Lindberg 1/8 Tall “T” By Jon Fincher

Introduction

Henry Ford’s Model T brought the automobile into popular use in the United States. Produced from 1908 through 1927, the inexpensive, mass-produced Model T is credited with putting America on wheels. In later years, the T platform would be popular with car enthusiasts, sparking the hot rod craze, which continues to this day. Capitalizing on the popularity of the platform, Lindberg has issued four different big 1/8th scale Model T hot rod kits – the Big Red “T” Rod, the Hot Canary “T”, the Bobtail “T”, and the Tall “T”. I got my hands on the Tall “T” kit a few weeks ago.

First Impressions

The box is HUGE – a full 3 feet long, and fairly heavy. Whatever’s inside, it’s gonna be big.

Opening it reveals a sturdy corrugated cardboard box divided into four different sections (see picture). Clockwise from the bottom left, the main body parts live in one area; tires, wheels, interior, and glass in another; most of the engine and chrome chassis sprues in a third; and the rest of the chrome sprues in the fourth. A large set of instructions greets you on top as well.

Digging through the kit, I noticed all the sprues were individually bagged – a good sign, especially with the chrome pieces. I also noticed a few lengths of tubing, which a quick look through the instructions tells me should be for brake lines, fuel lines, and distributor wires. The kit also includes stanchions and some display parts (tire iron, gas cans, jack stands) for displaying your Tall T as it would appear in a car show – surrounded by velvet ropes.

The Fondle

The body is made in two big parts – the exterior body, and the tall roof (hence the “tall ‘T’” moniker). The interior bucket, along with two bucket seats and dashboard, are well molded.

The engine, at first glance, appears very basic and crude, but appears to build up into a nice representation of a small block V-8 suitable for hotroddding. This is good, as the engine will be open to the elements and viewable from every angle – detail will be necessary.

The sprues are intelligently laid out, although the attachment points for some pieces are flimsy, leading to pieces being loose in the bags. I had to consult the parts list in the instructions to discern the drive shaft from an unused plastic rod.

The chrome looks good, although typical mold lines and ejection pin marks means I’ll be rechroming them after some clean up. There is a lot of chrome on this kit, so I’ll be prepared with lots of gloss black and Alclad II Chrome.

Opinions

As I said before, this is a big kit (see picture). For a sense of scale, the Tall T engine block is shown with a 1/24th scale resin block on top of it.

Detailing (even super-detailing) something this large is both easy and difficult. The ease comes when you compare your efforts to similar detailing on 1/24th or 1/25th scale kits – no hunting for tiny gauge wire or watch gears here, and no eye-strain. The difficulty, however, comes with the large scale and big size – detailing is almost mandatory, as the absence of detail will be an eye-sore with a kit this big.

There is, however, plenty of room for detailing, especially in the exposed engine, the spacious interior, and the shiny chrome suspension. I don’t know of any aftermarket for this kit, but I do know that building this car without doing some customization work would be a shame.

One other ramification of its size is display space – quite simply put, have an idea of where you’ll put this thing when it’s done! I may need to build a display shelf for it in my workroom. If space is an issue for you, stick with smaller kits.

I’m looking forward to taking this kit on – I and two other modelers are working on 1/8th scale Lindberg kits with a deadline aimed at a show in 2009. My car building forte is mostly in replica stock and muscle cars, so this is a big departure for me – while I like the look of classic rat rods, I know little about them mechanically, so I’m looking forward to learning something new. Finally, the thought of three huge hot rods on a show table next to hundreds of tiny 1/72nd planes makes my modeling heart giggle like a schoolgirl. This will be fun!