The model car thread! :-)

[HOSS429]

i have a few of my favs .. i opened one up to fondle the parts once but i wont ever put any together . i had a few when i wore a childs clothing but they`re long gone ...

[HOTRODPAINT]

You have good taste! :-)

[HOTRODPAINT]

Here are a couple more.

I know some of you guys have pictures of stuff you've built. We would love to see thementertainer2.0-75# (3).jpg! :-)

[Old Coyote]

Thought I'd do something a little different ........ a 427 SOHC Ford powered digger



.... and another Keeling & Clayton car .......... the rear engine dragster



...... and Judy Lilly's SS/AA Hemi Barracuda

[Old Coyote]

..... the Dunn & Reath "Rainbow" car



.... Roger Allred & Marvin Clarke's National Record holding D/D



.... the Beebe & Mulligan "Fighting Irish" dragster

[J. Robinson]

I finally got around to taking some pics of a few of my favorites. First up is one I built over 20 years ago. This is a replica of the '56 Chevy 2-door sedan stock car I drove back in the early '70s at Indianapolis Raceway Park. This rendition is how it looked in 1970. When I built this model I couldn't get a 2-door sedan model, so I used a 2-door hardtop. Otherwise, it's pretty accurate. I have posted a picture of the real car. The colors are faded, but you can see the dents and scrapes that are replicated on the model.

[J. Robinson]

Next is another 20-year-old creation. This one isn't a copy of a real car, but was inspired by the cars I used to see parked at the local service stations around the neighborhood when I was a kid. Back then (1950s) there was a race track in practically every county. Some were dirt and some were asphalt; this car is typical of the coupes that ran on the dirt tracks like Paragon Speedway in Indiana.

[J. Robinson]

Recently I have been building replicas of old Indy cars. I love the old front engine roadsters that reigned supreme from 1952 to 1964. During that era ingenuity was the most important part of a successful race team or car builder. Indy car racing now is B-O-R-I-N-G. All the cars are the same and you can't see the drivers except for the top of their helmet. They could be radio controlled cars for all we know.

This is a replica of the car that Bill Vukovich drove in 1955 (Original pic included). Lindsay Hopkins had the car refurbished by Frank Kurtis (the builder) after Vuky's fatal wreck and Jim Rathmann drove it in '56. It was sold after that, had a different engine installed (Maserati? Ferrari?), but I don't know if it raced again at Indy. The car still exists in a museum somewhere, possibly in the Netherlands..? I built this in its 1955 livery from the old Monogram kit that was first introduced in 1956 and has been reissued countless times since. I had to move the exhaust to the right side, reshape the cockpit opening, and fill the old exhaust opening & shave the hump off the hood to be correct. Also, the engine is tilted 30 degrees to the right like the real car. The correct decals are from Indycals.

[Dave Severson]

Nice one, Jim!!! Indy was never the same after the roadsters were replaced with the rear engine cars......

[J. Robinson]

This is another Indy car. In 1956 Lew Welch showed up at Indy with two new Kurtis built Novis, #29 and #31. The #31 car failed to qualify, but Paul Russo put the #29 solidly in the field with the 8th fastest qualifying speed. When the green flag flew, so did Russo. He went to the front in quick order, took the lead on lap 10, and began pulling away from the rest of the field. The Novi had monster horsepower compared to the Offenhausers, though, and it was hard on tires. Just after completing the 21st lap, as Russo was entering turn one, the right rear tire blew and his day ended against the first turn wall.

I built this model using the Monogram Kurtis kit again. I had to lengthen the tail 3/16 inch, square the rear corners slightly, and build the fin. I used some Evergreen sheet styrene and automotive body filler (real body filler, not model car stuff). I opened up the cockpit side to match the real car, filled most of the louvers and seams (with auto body filler again) and moved the body seams to match the pictures. I shaved the hump off the hood and built the oil cooler and fuel filler on the left side out of a couple of Moon tanks from my spare parts stash. I restyled the nose using sheet styrene to form the opening and molded it in with auto body filler. The engine is a compilation of two Offenhauser cylinder blocks turned backwards and joined on a common crankcase. The centrifugal blower is actually two flywheel/clutch assemblies (unknown origin) glued back-to-back. The rest is miscellaneous bits & pieces from the parts stash. My only regret is that I only put one spark plug in each cylinder and a real Novi has two plugs in each cylinder. Decals are from Indycals.

[J. Robinson]

You sure got that right, Dave. Back in those days a guy with good mechanical and fabrication skills, a little bit of money behind him, and a wild imagination could build a unique competitive car (like A.J. Watson, George Salih, Quinn Epperly, Frank Kurtis, etc.). Now you have to have a whole school full of engineers and truckloads of money just to be like everyone else. Seems like it eventually gets that way in every type of racing...

[NTFDAY]

You sure got that right, Dave. Back in those days a guy with good mechanical and fabrication skills, a little bit of money behind him, and a wild imagination could build a unique competitive car (like A.J. Watson, George Salih, Quinn Epperly, Frank Kurtis, etc.). Now you have to have a whole school full of engineers and truckloads of money just to be like everyone else. Seems like it eventually gets that way in every type of racing...

So true and so sad

[J. Robinson]

OK, one more and I'll quit... In 1959 Dick Carmen started building a car of his own design in his basement. It wasn't so radically different from the other cars in appearance, but this car would be powered by a stock-block Chevy V-8. It also had a lower profile than the older Kurtis cars, closer to the more recent Watson built roadsters. It took him a while to put things together, though, and help from another mechanic and fabricator - Jim McGee. They finally had the car ready to run in 1962. They took it to Indy and made some practice runs, but didn't qualify. Later they ran the car in some "big car" events in the northeast (Langhorne, Trenton). They updated the car with lower profile wheels & tires, but before they made it back to Indy the car became obsolete because of the "rear engine revolution". Jim McGee went on to become a renowned Indy car chief mechanic and the Chevy powered roadster sat in Dick Carmen's basement shop for the next 40 years. Finally, with a complete restoration, the car was sold at auction couple of years ago for $110,000, about 1/3 of what a car with Indy race history usually sells for.

Once again I used a Monogram Kurtis kit as the basis for this build. I had to section 1/8 inch out of it horizontally to lower the body profile. I used a combination of the kit wheel centers and some rims and tires from the junk box to achieve the lower profile wheels/tires. The engine and rear bumper came from the Monogram Super Modified kit. The Chevy engine sits offset to the left, but is tilted about 20 degrees to the right to stay within the body (as in the real car). The drag link is from the parts box. I made the headers from Evergreen styrene tubing. The cockpit was reshaped on the right side to match the real car and the oil tank was built from scratch using plastic from old bodies. The numbers were cut out from gold prizm vinyl and the other decals are leftovers from the Kurtis kits. I still need to add the velocity stacks and wire the magneto; I'll get to that eventually...

[Dave Severson]

Jim, great job on the Carmen car!

Dad used to take one or two of us boys (based on the previous school year's grades and behavior) to Indy with him. He had a buddy in USAC who would get us infield passes for the last two practice days. I'll never forget how it felt for a kid (10 years old the first year I went) to walk around and see these wonders of engineering and all my USAC heroes who drove them! The last race I went to with Dad was in '67, the roadsters were gone and Indy had changed too much....

Been to Indy a number of times since then, but I still miss the old roadsters!!!!

[J. Robinson]

Thanks, Dave. It's one of my favorites. It would be fun to have a street-legal version of it or a Watson.

My dad was a Teletype repairman for A.T.& T. and he worked in the press box at every race from 1948 through 1965. Unfortunately, he couldn't take me with him. I didn't get to see the race in person until I was old enough to go on my own!