1936 ford coupe

Glad to be back mate, I'm still working a stupid number of hours but the boats away for repairs next week so i have an extra week off.

A few years ago I found one of the la salle grilles mastered by Rik Hoving of the custom car chronicle web site. It took another year to find the monogram 36 coupe in a rebuildable state and luckily most of it had been glued after paint so it mostly came apart easily apart from both axles and one running board. I dont think i can save the axles so i will replace them with parts from the revell 40 standard coupe kit and an front axle from the parts box in australia. So far I've mostly been adding the missing body lines to the rear of the body and glued the top on ready for a chop or maybe swapping the roof above the raingutters with the top from the 40. I'm hoping to keep it fairly period which is not usually my style but i really like the old 30s and 40s customs by westergard and ayilla so if you see something that wouldn't be period please point it out to me. The engine is from the 40 kit and will be mostly stock unless i can find my missing triple carb set. The wheels will be from the 40 with some flipper caps i found that fit the rims. I dont know what they are from but they are smaller than the ones in the revell 50 ford truck. the tyres are from an amt parts pak and are a little smaller than i wanted to use but they fit the rims so they'll have to do. I'm leaning towards a darker shade of paint and a solid colour but if the body work turns out nice enough i may use hok pearl. I'm going to use the 40 dash as its nicer than the 36 one but the rest of the interior will be from the 36 with possibly a 48 ford sterring wheel. if you have built a 36 please feel free to share it here, especially if its the monogram kit as i have only seen the amt kit built.






if you build one of these, this part will stop the body sitting properly on the fenders. it needs to have a couple mm removed from the bottom

it looks worse in the pics mate. i have to cut a section from between the front fenders and it will sit nice then. I'm not doing that yet as these old kits are pretty brittle and its holding them in shape just now. My plan is to fit it just before primer

Great to see you back Les! Looks like an awesome build you got going on. The 36 Ford makes a great looking custom.

Tonight i chopped the top. I decided just 2mm would be enough to acheive the custom look i want. In the process of the chop I took the time to level out more of the door top to give it a longer look than the stock curve has. For the rear window i used my widest saw to cut along the the bottom of the window as I dont want to chop it. As you can see there were a few angled cuts down from the bottom cut for the doors. its messy but the peices are level so it just a few small pieces of sprue to fill them. most of the material removed came from the top edge of the rear piece as I like the sleeker looking chop rather than a hot rod style chop on this build. I have to run the saw along the drivers side of this edge again and reglue as its just a smidge different to the other side and its easier to remove than add back. While i had the top off i also cut a section of the amt elcamino bed cover to cover the shelf behind the seat as there is no way to get a nice finish on the paint with the top on, and the top fit is not good so it had to be glued so it could be body worked with the body

I got a bit ore done tonight. The chops ready for filler but i cant do that at work. I've also cut down the inner fenders from the 40 kit to near half the height they were. This hides 2 large plastic rods that were pretty ovious and it gives me a battery. I also filled a slot in the firewall that doesn't seem to serve a purpose. On top of this I've ordered one of icemans flatheads as this just looked lost down in the bay so this will give it some more height, and since it was there i got a quickchange axle too to use on this and also means i dont need to rob another kit for resin body i have so i'm claiming win, lol

That is one bloody awesome looking chop mate, done perfectly !!

If you use the sanding dust and CA glue to fill those gaps, it wont sink back like filler does when it eventually dries.

Thanks guys. I had a stroke of luck today. I was looking through my similar era kits for bumpers and in my 40 convertible kit i found this resin interior. I have no idea who made it but its very nicely cast and had the handles included. The door shuts are a little short but i can fix that by removing them and scribing them further back. I also found these cord bumpers which i think i'm going to use. I'll be using the front on the rear mounted closer to the body with a filler piece, and will use the rears at the front. Its much too wide but my plan is to remove the centre and mount them either side of the la salle gille with a filler piece behind. I want the entire grille exposed as a feature at the front so the bumpers may be mounted a hair firther back than the centre

Your doing some awesome custom work Les, love your thought process and the guts to go with it..

Nice work on the chop Les!

I didn't realise the rear bumper pic was so bad so here's one you can actuall see, lol

I've also glued the front grille in place. I had to remove the 2 small sections of plastic that held the fenders together to do this so figured it best to do it at home so they didn't get jostled too much taking it back from the boat. To get the grille to fit also meant slightly pulling the fenders apart and I added a small section of plastic behind for additional strength.

I might leave the bumper as one piece, it seems to be shaped to avoid the grille and once its at stock height it will give a more finished look to the front end

Your not making it easy for yourself, thats for sure mate,
but every little bit is worth it, looking good Les.

My engine and axle arrived this morning so I can get some more progress on this. I may have to modify the rear of the chassis to fit the quick change axle as its got a larger centre than the stock axle.