Bluesmobile fun

I have a Bluesmobile replica. Its something that I’ve been working on slowly over the last few years in between other projects. And its a nice relaxing project usually. Just about as low pressure as you can get when building a car. Not to say it isn’t difficult. In some ways its actually harder than some of my other vehicle projects. With most projects you have to figure out how to do something, and then do it. On a Bluesmobile, there is an extra step. You figure out how to do something, you do it, and then you have to figure out how to make it look old and crusty. Which often times is more difficult than the actual project you started on.

To complicate things further, there are no plans for something like this. And reference photos of the actual movie cars just make things less clear as they used multiple cars for filming, and almost all of them are slightly different. So what does that mean? LOTS of freeze frame work with the DVD player. Lots of walking back and forth to the garage to measure, check, and remeasure things. And a HUGE amount of trial and error.

Most days it is fun though. There aren’t many vehicles that you can build that are supposed to look beat up and crusty. And the dirtier it gets the better it looks.

My specific car was originally built for the House of Blues in Orlando Florida. When they were finished with the car, they returned it to the builder who I then purchased it from. And to be clear, it looked good when I got it. The guy that built my car (and the 12 others for HOB) did a great job. It looked good in photos, and it looked pretty decent in person. It just wasn’t as correct as I like my cars to be. I played with it as is for a while, and then decided to work on it in small chunks. One of the perks of a car like this is you can jump in and go anytime you want to. You don’t have to worry about it being clean. Because of that, I didn’t really want to do anything that would take the car out of service for a huge span of time. Using that philosophy, I’ve done a lot of little things to the car.

Sanded down the fenders and repainted them. (Then sanded them down again to distress them)

Cleaned up the doors and repainted them. Then sanded THEM down to distress them.

Repaired some bad body work on the rear sail panels and repainted them. (Then custom mixed and weathered paint to match the new paint with the old faded white of the roof)

Sanded down and repainted the trunk lid. (Twice.)

Custom created a set of paint masks for all of the various stencils that are needed on a Bluesmobile.

Painted and then distressed the lettering/logos on the front fenders, front doors, and trunk lid. (I still have the rear doors and the rear fenders to go)

And probably the largest project to date, created a full set of plans for a screen accurate set of pushbars. Which took me the better part of 6 months, too many phone calls to count, and a HUGE amount of time watching the movie frame by frame.

The pushbars are almost the icing on the cake at this point. In all of the photos and all of the replicas that I’ve seen over the years, all of them were lacking in the pushbar department. To be fair, some were close. But still lacking in some small details to the ones on screen. Its taken a huge effort, but I’m just about ready to release a full set of plans for a screen accurate set of pushbars. From there, I’m hoping to release paint guides, as well as some positioning guides for where everything goes. I could probably write a book, but the market for this info is so darn small, it would almost be more trouble than its worth. So I’m releasing the info to the community of builders, in the hopes that it can help someone. Stay tuned for more info and updates.