The BMW 507 Ultimate Build Thread!!!

[A12pilot]

Moving forward, been doing some more sculpting and forming. This is just the initial go-around and I'll hit it with long boards after the body is foamed up. Starting to take shape! I’m extremely pleased!

Cheers
Dave

[TimG]

That looks great.

[Billohio]

What are you cutting it with? I would think that stuff could be everywhere

[A12pilot]

Bill, it’s cut with a 12” fine tooth sawzall blade and sculpted with a belt sander with 60 and 80 grit. After each day I clean the shop and surprisingly, it really doesn’t make the mess you’d think.

Cheers
Dave

[markinnaples]

Coming along great. Have you done any measuring of the buck just to make sure it all matches up exactly with an original? Just curious since you're really into the meat of the body now, I'd be freaking if I found something was off after all the work was put into forming the mold.

[Hawkeye]

Looking great!! Once you have the entire car formed in wood and foam, what is the process to make a mold and how many sections will it be? Did you get your intake yet?

Thanks,
Marty

[A12pilot]

Marty, the owner of the intake was really cool to talk to. After considering what I needed to do, I just couldn’t justify that price for an intake I’d need to modify anyway. I decided tig welding two-barrel adapter plates to a dual-four intake would be best since I need to do some fabricating to the remainder of the intake anyway for a drip pan. I couldn’t justify bastardizing a vintage speed part like that. That guy builds some cool old-Skool hot rods!

Mark, I’ve been going off measurements from the model and then multiplying that number by 18 to get the proper dimensions. I have exact tail light housings and used this method to see how close I was to the actual real part. I was about 1/18th off, so it’s safe to say everything else is measuring correctly. Big dimensions like width, length, and wheel base are exact. Honestly, a keen visual eye for the detail of the curves is really all that’s needed for the forming of the panels. Smaller items like location of the side grilles measured perfectly.

I am thinking I may have the 3D scanning company come down and scan my completed buck and do a comparison to the scan of the model body and see where I may need to make any corrections. They can overlay one over top of the other and any resulting errors would show up red indicating where I’d need to trim.

More esplainin’ later.....

Cheers
Dave

[Billohio]

Getting your buck scanned is a great idea.

On facebook market place I saw a wood racing boat hull that looked something like your buck. If you decide the car is too much trouble just throw a motor on the back of it.

[TimG]

I know the Kirkham brothers originally did one side of their Cobra from an original and did a mirror image to produce the other side as both sides of their fathers original Cobra had different dimensions.

[A12pilot]

It's interesting you say that, Tim. All of these cars were hand made so no two are identical. When studying restored examples, you can clearly see asymmetric traits in grille openings, headlight to fender angles, and various other small inconsistencies on the same car. Seeing how time was critical on making these, it's not surprising to see these errors.

Since time isn't critical on my build, those inconsistencies will be from me not knowing what I'm doing versus production volume!

Cheers
Dave