Built by: Vern Scholz

"Uncertain-T”

I remember back when we had a  Woodwards department store in Canada , and they had their hobby section in the middle of the store right by the escalator. I can still see the Uncertain “T” sitting on the shelf, and thinking that is one neat car. I never did get the kit as I was into the easier Monogram models because they didn’t need a lot of paint. Although the Uncertain T was a Monogram kit it was harder to build, and needed to be painted to look decent.

It wasn’t until a few years ago I got the bug to find an Uncertain T, so I searched E-Bay. They rarely came up for sale, the ones that did were usually unbuilt with the original box, and were quite pricy! Although I would have liked one with a box, a glue bomb that was missing a few pieces was the target. Most of the major parts were there, and low and behold I won the bid. I can’t remember the price, but I know it was quite reasonable, somewhere around 20 dollars, but it was without a box. Oh well, after many years finally a tilted T was mine! The T was in a state of disassembly and needed a lot of TLC!

One thing that struck me as I took it apart was how brittle the plastic was. It took some patience to keep fixing parts and pieces that kept breaking and then rebreaking in other areas! One thing on the model that I did not like was that it was made so you had to put the body on the chassis before you could paint the body (rear end to body fit). That was changed that so the chassis could be built with full detail (brake lines, coolant hoses, fuel lines etc) and then be able to paint the body separately. Since the chassis was detailed the engine received the same treatment, ignition wires, fuel lines, alternator/electrical wiring. To top off the engine a scratch built injector with real polished aluminum tubing made the engine look more realistic. The original molded injector was kind of toy like in appearance, hence the decision to improve the engine. All the chrome was quite bad, so it was stripped and redone with Alclad chrome. To improve the exhaust the headers were cut off the heads and rebuilt, the ends were drilled out and header flanges were added, again to improve the appearance.

Some of the missing pieces such as the headlight stands were too brittle or missing parts, so stainless wire was used to make new one bucket stands. An important part at the back, the push Key was missing so one was fabricated out of aluminum, and polished to make it look like chrome.  Some time was spent to make the spokes on the front wheels thinner, as they were too toy like in appearance and also redone in Alclad Chrome. The interior was done to replicate the real car with black naugahyde , with black flocking to simulate black carpet. A custom blend of candy tangerine over gold (in scale) metalflake ,with a clear coat was used to replicate the  Uncertain T’s paint. All the original glass was damaged or just not worthy, which necessitated the use of clear acetate for the windshield and rear window.

It was a tedious and time consuming process to restore this model, but I am quite pleased as to how it turned out.

I now have an Uncertain “T” that I thought was so cool all those years ago!

Special Thanks to Moe Putney for the great pictures!