SPA Modeler

Why the Beetle Bus of course...

Stikpusher wrote:Why the Beetle Bus of course...

Oh you wanna go eh? LOL. I'll have more on this one starting Friday. After 9 hours of sanding last week I don't care if I ever see another piece of sanding paper or sanding stick.

I spoke with Rick Dobbertin today on the phone ( the owner of the J2000) and he's going to send me some engine detail photos on the engine so I can get all the hose and harness routing correct so I'll be looking forward to that.

Nice to have a good reference contact like that!

He's helped me a little bit with a couple unpublished photos and he's working on a few more plus a spare Revell J2000 kit to send my way. I just ordered a Pro Stock Camaro with the wheels that I want that are a 5 bolt pattern instead of a 4 bolt pattern Weld Draglites. This Camaro kit's got a bunch of other "goodies" in it that I'll use as well. The aluminum wheels I've been mocking everything up with are a "special treat" for my Street Stock 1990 Mustang LX I'll be tackling in the future.

Here's the kit:



and a picture of what the wheels will look like outside of an artists box top art representation ( Say......... I like that "Chevrolet Power" decal on the side of that hood scoop! That'll be going on the VW somewhere alright) :

The first thing that I had to do to get the engine / transmission to fit was to get rid of the Lenco 4 speed transmission and replace it with a Turbo TH350 automatic transmission. I went to work by cutting the Lenco from the engine assy.



After some sanding and dry fitting to make sure everything would line up flush , I mated the two together:



This morning has been nothing but planning and fitting to make sure all these mods are gonna jive with each other. I cut the flooring out another 1/2" at the front to allow the engine/ transmission to fit in nicely. I think this'll be ok:



I've got a lot of work ahead of me to include rear chassis framework fabrication, engine and transmission mounting and figuring out where I want the radiator to wind up as well as figuring out how I want to do the seating arrangement because the OOB stuff is now shot all to Hell.

Might as well get another case of beer and brats, boys. This is gonna be a while....

Paul wrote:Might as well get another case of beer and brats, boys. This is gonna be a while....

Don't worry, I'm in for the long haul. This one will be well worth watching!

Thanks Paul and Mark. Made some more progress in the way of the roof. I ended up knocking one of my splices for the window framing out while washing the whole thing with soap and water so I could prime it. I ended up splicing a new section in and getting through the primer stage. I've got so much planning involved in this build now that it's all layered like a friggin' sandwich. I've just gotta be careful about the order in which I do stuff so I don't have to go back and redo anything. I'll get a little further along before I post any more pictures which'll probably be on Friday.

I remember reading the article about the J2000 in the 80's. What a car