Lloyd Ruby's 1970 Mongoose Indy Car

Thanks to my friend, Jimmy “RASS”, I have been able to obtain one of Lance Seller’s Lloyd Ruby 1970 Mongoose kits. I’ve wanted to build one of Lance’s kits for a while now, but my budget just hasn’t synched up well with his releases. But this is one that I really like, so I am really happy to get my hands on one and am looking forward to diving in. Thanks again to my buddy “RASS”!

The quality of this kit is first rate, which I can’t say I’m surprised, since all of Lance’s cars always come out nice. As nice as it is, I’m glad that I see some areas where one can add some additional detail and really make this model stand out.

Here’s the original car:




Here are the kit pieces and the decal sheet:




All of the color can be done with the decals. I’m contemplating painting the red, though. We’ll see…

So far I’ve mostly just done parts cleanup, but I did open up the naca ducts.








I decided to lower the seat back a little to match the reference photos.

Very interesting Art. 
Ill follow along with this. Perhaps make your pic's a little smaller. 

Great looking kit Art. Glad to have you back again buddy.

Great looking kit. Is that 1/24th or 1/43rd scale?

Thanks for looking, guys! Mike, this is 1/25th scale.

Great start! Looking forward to seeing this develop.

Nice kit Art and a great start. I have several of Lance's kits and they are all top shelf.

Thanks, guys!

I've been making a little progress on this, but it’s been mostly cleanup. Looking at the reference pictures, it looks like the car (or at least the restored car) had a different looking transmission rear cover. The closest thing I found was the piece out of the AMT Lotus kit. Since I didn’t want to ruin the whole kit over one piece, I cast a copy of it in resin.





I also polished up most of the white metal. This shot shows the polished part next to the unpolished part.



Added ribs to the vents, per the reference shots. They might be a little oversized, but it’ll work.

Starting to close up the bottom of the nose, so I had to paint the radiator, then mask it off before I glued it in. I added some pull tabs to the masking tape so I can get it off later.

From another pic, I could see that the upholstery had horizontal stitches as well as vertical, so I added some.







This was hard to do because it looked pretty cool, but I removed the side upholstery to go with a more accurate modification.




More to come. Thanks for looking!

Thanks for the update Art, I am following this one.

What a great project. Very little being done these days with "open wheel racing cars." Sometimes earlier AMT Indy kits go up on the web, but aside from low volume (and pricey) ones and the brief flurry of 1/43 models, not much happening. Thanx for a sweet build!

Great work so far!

Looking good so far Art. Can't wait to see the decal work.  It should be pretty spectacular.

Thanks for all of your comments, guys. I really appreciate it!

Got a little done on the interior. I made a new dash that will allow it to come back a little in the cockpit and meet up with the frame.



I added some frame tubes as per the references.



Some aluminum panels were made that will later be “anodized” blue.



I tried to make some side upholstery panels, but they were an abomination, so I gave up on that. I have an idea that I think will work better. I did make a seat roll at the bottom, though, and that worked well. I also realized that, although it was accurate to the reference photo, the inside vertical tubes in the cockpit had to go. It created an impractically small opening.

Coming along nicely. Very interested in seeing how this turns out.

I drilled the hole for the intake tube. I accidentally drilled it out too large (had too big a drill), so I filled it back in with styrene tube, then drilled that out to the correct size. It actually turned out nice that way.





It’s hard to see on the reference shots of the car at Indy in ’70, but reference shots on the restored car show a fuel filler cap very similar to a sprint car tail tank. I think adding them will add some interest. I had previously made some castings of the filler cap from the Monogram sprint cars and they look to be a perfect match.

Very good! Good reference fotos and the skill to make your own parts can bring a model to perfection. Thanx!

Great work! The attention to detail is beautiful

Duplicate post... Sorry!

I finally got some paint on this beauty. I elected to forgo the red stripe decals and paint it instead. After some talks with Jimmy "RASS", I picked up some One-Shot sign painters enamel. I used the Donn Yost method I usually use with my Testors enamels and mixed it 2:1 with lacquer thinner. I have to say, the stuff worked great. I laid it in real thin so as to not bleed under the tape, but I'm real interested to see how it would do on a full body. It seems like it would really produce a nice finish without a clear coat. My base coat is a little grainy, so that's how it looks in the pictures, but once I get clear on it, it's going to really pop.

















Here's a shot of the blue anodized parts for the car.



Thanks for looking!

Brilliant progress, the anodised details are great. 

Very nice crisp paint work Art.

How did you anodize the parts blue?

Looking good Art

NICE !!!!