Poison Pinto WIP

[TooOld]

For the last couple of months I've been working on and off on this partially built Poison Pinto I picked up several years ago . It was missing the steering tie-rod which was easily fabricated , also missing was one headlight and the gas cap which I cast using parts from a Pinto Street Rod kit , and an alternator and license plate that were scrounged from the parts box . . . everything else was there .



After a mock up to check the ride height it all looked pretty good but the front tires were sticking out past the fender flares , not much but they needed to be moved in to look right . After some thought I decided to cut out a portion of each inner fender and space them in 1/16th inch on each side , this retained the stock mounting points for the front suspension which made assembly a breeze . The front axle needed to be narrowed and the only real issue was trying to match the color of the plastic to do some touch-up . Mixing Neon Green with Yellow came very close but not perfect , luckily it will all be hidden when the body is placed on the chassis .



Here's before and after shots of the modification . If you look closely at the lower point of the fenders compared to the tires you can see the difference .



Again it's not much but to my eye it looks much better now .



On to some assembly . . .
The chassis is pretty basic and I did nothing extra , just gray primer and some chrome touch-up with Molotow .



The kit tires look really nice after sanding the treads , adding white letter decals from Gofer Racing , and a coat of DullCote .



The engine builds up really nice and looks great ! I swapped out the kit carbs for a couple of Holley 1850's from the AMT '69 Torino , added a MAD distributor & coil , and printed Boss 429 Decals for the valve covers .



Here's the finished chassis .



And just yesterday I finished polishing the body . . . sure do like that bright green !



If you haven't heard Atlantis may be reissuing the Pinto Street Rod kit , no official word but they did have this test shot at a show a few months ago !



To be continued . . .

[plastimatic]

Some nice work making that pretty engine, Bob.

And you know I like some of that polished body plastic (when it's worthy) .

I agree about pulling the wheels to be more under the fenders.

There's a couple of built kits I've done it to after seeing them on the shelf for a bit.

[Rallymaster]

Excellent progress and thank you for the clear pics and testimony here. Really smart mods and the engine is well, BOSS!

Curious, are you going with the stock decals?

[TooOld]

Oct 29, 2024 17:56:44 GMT -6 plastimatic said:

Some nice work making that pretty engine, Bob.

And you know I like some of that polished body plastic (when it's worthy) .

I agree about pulling the wheels to be more under the fenders.

There's a couple of built kits I've done it to after seeing them on the shelf for a bit.

Thanks Jim !
I've pulled a few off my shelf to fix the width and ride height too . Now I make sure to always check and make changes when I start a build .

[TooOld]

Oct 30, 2024 5:51:40 GMT -6 Rallymaster said:

Excellent progress and thank you for the clear pics and testimony here. Really smart mods and the engine is well, BOSS!

Curious, are you going with the stock decals?

Thanks much Dave !
I've printed my own decals and actually just applied them this morning ! Using an image of the originals I changed the stripe color from black to green with a black pinstripe . For the "Poison Pinto" I printed two sets : the first set was all white on white decal paper and the second set had red lettering and was printed on clear paper , the white decal gets applied first and the clear decal goes on top .
First time I've tried this and it worked really well but they are a bit fuzzy , with some practice I should get better at doing decals this way .

Here's how they look ! Still need to clear them .

[patw]

Hey Bob, superb work yet again!

[TooOld]

Oct 30, 2024 16:16:16 GMT -6 patw said:

Hey Bob, superb work yet again!

Thanks Pat !

[TooOld]

After posting the last photos yesterday I knew I wasn't happy with the decals . It was originally a test to see if I could print a white underlay with a clear decal on top , I just copied and edited an image I found on line . . . not ideal . So I sat down and spent a couple of hours drawing "new" artwork using a vector program I have , these are much cleaner and sharper . Once dry I spray them with a sealer and let them dry overnight .

The top decal is clear paper , the bottom is white paper .

[Rallymaster]

You might have told me this, but what kind of printer and supplies are you doing this with? And yes, vector graphics are superior to pixels in this case.

[rapidtransit]

I sure could use a set of those side pipes !

[TooOld]

Oct 31, 2024 5:57:04 GMT -6 Rallymaster said:

You might have told me this, but what kind of printer and supplies are you doing this with? And yes, vector graphics are superior to pixels in this case.

Right now I have a Canon TS6120 but I've had a few others that worked just fine , the main thing is that they have settings for photo paper and high resolution printing . For decal paper I've settled on what Bare Metal Foil sells , the white seems more opaque than other brands .
The vector graphics program I use is Inkscape (it's free). I'm no expert so it's taken me a loooong time to figure out how to use it , I'm still learning things every time I use it .

[TooOld]

The new decals have been applied . . . much better !

[TooOld]

I only managed a few hours this week so not a lot of progress but I did make a couple of more parts that I discovered were missing . . .

First was a taillight cut from .030" clear sheet and sprayed with some clear red .



Next were those front and rear bumper "Darts" . I chucked short lengths of tubing into an electric drill and sanded them to a point , cut them to length , then inserted a piece of plastic rod and again sanded them to a point .



I also foiled the body around the windows using BMF Chrome foil scuffed with a 600 grit sanding pad to simulate brushed aluminum . After applying the foil I lightly buffed it with a Q-Tip to highlight the rivets .



Since I had clear windows from a Street Pinto kit I thought I'd try tinting them green with some Testors Transparent Candy Green spray paint . Not 100% which one I'll use but I'm leaning toward the green .