While shopping the Jimmie Flintstone site for a 58 Chevy body I stumbled across the '61-'65 Econoline panel body. I was over joyed to find it as it is a major vehicle in the Cars I used to Own series of builds.
The Flintstone site does not ship to Canada and anybody that sells the body here charges WAY more I had a buddy in Vancouver Washington order it and he then shipped it to me. It is still in transit as of this writing.
Since the first generation Econoline’s have never been kitted the body is designed to go with he chassis and interior from the Lindberg Lil Red Wagon/Dodge fever Dodge A100 pickup kit. After a long search for one of these available for a price that did not require a second mortgage on the house I managed to score one from a reasonably close toy store/hobby shop. As these have not been released for several years I was beginning to think I would have to sell a kidney to complete this project
Although it is a Dodge interior the basics are close enough for anybody but the most diehard early sixties van fanatic. In fact it looks like Dodge didn’t even try to hide that they were copying the Econoline.
The knowledgeable amongst you are probably saying “But Tcoat the Econoline only came with a six cylinder engine and that is clearly a V8”. Well that is actually convenient for me as my '64 had a 351W and C6 tranny from a 96 Fairlane crammed into that doghouse between the seats. So with some blue paint and a bit of squinting the kit318(?) now becomes a 351. It isn’t like you are going to see much beyond the very bottom anyway
I bought the van already built in late 78 and it had already been done up in pretty much standard vantasic style. There was a bench in the rear that folded down to a bed, a cabinet from an early sixties RV with an 8 track player in it, an ugly (by todays standards) carpet and some early '70s house speakers mounted up in the rear corners The two pieces of foam for the bench/bed were hard to “sleep” on as they always pulled apart so I screwed the base down and threw a cheap RV sized mattress on it. I also wanted a chair so borrowed (forever) an old mid sixties bar stool from my parents and screwed it to the plywood floor. It of course would have meant instant death for anybody riding on it in the event of a crash by those were the invincible days.
Paint starts to bring things to life. The top of the cabinet was that sort of psychedelic woodgrain pattern that anybody over about 55 years of age will recognize. The carpet, although not shag was a heavier pile than you get using embossing powder so it is short turf fibers used in model railroads. I think I missed a narrow black line between the bigger sections of the carpet but once body is on won’t see much of it anyway.
And all painted up. The dash is coming with the Flintstone body and will have white panels like the doors, seats and doghouse have. The blanket will be familiar to pretty much anybody with military, police or firefighting experience anyplace in the world. You can probably feel the itching kicking in already. Still need to make an 8 track player for the cabinet but have to did up a chrome radio I know I have someplace for that. Nothing but the front seat are glued on yet since I need to have the body to ensure spacing is correct.
As far as I know there are no existing pictures of the real thing but most of the details are etched in my brain even after al this time so it is very accurate at least in my head.
Tcoat, I really like this build. I’m a big fan of the custom van craze of the 1970’s so any panel van from the 1960’s-1970’s is of intereswt to me. I’ll be following this build along closely.
The real thing was built by a guy in 1974 so it was a very early member of the custom van craze. It had passed through a couple of people before I got it and I soon discovered why.
The 351 Windsor engine they had crammed into it was just to much power for driving in anything but the best of weather. Nobody dynoed it to see what the actual horse power was but it had a performance cam, four barrel, headers and a few other performance upgrades I just don’t recall. Combined with the placement and light weight f the van it was almost impossible to drive when wet out or even if the tires got to cold. It was also an hour job to pull things apart just to check and fill the oil.
The C6 auto transmission in it had the most wonky home made linkage ever. If you left it in park while running for more than a minute it would pop into reverse all on it’s own.
On the plus side, in warm weather when you could get traction, it would pick the front wheels off the ground for 50 feet!
I eventually got bored/frustrated with it and sold it (at a hefty profit) right in the heart of the van craze. Nostalgia has now twisted my perspective of it and if I could get it back, as it was, tomorrow I would!
Quick mockup using the Dodge body. Looks like I am going to need to trim a hair off the barstool height but the cabinet is bang on. There is no way the front seats will fit in using the locators. They don’t even clear the kit body so need to move closer together. I raised the rear about 3 scale inches when I built the suspension so the rake looks about right.
Pretty happy with it so far as it fits my memory of 45 years ago pretty good. Never thought I would ever be scratch building a 1/25 scale bar stool though!
After much disscussion on another forum it has been determined that the dash as molded includes a pad along the top and golve box that mine did not have. In my van the dash was just steel painted a semi gloss black with the panel around the instruments, ash tray and flat govebox door in white. The padded glove box will ruin the symmentry of the white no matter how I paint it so it has to go.
I have never worked with resin parts before so have no idea how hard it would be to remove it. Is there a good way to sand/grind/crape or otherwise flatten it out? Don’t want to ruin it in the name of accuracy but it just will look wrong as is!
It was truly a creature of the '70s. The side pipes are going to be a challenge since they were cheap “Made in Japan” (remember it was the 70s) things that no kit has ever duplicated and will have to be scratch built from memory. The lucky part is that they were not exactly complex.
I need to find some slightly smaller tires. These just look like balloons. The chassis needed some considerable rework as the body is about 3/8 inch shorter than the Lindberg kit.
That is looking great Tcoat. I remember those days. I loved those old vans. You are doing an excellent job replicating the details. I once owned a 66 GMC van. Like you I wish I still had it.
It is fun just how many people across a couple of forums had a sixties van of one make or another. With the number of people that have said they had one I am actually sort of surprised that this era of vans is, and always has been, almost completely ignored by the mainstream manufactures. They pumped out many different versions of the '70s vans since they were the bigger part of the craze while us poor early adaptors went without.
I had a 68 Chevy van. Strange in that it was a work-family vehicle that the kids painted smileys all over. When I bought it ,mechanically and interior wise it was great. The paint was just Deep red primer!
WOW! Those new tires,wheels, & hub caps look great on it. That interior looks so cool too. I agree about needing to drop the nose a bit more to achieve that proper stance.
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