The last time that I built a 427 Cobra was when Johnson was president. The kit that I will be building is a Revell of Germany 1965 Cobra.
Notice the word that the yellow arrow is pointing at, NEW.
The back of the box includes some nice photos of the finished model.
The parts are packaged in plastic bags. A single set of decals is included.
A number of frets are included. I marked each fret’s letter with a black marker. This makes it easy identifying the frets during assembly.
A nice assembly manual is included. The assembly instructions are very well done. Each part is identified by it’s fret letter and part number. The color of each part is indicated and the correct sequency of assembly is indicated (red arrows).
The part colors are indicated in 21 languages! I made a cheat sheet of the colors in english. Eighteen colors are required for this build.
Remember that the box top included that word NEW in big bright colors! Liar, liar, pants on fire!!! This is a kit that was originally made in 1988. I think that the only thing that is new is the decal sheet. Flash will need to be removed from many parts.
I started the build by first working on the wheels and tires. This is a photo of an actual Cobra wheel.
The wheel and tire on the right are what is included in the kit. The blue line and the word Goodyear are decals. The wheel is chrome plated and the tire is super shiny. I thought that the chrome finish looked unrealstic, so I removed the chrome finish using Purple Power. This stuff removes the chrome in less than an hour. I painted the wheel using Model Master Aluminum Plate. I polished the rim and ribs of the wheel using a paper stump. The tire was weathered after the decals were added using an Aqualine weathering product.
A ‘New’ cobra would be great. I’ve got the monogram kit in the stash - I would really like to find GTM models Ken Miles at Willow Springs kit with the broken windsheild and dented trunk just like the move.
Awesome job with the tires. The Cobra is a super cool car. Funny thing. Last Saturday while driving for work in southern Maryland I heard the thunderous roar of a car engine. In the opposite lane a blue Cobra with the white strip went flying by. Then about an hour later I saw another one. This one red and white.
I have an older boxing of the Cobra kit from Monogram. Looks like it got reboxed under Hasegawa too, wierd. I’ve also built the old MPC large scale Cobra, which is a great kit when you can get one.
I am looking forward to seeing this as the Cobra is my #1 dream car on my all time cool car list.
I do not own an airbrush, so I am stuck using rattle cans. I plan on using Tamyia Light Blue. I hope that the Tamyia paint is a “light” blue and not a “medium” blue.
Thanks regarding the tires and wheels. I would guess that the cobras that you saw where “replica kits”. I would doubt that an owner of a real Cobra would drive it around town for fear of getting into an accident in a $1.3 million car.
A few years ago I was at a car show and a man was showing off his “real” 1965, 427 Cobra. He had the original bill of sales from a local Ford dealership. The invoice indicated that he traded-in his Corvette for the Cobra. He also had a signed letter from Carroll Shelby thanking him for purchasing a Cobra. The Cobra had a number of minor dings in the body and the paint needed to be redone. It looked everypart its age. The man used the Cobra as a Summer daily-drive when he first purchased it. He said that the car was very crude. It had no heater, no interior upholstered panels on the doors, no door windows and no top. He never drove it when rain was forecast. He said that the car was designed and built for only one purpose. To go as fast as Hell.
This car has a very strange frame. It consists of large diameter steel tubes welded into an assembly resembling a ladder. I painted it flat black and gave it a mild weathering. I’ll assemble the parts today and provide an update tomorrow.
Looking good Johnny. Remeber these were race cars, built for speed not comfort. I built one of the Accurate Miniatures Grand Sport Corvettes (white one) and it had a very similar chassis.
Clamps were required to make the sides of the engine block fit properly.
I removed the chrome finish from the intake manifold, dry-sump pan and carb.
I purchased a pre-wired distributor from MAD.
Now comes the $64,000 question. Was the 427 painted blue or black. I visited a number of Cobra websites and the consensus is that a 1965 427 was painted black. So be it.
The engine block is black and the transmission is a medium grey. The nasty looking seam on top of the transmission will be hidden once the model is finished. The intake manifold is painted flat aluminum. I added some “earth” colored weathering to the intake manifold. The cold air box is painted Testors’ Aluminum Plate which is buffed to a nice shine. The top edge of the cold air box is painted grey to mimic the foam gasket on the 1:1 car. The carb is painted aluminum with brass highlights on the float bowls and the choke plate. I think that most of the carb will be hidden by the air cleaner. The valve covers on the 1:1 car were cast and were painted black. After the paint dried I scrapped the paint from the cooling ribs using the back of a hobby knife. The wired distributor adds a nice look.
Our Boss at the Ford Dealer in Arkansas Had one and Yes, the engine was Black. I got the priviledge of working there in the evenings as a sales rep. My specialty? T-Birds and L.T.D.s. once in a while, a truck, to an acquaintance or something.
The engine is installed on the frame. I did a test fit of the wheels. The axels are WAY to thin and there is no way of fastening the wheels to the axels. The wheels just flop around!
