Force

As Jesse says, these Top Fuel Dragsters are not that hard to build if you do them straight out of box...it's when it comes to correcting things to make them accurate for today it gets a bit harder as it involves some modification of parts and some scratch building...and if you decide to detail, plumb the fuel system and wire up the ignition system you have to know what you are doing to get the right look. But the model kit itself isn't that hard at all and you can allways get a couple of them, build one for practice and do the others when you feel up to the challenge...a bit like learning by doing.

Another hurdle is accuracy. How accurate do you want your build to be as the Bernstein and Schumacher dragster kits were way out of date even for the time they came out. They needs lots of work to be up to date, mostly the engine wich needs a lot, new set back 14-71 blower, new MSD Pro Mag 44 magnetos, new fuel pumps, new valve covers with covers over the spark plugs and some other stuff. The rest of the car need a new 3 element rear wing, a new one piece front wing, a head protection shield and new wheels. If Revell had done all necessary updates back in 2002 when these two kits were new they would have been nearly accurate even for today 13 years later...but unfortunately they didn't.

It works for me too.

If you are looking for pictures of early 90's nitro engines you can tell if they are early by wich type of magnetos they have, the large MSD Pro Mag 44's werent used until about 1996-97 before that they used smaller Mallory Supermags. The fuel system was also changed from dual Enderle style fuel pumps to the Sid Waterman Bertha style pumps they use today in the mid 90's.

100%

The old bad Monogram 69 Camaro kit is 1:24th scale and the later 90's Revell kit is 1:25th scale and that's the easiest way to see the difference. I think I have read somewhere that the Revell 69 Camaro (wich is a very good kit by the way) has it's roots in the old Monogram large 1:12th scale kit and was downsized to 1:25th scale when it was tooled up in the 90's...I could be wrong but I think it has gone through my head sometime.

Very nice work Tyrone, I'm amazed!

The engine options in the Polar Lights Ford Talladegas and Mercury Cyclones are a FE 427 wedge and a Boss 429 "semi hemi", but no 427 SOHC as it wasn't allowed for NASCAR competition.

Great build of one of my favourite cars.

Me neither, nothing at all until the stuff arrived some weeks after I ordered.

Just for the record, Tyrone Malone did not build the Defiance, he bought it from the original builder Jerald McBee from Oregon back in the early 80's. Before Malone bought it and painted it pink it was brown with yellow, red and white stripes.

Yes they look like E-T III's but they are not painted, some of them were anodized gold and I have seen many pictures of race cars with gold anodized E-T wheels from the early 70's.

All the AMT 33 Willys has the same blown 427 SOHC and it's a good one. The MPC Mustang Gasser (Malco and other spinoffs) also has a decent blown 427 SOHC. The AMT 68 Shelby Mustang and 66 Galaxie has dual carb 427 SOHC engines wich are usable. There are more out there but I'll stop here.

It's better to use an outside online image host and direct link your pictures from there, I use Photobucket myself and I have lots more storage capacity and bandwidth than if I would use the forum picture host service. It's free and works quite good.

Well an Allison would never really look realistic and plausable in a truck, the engine was developed and first used in 1930 and was for aircraft use, it was widely used in WW 2 in the P38 Lightning, P40 Warhawk and P51 Mustang among others and runs on gasoline, the engine has a 1710 cui (28 litre) displacement wich is about twice as large as the common truck diesel engines are, the power output for the aircraft engines back in the day was from around 1000 hp up to 2000 hp and it consumes lots of fuel and would not be that economic to use in a truck. After the war the surplus Allison engines found new uses in drag racing, tractor pulling and boat racing. But with that I don't say it couldn't be done, it's a model and you can do whatever you like with it and it doesn't need to be realistic and plausable. Even the truck manufacturers did some research back in the 50's and 60's and put gas turbine engines in trucks, they were not that economical either but they still tried to see if it would work.

You're welcome.

Nice work so far.

Pictures of the Sox & Martin Superbirds are a bit hard to find as they were used for a short time...and yes I said Superbirds as Sox & Martin appearently had two, one for the Super Stock / E class wich ran just a few races as it wasn't really legal, and one for the C / Modified Production class wich were campained for a longer time. The SS/E 4-speed car had a 426 Hemi with a Rat Roaster intake manifold and two Carters, no hood scoop, no scoops on top of the fenders, a painted metallic blue roof and white interior...one of only two built and Jack Werst" Mr 5 And 50" got the other one with an automatic and ran in SS/EA. The C/MP car had a 426 Hemi with a high individual runner intake manifold like the 70 'Cuda had, two Holley Dominators, a 440 six pack scoop on the hood, no scoops on the top of the fenders, a black vinyl top, white interrior and a slightly different paint job and decaling than the SS/E car. This is an engine pic of the newly built SS/E Superbird I just scanned from the Super Stock & Drag Illustrated July 1970 issue, the picture is in black and white but you can clearly see the valve covers and they definately don't look black to me.

Well as far as I know both the Sox & Martin SS/E and C/MP Superbirds had chrome valve covers as most of their Hemi race cars had back in the day. Yes the early Race Hemis chrome valve covers only fit on the early Race Hemi heads wich are a bit different designed than the Street Hemi heads wich have a kink in the end to make room for the power steering filler neck, but I believe the aftermarket very soon made chromed valve covers for the Street Hemi engines as people would like their engines to look like the race engines, many of the 68 Hemi Dart's and Barracuda's also had chromed valve covers but they were delivered with black valve covers from the factory

Well we have pretty much the same rules over here in Europe and Sweden as they do in the US, the sport comes from there you know. The numbers on the windows are the drag racing license number for the driver and most of them are 3 or 4 digits, lets say 341, 1798 or 2583 to give a couple of examples, but if you place yourself in the top 10 in your class in the sanctioning body you compete for (EDRS, NHRA or whatever) you get the corresponfing number from 1 to 10 after the class designation the year after as Karl said...so if you do a fictional car the numbers can be whatever you like but the classification for the car must be kind of correct and believable otherwise you will hear about it, so a Datsun with a Ford engine will not work in Pro Stock but will fit in many other classes.

American Trucker has been aired on Discovery Channel here in Europe, at least one season, and I saw the episode with the NASA Pete's.

I'm amazed Revell AG hasn't reissued that one yet. As for Moebius, I would take a spread axle flatbed or whatever modern trailer they do, maybe a Featherlite race transporter, a lowboy, a tanker...well amost anything modern.

Keith Marks has decals for the Trans Am

I must agree with the others, Great Work!

I think the main reason they stopped using the Potvin style drive was that it was a fixed drive where the supercharger and crank shaft rotates at the same speed and that's a disadvantage as you get moore boost if you overdrive the supercharger, with a belt drive it's easy to change the gear ratio and over or underdrive the supercharger depending on how much boost you want. NHRA has a limit for supercharger overdrive in the nitro classes at 1.5:1, (1.7:1 in Denver Co) and the supercarger rotates at 12,450 rpm at an engine speed of 8500 rpm and delivers about 60 psi of boost (4 atmospheres).