1966 Ford Fairlane GTA

 I love it when a W.I.P. include's a "Background story"  The sentimental connection always bring's out our best work. ( and also our own worst critisizem's ) 

I built this kit many year's ago and seem to recall I had a "Bear" of a time getting the headlight assembly to line up with the fender's ( and they are a bit too thick ) I reccomend at least sanding the chrome  Compleatly off the back of the headlight's.  But please test fit first....For all I know  I may be remembering a bad fitting gear on a Roundhouse Shay.....

Checked out MCW and yes, they do have Springtime Yellow. I'm not sure I want to invest many more $$$ in this 'diversion' project. But, I've saved the page if I have a change of heart.

I'm having trouble with Photobucket. In fact, I hate it. The popup ads are ridiculous and it's now not letting me share photos with paying $330 a year. Sorry! That ain't going to happen. It's also horribly slow and I have 116 MB/S download speed.

Is there any other way to get pictures into this site without that hassle?

Problem Solved!! Switched to Google Photos. Went to the help section of this forum and found the answer.

Well... I thought the problem was solved. When trying to upload so more pics to Google Photos, it just seems to hang up when "processing photo". By hang up I mean no action over a periof of hours.

After seeing what you have been doing on your other projects, this one is going to be fun to watch.

Be aware of using Google, I tried that approach and after time, people either can no longer see the photos, or they disappear.

I bought a yearly subscription for $20 on Imageshack and absolutely love it.  It has easy to use drap and drop management of the albums, its not taylored to mass sharing of albums like other sites, and its easy copy the photo file location to imbed into FSM posts.  So many other sites seem to make it a 10 step process.

I just joined ImageShack and it IS MUCH, MUCH BETTER, FASTER AND MORE STABLE, and yes, it cost me $19.00. I believe it's worth it.

Today was one of those days where you take 1 step forward and three back. I want to add ignition wiring and attempted to drill out the kit's styrene distributor cap. Not only did it not go as intended, I broke two tiny carbide drills in the process. 

So I attempted to machine one out of brass. I have very small brass capillary tubing that will serve as bushings for the wiring and I though (wrongly) that I could solder these bushing into the brass. 

The machining went fine, but the layingo out and drilling the 0.032" holes for the bushings was a complete fiasco. Not only was my spacing all over the place, but I broke some more carbide drills and left a chunk in one of the holes.

So I went to plan C which was to machine it out of aluminum.

Again, machining was not a problem and yet again, putting the holes into the cap was a nightmare. Besides the spacing problem reappearing, I also broke more carbide drills. While inexpensive, these things aren't free.

Here are the three rejects. Picture was hard to get into focus.

Now I'm on Plan D which is creating another one out of Plastruct plastic pipes being machined to shape. Drilling will be much easier. If this doesn't work, I'm going to my LHS and buying an after-market distributor and wiring. I've alreay spent more than that on all those carbide drills.

ImageShack seems to work much better moving pictures.

Re: sanding chrome plating off the back of the headlights:  An easy way to remove chrome plating from plastic parts is to soak them in Windex for a few hours.  It will completely dissolve the chrome, like magic!

Not sure why you think that kit is crude. It's a fairly well done kit, tooled in 1991 or 92.

My opinion was based on the fit of the parts vis a vis the size of the pins versus the size of the holes, the lack of positive location of the fender inner walls, etc. My right hand one is crooked since there was no position keying and I must have moved it before it dried. When you compare this kit to a Tamiya or Meng kit, the comparison is easy to make.

After looking at the web for pre-made distributors I found that none of them solved my problem, but I did see a Detail Associates distributor kit that had separate top plates with 6 or 8 cylinder arrangements which made me realize that I too can make a separate top plate and if so, can lay it out better than trying to drill into the machined distributor itself. 

So... I laid out a plan on Adobe Illustrator an 8-cylinder arrangement on a 3/16 circle which is the smallest size of gasket punch to make a nice round disc. 

I made six copies considering how many I'd screw up. I spray glued the paper and glued it to some 0.020" sytrene and then used a sharp end of a divider to *** punch the cross points on the drawing. My first attempt had the marks on the a layout circle that was a bit too close to the outside edge so I then punched inwards to the tips of the layout lines and this proved okay.

I drilled them with a 0.021" drill and then followed up with a 0.026" drill which is close to the size of the micro-tubing that's going in the holes to provide a raisded tubular surface for the wires. In looking a pictures of this engine, the spark plug wires come off at 90°.

You can see the three that I drilled produced one really good array which is the one that I ended up using.

Actually the first one that I attempted was on a piece of thin ABS. After gluing the disc to the Plastruct tubing and attempting to turn it on the lathe, the glue didn't hold and the disc disappeared into the quantum rift. 

I then decided to use the styrene. The Plastruct tubing isn't styrene. It's butyrate and therefore, doesn't respond totally well to the ABS or styrene. It seems to bond, but then it doesn't. So this time I CA'd the disc to the butyrate. I then made the distributor. It wasn't easy since I had a collett that could hold the larger diameter (1/4") tubing, but when I turned it around to turn the small shaft that would mate to the engine, I had to improvise by using part of pin vise held in the lathe's three-jaw chuck. This worked marginally, but good enough to get close. After I machined it as far as I could go, I measured the shaft, found a drill that gave me a hole that size and drilled out the mounting hole in the intake manifold to fit the distributor. The results were good. I'm now going to machine a tiny natural aluminum vacuum advance diaphram to simulate this part with real metal so it will look spiffy. All in all this little distributor project has taken a lot of time and I'm not done yet.

I then turned back to railroad work since the brass I needed to complete a 10ft long model chain link fence to surround part of the refinery project I'm building. I'll be working on the GTA interspersed with building the refinery.

Nice work.

well looks like you "got 'er done."  will be watchin' with interest. 

Back on the GTA. I cut tiny pieces of 1/32" thin wall tubing and installed them in the new distributor. It looks a bit ragged since the heights of each is not uniform. I was not particularly careful when drilling the holes regarding their depth and really didn't cut all those pieces of tubing the same lenght either. But when painted, you can see any of this variation.

I also added tubing in the tip of the ignition coil. I had to remove the tapered portion of the plastic part to give me a good surface to drill. I then added the taper back using medium CA with accelerator filling the profile back. I also drilled out the tiny sparkplug tips and added tubes there to receive the spark plug wires.

I added the exhaust manifolds, the carb and did touch up painting. I painted the ignition stuff gloss black. For the carb, I first painted it flat aluminum and then overcoated with Tamiya clear yellow.

I needed to machine a vacuum advance diaphram and did it on the lathe, I now realize that I forgot to add the pipe input to its face and will add that with a small NBW casting.

Here's the engine just about ready to receive wiring and plumbing.

I'll be working on the railroad tomorrow, and then will have paint drying and be back on the GTA. 

Just about got the engine finished today. First I CA'd a resin hex nut to the vacuum advacnce diaphram and then piped it to the base of the carb using some 0.010" brass wire that came from the fancy cork netting on a couple bottles of Spanish Rioja wine. Besides getting this very nice fine gauge brass, wine bottles are also a great source of foil that can be used for lots of detail scratch-build parts. I ultimately painted this aluminum.

The NBWs are from True Details and you can see the resin block to the left.

Next I used some 0.021" brass wire for the PVC pipe from the right valve cover to the intake manifold. This pipe was painted engine blue.

And then it was time to put in the ignition wiring. First I was going to use some very fine gauge stranded copper that was an interesting yellow color. This was salvaged from an old printer that my grandson took apart. But it was a little too fat so I substituted 0.016" black iron wire. The iron wire holds its position well. I bent the ends going into the distributor cap 90 degrees since the prototype's wiring comes out this way. I use CA to hold them into place. I have no idea what firing order I created, I just alternated the leads coming out going to one cylinder bank and then the other. 

I painted all the ends and tubes Tamiya Rubber Black so it looked like the rubber boots on the wires.

I added the rest of the details (oil breather cap, air cleaner, belts set with alternator and fan). 

The air cleaner got a detail telling us that this is a 390 cu. in. V8. These are old style decals with large extended clear film areas. It means you have to trim them very close, but then there's nothing to grab hold of with the tweezers. I used Micro-set solution to soften the inner clear film so it snugged down inside the air cleaner's depression.

I realize you can go further than this on engine details. There's wiring to the starter motor (not seeable), alternator wiring to and from the voltage regulator (which I don't think is included in the kit), brake lines (car had a simple, non-power brake cylinder which doesn't appear to have anti-lock brakes which weren't available in 1966) and full lines from tank to fuel pump to carb. I may add that since the fuel pump is on the engine.

I have some great images of the interior which should be fun to do. This is the first car kit that I have completed in about 53 years. I did run "Grandpop's Scale Model Clinic" at a community center and some of the middle-schoolers were building cars. That was a fun thing to do that was inspired by my older grandson. I ran two consecutive sessions.

I remember you posting the picture of your GTA with you and your wife next to it when I was building my '66 GT over on the Scale Auto forum.  I really like the detailing on your engine!  We all tend to do a better job when building the cars of our youth.  I remember the detailing I put into my '70 Duster 340 that I built a few years ago.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks fellas!

I finished up the refinery project on the model railroad. It was an 8-month endeavor that came out better than I expected. 

So today (rare Sunday session) I got back to working on the GTA. First I painted the aircleaner element white. I may add a dark was in the folds to give it more definition. I'm pretty much done with the engine and got to work again on the chassis.

I wanted to drill out the exhaust pipe ends starting with small one and going to the final size, but it didn't work as planned. The Ertl plastic is brittle and the wall broke out when I tried to open up the hole. First I tried to repair using CA and re-drilling, but it broke out again. So I went to plan B; making new ends out of brass tubing CA'd to the existing pipe.

Thinner walled brass tubing would even work better, but I didn't have any.

I glued the shocks into the chassis and then the leaf springs. I glued the rear together, sanded the very obvious seams after it dried, and then test fit it into the springs. The instructions show putting in the exhaust system before the springs and rear go in, but I wanted to air brush all the gloss black at one go and I wanted to paint the exhaust a different color. The exhauset could be put in, but it took a lot of bending and I think it would mess up the paint. So... I'm leaving out the drive shaft and rear until after the exhaust is in, but painting all the rest of chassis.

The exhaust pipes were also painted gloss black in preparation to receive various metallic shades and a gloss black base coat is usually recommended.

I also sprayed the engine compartment and radiator plate with gloss black. Engine's not glued, just sitting there looking pretty.

Tomorrow I'll finish painting the exhaust and install it, then put in the rear, install the engine and drive shaft and fasten in the radiator. I've decided I'm not going to add any more wiring except battery cables to the voltage regulator.

Just blew away today's post by attempting to click on the tab in my browser while getting a picture from Imageshack and inadvertantly hit the "X" and closed the tab. So we'll do it all again.

I didn't have much work time today, but did get a little over an hour in the shop and about the same amount of time reviewing videos on YouTube on how to open up model doors and add hinges. I hadn't done this since 1971 so it was time for a refresher before I screwed up an out-of-production model.

I used the method that has you gradually scraping out the seam with the back side of a sharp #11 blade. I augmented this with my very fine MicroMark razor saw. The saw's kerf is only 0.005". It was tricky cutting the vent pane away from the roof, and I thought I might lose it, but it did work. I came out of the lines a couple of times and filled the minor scratches with Tamiya fine putty.

I have a lot of work left on this part since the interior needs to be separated and door jambs have to be created to fill in all the open spaces.

I painted the exhaust pipes a home mix of gray and flat aluminum to make a "steel" facsimile. I then masked the pipes and sprayed the mufflers with Tamiya rattle can bare metal.

I installed the pipes and then CA'd the rear into position. It was time to connect the engine, but the drive shaft was too long. Way too long! I re-checked to make sure I didn't install the leaf springs backwards since the rear is not centered and if I got them backwards, it could account for the poor drive shaft fit. But, after checking, it seems I did it correctly. Furthermore, the mounting holes were not the same size front to back and varied side to side. Also the shock mounts were inside and towards the front. 

I measured the overage and cut the drive shaft at the transition point and removed the excess piece. I wanted to re-attach the two parts together using a piece of 0.032" brass rod. I drilled the universal joint piece with a carbide drill successfully, but broke the drill in the long end. When you have a chunk of carbide stuck in a hole, you're basically out of luck. It was time for plan B. Plan B was to make a new shaft out of aluminum tube of the same size. I narrowed the plastic parts so they would slip inside the tube. Here's the new assembly being fitted. I haven't glued the parts in yet. That will come tomorrow.

I kind of like how the real metal tubing looks, but it's not very prototypical. I also shot the entire chasis with Dull Coat since I was told that Ford never finished the engine compartment with gloss black.

Again a short work session. 

Got the engine glued into the chassis. In the attempt to get the transmission's tab keyed into the trans support beam, the engine/transmission joint gave way and I had to reglue that and wait for it to dry. I touched up the exhaust system in the mean time.

I then got back to work on the body. I cut out the inner door. First I took time to locate the inner panels relation to the out door and marked the outer door. The inner and outer doors do not exactly overlap on car door since you have a door jamb in between. I had a little booboo the needed some filler and did so. BTW: the few scratches on the outer body filled nicely and shouldn't be noticeable. Even real cars have filler applied at the factory before painting... at least they used to.

The inner door panel sits almost vertically, but the outer door has curves and turns inward near the bottom so there needs to be a shim to fill the empty space that would be occupied by the lower sill part of the interior piece. I added a piece of plastic scrap to fill this space. The end spaces will be fill with the jamb pieces on both the door and the body.

Here's the door test fit together.

Then I had to start building the hinges. My first attempt is a little too wide. I've reviewed videos on this and most folks use styrene tubes to hold the hinge wires. My first attempt uses brass tube with a 1/32" i.d. to match the 1/32" brass wire. It'll take a few attempts to get them exactly right. Persistence pays off. Since I'm going to be epoxying the hinge into the door, whether I use brass or styrene doesn't make a difference.

Happy Wednesday!

spent most of the afternoor with Apple Support figuring out how to import the Photos library from my wifes 8 year-old MacBook to her brand new MacBook Air, and how to get my MacBook Pro to be able to run Windows. The Book Camp Assistant kept crashing and we couldn't figure it out. That left to about an hour in the shop.

First I attached the radiator plate, connected the lower heater hose and installed the upper one. The fender walls were too wide apart and I had to enlarge the slots on the radiator piece to get it to nest in properly. It will need some touch up painting.

I will attempt to add some heater hoses too. I checked out a walk-around video on YouTube that nicely documented a beautifully restored 66 GTA. I was able to pause the playback and make focused screen shots of various images including the heater hose locations. I was also able to get some great shots of the interior that's going to very valuable in detailing the car. It's been almost 50 years since I sat in that car and frankly, don't remember very much about it.

Got back to the hinges. Made a second set that was a little better than the first, but the geometry was wrong. The legs that connect to the body, can't be on the same level as those in the doors. They have to extend a bit downward toward the door skin since the mounting point on the door is a bit elevated due to a pad of medium CA to level out the mounting surface.

This led to the 3rd attempt which is more workable. It's not perfect yet, but it may work. The door sites at the proper attitude and swings fully outward.

I had to cut a couple of minor slots in the inner door panel to give some clearance to those large loops. I'm wondering if the loops need to be a bit smaller and that would move the hinge closer to the door's edge. I might try that which would be attempt number 4.

Woke up thinking about a crazy idea of making true scale hood hinges. I did a Google search to find good images of them and found pictures of the actual hinges for the 66 Fairlane (also Mustang).

I downloaded images of front and back and put them into Illustrator and traced over them. I don't have actual sizes of the hinges. A neighbor has just restored-upgraded a 64 Galxie 500 and I might ask to measure his. After drawing the image, I needed to figure out how the darn thing works. It's not as simple as it seems.

The hinges are a parallelogram like a scissors jack. I found a video on adjusting old Ford hood hinges and watched the action when they operate. The side arms move away from each other with the big spring between adding counter tension to offset the hood's weight. I copied and pasted a bunch of copies of three different sizes and the smallest one seems to be close to what a 1:25 hinge will be. 

That all being said, I'm really not sure if I can a) make two, b) make them workable, c) attach it to the car, and d) have it actually close the hood correctly. I'm going to try, but not spend very much time on it. There's a reason why modeler's don't usually make scale hinges for model cars.

Back to the door hinges.

The 3rd version hinge's loops were much too big which led to version 4, 5 & finally 6. I got 6 as good as I was going to get it. I found that the thick plastic doors and body sides were interferring with each other so I thinned them both and carefully trimmed a little bit of the door edge. I decided to use plastic tubes to hold the body side hinge mounts for eash of gluing them in place.

Versions 4 and 5 had smaller loops, but the drop I bent in the wire was too severe and it pushed the door away from the body.

This view shows the smaller loops and the correct drop.

And here's a vertical shot showing the rest of the geometry. With the newly designed, smaller-looped hinges fit closer to the door's edge and I didn't need those relief cuts so I filled them with some styrene stock.

The inner panel needs relief under the dash area to clear those plastic hinge holders. I'll do that on Monday. So happy Friday and great weekend.

Your photos are all missing. The recent ones. Nice engine work. A suggestion on the chassis, a factory stock chassis would be red oxide primer with body color overstay.

With the hinges attached at both ends I had to fit the rest of the inner pieces to the hinges. I had to cut some clearance notches in the kick panel on the left side, and later, after fitting the dashboard, found that it too would need relief. 

With all the fitting complete I needed to close up the door's gaps with jambs front and back. I used thin 0.010" styrene I traced the internal curvature using a compass with the point tracing the curve and the pencil to draw the curve on the styrene. This method is a good way to trace oddball curves onto sheets to fit things. I learned this trick many, many years ago working a summer job at a stainless steel sheet metal plant in 1970.

After gluing the rough shaped sheet into place, I let it dry and then trimmed it close with a sharp #11 and then filed and sanded it to a perfect fit. 

Here was the trimmed jamb in place on the lack and hinge ends. I went back and filled the remaining gaps with Tamiya filler although I think this might be overkill.

t was time to paint the interior pieces and I did so with Tamiya semi-gloss black which nicely simulates the sheen of leather. After it dried I went back and picked out some of the shiny details with Vallejo "real metal" silver. I used some Tamiya clear red to paint the door handle reflector. 

For the instrument panel I attempted to do some metal foiling. I'm not too good at this and this is the first car I've ever attempted using Bare Metal Foil. At first I cut the strips, lifted the end and peeled it off the backing paper to promptly see the stuff curl all over itself and become a mess. After I added the foil to the bottom strip on the dash that I decided to read the instructions since there must be a better way. There was! You lift one edge and and attach a slip of paper to it, then you lift the other end of the strip and attach another piece of paper. Then you lift the foil from the both ends while keeping some tension and Voila, you can keep it from curling.

The dask came out just ok. The instrument cluster was hard to bring out any details since the relief was very shallow, and the foil could have been better.... much better.

The door sides also have chrome shiny trim. And now that I look at this picture...

I realize that I put the chrome on the wrong part of the door and will have to fix that.

The chrome is a bit of a hassle. I need practice. I picked the separate door to try first. Doing the rest of the interior will be harder since it will be done at an oblique angle.

To make matters worse. In working to remove the excess foil I took off a lot of black paint that I'll now have to hand paint back to a semblance of decency.

Tomorrow, I'll strip the incorrect foil and get it right. As I went along it did get easier to get the foil on better. I will also try to do the rest of the interior. I may end up painting the striping. I've used old-style drafting inking pens to do fine striping on models. These are the kinds that have two springy blades ending in very sharp points where the distance between them is adjusted with a vernier screw.

Back to work on the door trim. After stripping Monday's foil, I touched up all the places where I scraped off the paint. The touch up ruined the beautiful initital air brushed semi-gloss black. But, I was able to get the foil into the right trim on the door. I'm not 100% satisfied with the foil's appearance, but it's going to have to work. 

I then added some trim to the venta-pane window insuides. The outside will have to wait until the outside is finished since I would have to mask the chrome and woud assuradly remove the trim with the tape when unmasking.

The door doesn't look as rough in person as it does in these pictures. It does look pretty rough. Next time, I might just painting the trim with Vallejo Real Metal using a fine pointed brush.

Finally getting the hang of putting on the foil. I did the chrome seat bands and am pleased with the results. It was an easier install and I took my time.

I painted the carpeting a Tamiya medium gray, but it will need some flat spray since the paint has a little bit of sheen.

I opened the relief holes in the under-dash side wall to better clear the door hinges.

I then decided to add some heater hoses. I used some small guage electric hookup wire. I didn't have any more black so I took a Sharpied and 'painted' the red wire black. After installation I went back over it with some Tamiya Rubber Black. It's a great color since it's a black with just a hit of gray in it. I used a #50 drill to make the holes in the water pump, intake manifold and then the firewall. I used a tiny 0.010 carbide bit as a starter hole so the "bigger" drill went where I wanted it to.

I still have to install the battery and I'll probably put in some battery cables too. Secondary wiring is such a small gauge that when you do it in 1:24 you'd barely see it. I'm sure some guys add them too, but this engine bay is getting busy enough.

Man this is looking good.   And cool youre reference photo is you!  Looking forward to the finished product.   Btw, big gear head/car fan so love the subject. 

Thanks! I found another great broadside of my original car. The date was Memorial Day 1967 in Muskegon, MI State Park.

The kit has chrome steel wheels, but my car had hubcabs. My car and the kit have red-line wide-oval tires.

Had a very short work session today since we took the grandkids to see Coco. If you haven't seen it, it's another Pixar masterpiece. Even without a plot, dialog or music, the art and creativity is worth the price of admisision. At times it was breathtaking.

I glued the seats and inner panels to the floor after adding another coat of gray, a coat of Dull Coat and a brush coat of Tamiya Flat Clear, to try and dull down the shine on the gray. For some reason it's still showing a sheen.

My LHS clued me into another great product. It's called Liquid Chrome and it's produced by Chartpak. It's a 1mm tip and lays down an alcohol-based liquid metal that's truly reflective and smooth like metal, not like pigmented paint. It's as bright and smooth as the foil without the wrinkles. I touched up some of the door panel trim with it, used it on the reamining trim on the driver's side rear, and then tried it on the edging on the console. The center of the console is brushed metal, but the edges are polished. It's not a good use for foil. I did it backwards, trying to the marker on the edges before painting the center, but I wanted to see how it looked and it looks great. If you haven't tried it, I would highly recomment it.

I painted the outer sections with the semi-gloss black (by brush) and then did the trim with the chrome pen. It's hard to catch the reflecitivity in the picture, but believe me, it's really terrific.

More work tomorrow.

Using more standard aluminum foil (actually some product that I bought in Germany 15 years ago which is a thinner gauge than standard US foil) and Microscale foil adhesive I applied the foil to the broader surfaces of the console. The outer edges are bright and the inner sections are brushed on the real car. I used the non-shiny side of the foil for this to give a little contrast. The bright, as I noted yesterday, was provided by that really cool Liquid Chrome pen.

I used Tamiya Clear Blue and Clear Red to detail that little GTA emblam on the upper console.

I added the auto trans shift level and then CA'd the console into the car.

The dashboard needed some modification. Becuase of the shape of the door hinges I had to cut relief holes in the kick plate on the interior sides, but I also need to add this clearance to the dash component itself. There's already very little stock left on the left side, so if I cut some of the dash away in that area, there will be effectively nothing holding the dash on the left side. I needed to add more material onto the dash which would then be glued to the inner left panel. 

I added another piece of styrene stock under this piece to add some more meat and then glued the dash into place.

The dash tab will be cut away, but the new stock will hold it in place. To add more strength I'm going to drill and put some 0.021" brass pins through the inner panel into the added stock. That should tie it all together when I take a small router and cut the dash tab away to clear the hinge bulge.

The last thing I did was prepare the steering wheel and column. This was a perfect use for the Liquid Chrome pen to "chrome" the horn ring. The picture doesn't do it justice. It looks absolutely like chrome, not paint. Tomorrow I'll install the wheel.

I painted and installed the battery, and the master cylinder. I'm going to add some battery leads. Any suggestions on making a realistic battery lead connector? 

I'm quickly getting to the point where I'm going to have to paint the exterior. I'm using lacquer and don't want to use it indoors and I don't have a spray booth (yet), and usually do this work outside, but the weather's getting like Winter and that doesn't work. 

I don't know what to say, they're showing up on my machine.

Today, I split my session doing some train work (attempting to replace a broken headlight with an LED) and some GTA work. 

I routed the dash to give proper clearance for the door hinges. I've purchased some 1/16" solid carbide router bits from Drill Bits Unlimited that work nicely in the Dremel. I didn't ahve to remove much, just enough to let the hinge loop sit inside so the inner panel and outer body don't get pushed out of position.

The cut in this picture is a bit ragged. I cleaned it up a bit and then painted it semi-gloss black. I also installed the steering column today, but the pics don't show it.

I needed to make door jambs for the body side of the door opening. I didn't attempt to have the rear jamb sit inside the body. Instead I installed it so it fit flush with the body. My door is fitting a bit big some a little bit of extra stock wouldn't hurt. In this picture, I filed it to fit and then added some Tamiya putty to fill in any noticeable blemishes. In the real world, there is some kind of lock system on the body and door jams. I don't think I'm going to add that, but then I've been known to do this silly stuff.

For the hinge side body jamb I had to inset this piece since the door hinges into the body space. I used thin 0.010" sytrene for these parts and it was easy to get them to conform to any curves. After using liquid cement I went back and reinforced the joints with med CA. After which I again added some filler to close the gaps that were left.

I took another picture with the door fitted. I used the flash so you're getting a lot of specular reflections. You can barely see te front jamb and you can see that the dash area is now painted. 

What's going to be fun is putting the outside body color onto these jamb areas. I've been looking at a lot of videos of people building model cars, and generally folks don't open up the doors. It greatly complicates the process since the door, which is now a single piece has the inner and outer panels glued together. The inner is interior trim colors and the outer body color and the jamb is body color. The flash shows some interior space behind the dash that needs to have come color. On second thought, that's the firewall and without the flash blast you would'nt see it since it's going to be very dark under there. Sometimes it's good to take pictures of your work for evaluation purposes.

Without digital photography, all this journaling and posting would be nearly impossibe and very, very expensive.