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jlucky

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About jlucky

  • Birthday 06/02/1954

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  • Scale I Build
    1/25

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    Jerry

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  1. Having completed a Space 1999 Hawk spaceship, it was time to build another drag car, and with the recent passing of owner Roland Leong it seemed appropriate to build up Leong’s 1969 Hawaiian Mini-Charger. Leong, a Hawaiian native had a long string of drag cars that carried the Hawaiian name. This was the second Charger he introduced in 1969 after the original took off at the top end of the Pomona quarter mile and crashed into a be-gillion pieces. This new car was built eight-inches narrower in an attempt to be more aerodynamically sound and it did find its way into the winner’s circle a few times. The kit was released by Revell in 2010 as part of their NHRA Motor Sports Series that included four different funny cars. This series had completely new tools for the kits and they were absolutely spectacular in detail. This build, like almost all my funny cars is box-stock with my focus being more on getting the paint and the large decals right. The only changes I made to the kit include re-shaping the rear wheel wells to match the real car and the tightening up the rear slicks to have them sit properly inside the body.
  2. Hi guys, One of the reasons I got on this kick...partially because I want to be somewhat legit when it comes to the parts...but primarily because in Tom Boyd's book Collecting Drag Racing Model Kits, he points out that the Monogram (Revell?) kits had a 6-71 blower that was too small. The AMT kit's 6-71 was a more accurate size. So that just got me wondering.
  3. Please excuse the poor grammar...I should have reread the post before sending! Sheesh!
  4. I appreciate the response guys...much of that I was familiar with but it's a good summary. I guess what I was hoping to find was something like this page from an article about building AA/Fuel Altered. It gave a great overview of the various model items that was available.
  5. Greetings, Not sure if this is the place to ask...but here goes. I'm looking for some information that details the various drag racing superchargers (blowers) that have been issued in 1/25 scale model drag racing kits. I've been around drag racers all my life but was wondering if anyone out there in model land can point to a chart or collection of images that detail or describe the various blowers out there. Specifically, what does the usual 6-71 look like in comparison to the Mert Littlefield blower, etc.? How are the front plates and rear plates different? That kind of thing. Not sure if there is a chart out there, but I thought I'd ask. Any help would be appreciated. All the best!
  6. Greetings, Not sure if this is the place to ask...but here goes. I'm looking for some information that details the various drag racing superchargers (blowers) that have been issued in 1/25 scale model drag racing kits. I've been around drag racers all my life but was wondering if anyone out there in model land can point to a chart or collection of images that detail or describe the various blowers out there. Specifically, what does the usual 6-71 look like in comparison to the Mert Littlefield blower, etc.? How are the front plates and rear plates different? That kind of thing. Not sure if there is a chart out there, but I thought I'd ask. Any help would be appreciated. All the best!
  7. Well, it was in the final days of 2023 that I finally completed my last build of the year. It took me long enough! I had purchased the Slixx Decals for this car a couple years back from a local hobby shop, then scrounged around for the front axle and 427 Chevy engine from other kits and with the reissue of the Bantam Blast AA/Fuel Altered, reckoned it was time to get everything together. First off the front end was completely reworked to more closely match the real car. That meant chopping off the kits’ coil springs and adding side shock absorbers to a straight front axle with leaf spring suspension. This necessitated reworking the torsion bars and steering link as well. Trust me it wasn’t as easy as it sounds. The 427 engine went together quite nicely only I discovered that none of the fan belts in the parts box fit. So it was time to make my own fan belt using parts-box pulleys I mounted on the 427. The belt is actually made of black Gorilla tape with thin black backing inside and then crazy glued in place. Looks pretty good for a first time effort…even if I do say so myself. To top off the front end, the Moon fuel tank needed a special mounting plate to sit just outside the front grill. Front wheels are Competition Resins 12 Spokes with rubber tires and the rear are the 11.75 AMT Goodyear slicks as per the real car. See the photos. Interior is basic and the body was reworked slightly to enlarge the rear wheel openings. As for those decals that prompted the build, well given their age I gave them a healthy coat of Micro Scale Decal film…and don’t you know they were still too brittle and cracked with every application. I managed to get the side panels to work, but had to remove the top white parts and create completely new versions from plain white decal paper. Then I applied the smaller details and it sort of worked. Given that virtually all these drag cars rarely looked the same month to month, it didn’t turn out half bad. The Pure Heaven II Bantam now sits proudly in the collection next to its chief on track rival the Pure Hell Bantam.
  8. While I build a lot of Drag Cars...I must admit my other passion - 007 Stuff - is anxiously awaiting the new James Bond Aston Martin Revel kit. Some years back I got tired of just looking at the Airfix box in the collection and decided - models are there to be built. The finished product now sits in a place of prominence in my movie/TV collection.
  9. Perfect...thanks so much for the speedy reply. That was extremely helpful. I guess now I have a Chevy Nova that I'm not going to build.
  10. Greetings, Hoping someone out there can help me with this. I just purchased the AMT 1966 Chevy Nova Pro Street (AMT 636) and I'm wondering what is the engine size? I'm hoping it's a 427? If it's not...what's the best kit for a Chevy 427? Appreciate your help. Jerry
  11. It was the eagle-eye of one observer on this site that noticed I didn’t have the new “TV” Tommy Ivo rear-engine kit displayed, so that prompted my most recent build. Like any kit however it was not without it’s strange building issues. Bear with me for this rather long-winded introduction. First off I needed a different set of rear wheels and slicks. The ones included in the kit are far too wide (at least 15”) for 1972. The best place to secure a set of 13” slicks is a Polar Lights funny car kit so that was secured. The IVO kit’s headers are too thin and required some fiddley building so I went to the spare parts tray and came up with a suitable set of headers. The only other serious adjustment was with the front torsion bars. The kit comes with twin rods, but the Ivo car only had single torsion bars. I was able to secure a 3-D printed distributor that was the perfect size for the hemi. It came pre-drilled so doing the ignition wires was a dream. The fuel lines for Ivo’s car were solid pipe rather than braided hose, a feature of the era. A Pro-Tech barrel valve and hex fittings along with home-made fuel junction boxes completed the fuel system. There were no painting instructions, so I checked in Ivo’s book and saw, like the box art the car was reddish/orange in color so I shot it with an orange base coat and covered that with Candy Apple red. It looked right, but unfortunately many of the decals disappeared when applied because of either thin-color layers or I applied a wrong color. The engine was treated with some Tamiya Panel Line Accent color and the bright chrome was painted with Tamiya Smoke to dull it down a bit. After all that it was dusted with some silver weathering. After it was completed I also noticed that the unique tail section of the car, as molded was considerably taller than the real car. The kit body sits almost as high as the top of the rear slicks when it really should have been molded to come up to the height of the rear wheels, if not slightly lower. Still, great to have the kit back on the store shelves and it makes fine addition to my dragster history.
  12. Here’s one that goes back a bit. When I attended my first drag race in September of 1968, one of the dragsters present (besides the famed Assassin AA/FD) was a racer by the name of Denny Darraugh and he ran a full tail but that weekend no front end…and it always struck me as kind of different. So well before the Tommy Ivo full-tail kit was reissued I tracked down a resin body, along with resin 11.5 slicks, and a resin Crower scoop and decided to build to a kind of homage to that car. Hence the Energizer! Engine has been detailed with fuel lines from the pump, mag wires and throttle linkage.
  13. OK, this is one of those classic real scale dragsters and classic model kits. I remember building this kit in my “younger years” and it was a wonder to behold even then. Lots of great detail parts. Many, many years later I took another stab at this Garlits kit and was pretty happy with the results. The effort was made to get the proper scale wiring and plumbing for the ignition and fuel lines, plus dressing-down the chrome to give a more textured, real-world look to the model. Notice that Garlits wanted the injectors-butterflys painted black so that competitors wouldn’t be able to see his throttle action. This tied into his adding small fuel injector lines in the blower scoop to get more nitro into the manifold. He was a crafty dude, that Don Garlits.
  14. Holy Cow...what a sweet looking build. Congrats on a splendid job. I was planning to avoid the kit because of the use of the stock body, but your build changed my mind...it looks reeeeaaaalll nice. I gotta get me one of those.
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