Phantom 1955 Ford Ranchero/LightningBy Gerry Chevalier |
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The body, hood and windshield used for this project were from a 1/24 scale Monogram '55 Ford panel truck kit, and the interior, chassis, and pickup bed were all from a Revell 1/25 scale '99 Ford SVT F-150 Lightning. Other part sources will be noted as I go along it never hurts to have a well-stocked spares box!
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Originally I was going to build this kit as a woody station wagon with windows in the side panels. As I studied the side profile and especially the drawing in the instruction sheet I thought “Why not cut the roof off at the character line and down along the body to make a ranchero?” I thought that the roof looked too tall and made the windshield look too short and slot- like.
After
cutting the roof off I trimmed the front part of the roof and installed
it from underneath to the rest of the roof that was left on the body.
This got the roof down to a better height. I cut the rear portion of the
cab from an AMT 1/25 scale '55 Ford pickup to form the rear of the new
cab. This piece had to be widened to fit the larger body and the window
opening had to be reshaped also. The new cab then had all the seams molded
and sanded smooth.
I
also never liked the way the fenders on these trucks hung down below the
body to accommodate the running boards. Just trimming the bottoms off
would not look right so I decided to cut the fenders from the body and
move them up so the bottom of the fenders and the body were flush. This
gave the illusion that the body had been sectioned without all the work.
The hood would have to be sectioned though.
The
hood had its section cut out and I decided to not piece it back together
but to mold the bottom to the grill/fender unit and have the upper section
as a semi pancake hood with rounded corners. The hood needed to be lengthened
and widened slightly to fit the bottom portion and this was accomplished
with strip styrene.
When
I attached the front fenders with the bottoms flush with the body and
level with the ground, I discovered another problem. The tops of the fenders
created a rising line from rear to front making the front end appear to
be pointing upwards. To correct this I removed the fenders and repositioned
them to get the fender tops level. This created two other problems. The
front wheel openings were now slanted and the bottom of the grill opening/roll
pan and the fender in front of the wheel opening was too low. The front
wheel openings had to be moved forward anyway to line up with the wheels
on the slightly longer Lightning chassis. This also solved the problem
of the front overhang being too long. At this time I also raised the front
roll pan by taking a horizontal section out of the grill area. This made
the grill opening a more pleasing size. The front roll pan was formed
from strip styrene attached to the front pan and fog light buckets from
the lightning front clip were installed.
Although
the stock rear fenders were the same width as the front fenders, the back
of the body looked narrower than the front because there was effectively
no shoulder or width to the rear fenders themselves as they were molded
almost flush with the body sides. After removing the fenders from the
body they were widened with strip styrene and cutouts were made for the
Lightning taillights. After the rear fenders were positioned on the body
the rear section of the body was cut off flush with the bottom of the
rear fenders. The overall width of the rear is now wider than the front
but now looks in proportion to the front section. A roll pan was formed
from strip styrene and two cutouts for the exhaust tips were placed in
the centre to mirror the two driving lights in the front pan.
The
bed was cut from the Lightning body and fit almost perfectly into the
rear body opening. The centre part of the rear door lines was filled in
and the bottom line was moved up to create a tailgate. A recessed cutout
for a license plate was put into the tailgate and a flush cover was made
from the unused rear window.
The doors had their door handles removed and a new line scribed for the bottom of the doors. Side mirrors from the Lightning kit were also used. The Lightening firewall was adapted to fit the 55 cab.
The grill bar is a section of airfoil shaped aluminum tubing cut to fit between two sets of headlights from AMT’s Phantom '32 Vicky kit. The grill bar was polished and a Ford oval was applied to the center.
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