Force

The race trucks had light blue chassis and red engines but that doesn't go for the transporters, they were more for work than show as they rolled many thousands of miles transporting the race trucks all over the country and even over in Europe a couple of times, so they weren't detailed as much as the show and race trucks were. The Papa Truck was built on a 1976 VIT 200 Bicentennial Edition and had a pale gold chassis wich is the same as all the other Bicentennial Edition KW trucks had...I have never seen a photo of the Detroit Diesel 8V-92T engine in the Papa Truck but the engine could be either white as most KW's had white engines up to 1975, and some even after that...or silver as most Detroit Diesel 8V-92T engines was painted silver from the factory, and the Detroit 92 engines were called "The Silver 92 Series" due to that fact. The Hideout Truck was a 1978 and had appearently a white chassis as we can see in the picture...but I don't know where you see red on the engine because I don't, rust oil and dirt yes but no red except for the filters on the frame, the engine block, heads and supercharger looks to be silvergray with chromed rocker covers. I have saved a couple of other photos on my hard drive from some time ago, one is the same as yours but larger, and another one from the same series, and the engine looks as I said to be painted silvergray to me based on those photos. Click on the links, I couldn't hotlink them here as they were too large for this forum, the photos are from Ken Harris Fotki albums but I had to host them on my own photohost to get the large resolution, click on the + in the lower right corner a couple of times to get the original size of the picture so you can see better. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v99/JForce/Tyrone%20Malone/Hideouttruck7.jpg~original http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v99/JForce/Tyrone%20Malone/Hideouttruck9.jpg~original

You are welcome to share what you find out...I believe there are more of us who like to know for sure. But I would guess that if the frame, battery box and so on is white everything else would be the same color, the 8V-92T engine could be either white or silver, white as Kenworth and Peterbilt often had white engines and silver was the original Detroit Diesel 92 series color

Looks like something that could be from a Jo-Han kit to me.

The best 9" Ford axle in my opinion is the one in the AMT 60 Ford Galaxie Starliner kits.

Here is one more from Tim Ahlborn's Fotki site. http://public.fotki.com/mackinac359/movinon/bj--the-bear/

The Revell kit looks to be very close to 180 inches to me, and I just measured one of my AMT Papa Truck chassis and it looks like the AMT frame rails should be shortened about 66 millimeters (just over 2-9/16) to get a scale wheelbase of 180 scale inches measured from the center of the front axle to the center of the tandem. I know you Americans like the Standard Inch system but the metric system is quite good for this hobby as 1 inch in the real world is very close to 1 millimeter in 1:25 (exactly 1,016) so a wheelbase of 180 inches is 182.88 millimeters wich is close enough to 183...and the wheelbase on the AMT truck looks to be 249 millimeters and 249 - 183 = 66.

Yes I'm totally with you on that one...even tho' I'm a John Force fan since many many years I think todays Funny Cars looks like a strange door wedge on wheels with a small lump in the middle that they are trying to lead us to believe to look like a Ford Mustang, Dodge Charger or Toyota Camry...they are not that fun at all. It was better as late as the early 90's as the FC bodys still slightly resembled the car they was supposed to look like even tho' they were stretched and narrowed. Yeah that would be interesting to see.

What I meant with "fairly recent pics" was the ones found in Ken Harris's Fotki Albums from when it still was in Fontana, CA. But I hope we will see pics of the restored Hideout Truck soon, the Papa Truck is restored allready as can be seen in the Stagecoach Diesel Motorsports Museum album.

Yes they are built like 2-door cars but the cars they are based are only available as 4-door sedans...and as far as I know the only car made in the US of the 3 brands in use now is the Toyota, the other two are built in Canada and Mexico if I remember correctly. But the Generation 6 cars wich they use today do look a lot more like the street cars than the Generation 4 and 5 did, the only difference there was mostly the decals for the grille, head and tail lights otherwise the body for all brands was essentially the same. I like NASCAR racing and follow the Sprint Cup, and sometimes the Nationwide and Truck series on TV every Sunday but I think it was more fun back in the old days when the cars was built and modified from real factory cars and not fabricated from scratch by the teams as they are today..."the dark side rules"

Ehh...the AMT 69 GTX Hard Top kits has the 440 6BBL engine...at least the 5 or 6 kits I've bought as donor kits does and it's the engine meant to use when building the kit according to the instructions, a complete 426 Hemi is also included together with some speed parts but it's not mentioned in the instructions, so it's a bonus. But the 68 Road Runner, the 69 GTX Convertible and the Pro Street kits of the Road Runner and GTX only has the Hemi option. So the 440 are from the 69 Plymouth GTX Hard Top or the 70 Dodge Coronet R/T

Yes that's the album with the unrestored Papa Truck I was talking about. Well I would if I could...but I have not seen any pics of the restored Hideout Truck either...all I know is that Gary Ries at Stagecoach now owns it together with most of the others, and it might still be under restoration...but there are lots of pics of it before restoration here when it still was in Fontana, CA owned by Wayne Talkington. http://public.fotki.com/superboss1/tyrone-malones-hide/ and here http://public.fotki.com/superboss1/bill-block-of-banda/ You could contact Ken Harris who drove the Papa Truck in the European tour in the late 80's and has this Fotki albums and ask, he might know something we don't...most of the information I have comes from him. His email address is under his about me page at Fotki.

Very nice!!

Polar Lights did the 69 Ford Torino Talladega, the 69 Mercury Cyclone and the 71-74 Dodge Charger NASCAR kits. But if you use the Revell skill level scale where 3 is most challenging the Polar Lights kits are about 5 or 6 as they need lots of work to do a good model that looks like anything...it's like they were rushed into production still in the developing stage. Revell has allready gone over to the dark side with the new kits of the 57 Ford Custom and 57 Chevy 150 "Black Widow", both in NASCAR versions, and Revell did a NASCAR kind of model of the 69 Dodge Charger Daytona, the Pro Modeler version has some NASCAR parts included...but it's not that accurate for a race car.

Yes the Glidden & Allen 70 Mustang was a tube chassis car and was used in 1975 as was the Dyno Don car, but it had a 366 Cleveland engine...no Boss 429 based 500 as the max 500 cid 2,350 lbs minimum veight rule didn't come until 1982...and that's what we still have today.

Yes the 426 Hemi is based on the RB design, but the Hemi block has 4 bosses on each side in the lifter valley for the Hemi heads upside down head bolts, 4 bolt (cross bolt) main caps for the 3 middle ones and a crank shaft with 6 bolt pattern for the flywheel/flexplate, the regular 383-440 had 5...but the outside apperence of the short block is pretty much the same otherwise. I agree with Tim. The Hemi version is a sure seller for the main part of the model builders, as are most of the other Hi Performance cars in the other car brands...just think about it, who wouldn't like to have "top of the line" car in his/her possession...I would for sure if I had the money...more main stream cars doesn't have the same appeal on people. The slant 6 version of a 70 Barracuda were probably not made in large numbers but they were made...and there are most likely less of them still untouched with us today than the Hemi cars...but if they did a kit of one I don't think it would outsell a kit of the Hemi 'Cuda. The way kits are made today with changeable tool inserts there are possibillitys for several versions and I think we will get lots of them based on this kit in the future, one may be a more correct AAR version than the last 2 attempts Revell made...and that has a 340. Another thing, lots of modelbuilders do a lot of kitbashing and change an engine isn't that hard, and if you don't want to buy a kit and rob the engine from it there are several engine versions available on the aftermarket to do the car you want.

The AMT C-600 is in fact a heavier spec C-800 so it will work nicely, it even reads 800 on the badges on the cab.

I have never seen one...but on the other hand, I haven't been looking for one.

I have both kits, the Stake Bed Truck has two frames, one short to do a tractor and one longer for the stake bed...but the frame for the City Delivery is even longer than that,

It looks to be the Revell Beretta Pro Street kit with Reher-Morrison/Levi Garrett decals, so the chassis comes with the kit and are the same for the Revell Pro Street C4 Corvette. and the Rick Dobbertin's J2000 Pontiac Pro Street.

SLIXX does decals for the Glidden Mustang. http://www.slixx.com/7005.htm?id=3472 They do one for Dyno Don Nicholsons Mustang as well. http://www.slixx.com/1305.htm?id=2836

Yes, it would be nice with a re-issue of all of Tyrone Malone's trucks, the Papa Truck Transporter, the Super Boss race truck, the Hideout Truck Transporter and Bandag Bandit race truck...I have them all but I wouldn't say no to a re-issue.

Looks to be yes.

Yes he does, and they are good...but no chrome...I have bought a couple of sets for my Tyrone Malone Transporters from him to make them more correct and Alclad II to the resque as we don't have plastic plating service for hobbyists over here. But they switched to chromed 2-hole Budd wheels with tubeless tires on the Transporters and Boss Truck later in their life so it depends on what version you're doing. If you browse around in Ken Harris albums you'll find lots of pics of the Boss Truck, among them these of the truck in pieces in Texas http://public.fotki.com/superboss1/the-boss-truck-of-a/ One thing there is that the frame and wheelbase is streched and the rear part of newer frame rails with a KW 8-bag Air Glide 100 suspension is grafted on wich is wrong for this truck. The Air Glide 100 wasn't available in 1971 (as far as I know) and the truck originally had the earlier 4-bag air ride and a quite short wheelbase...on a couple of pics you see on the white part of the frame just behind the sleeper where the 4-bag suspension was originally mounted.

I have some pics of the unrestored Papa Truck where you can see the interrior, and parts of the chassis. I don't remember where I found them tho', it might have been at Ken Harris Fotki albums or his old Tyrone Malone website, there are some small pics of the unrestored truck in the Tyrone Malone Album but they are very small and hard to see any details. But the interrior were left original VIT 200 Bicentennial so it's red white and blue with some swirl wood here and there. If you go to the link and have a look around there are pics of the unrestored Hideout Truck and lots of them and they are great references, but the truck was repainted sometime after AMT did the kits and the paint scheme are not quite as on the model kit...same goes for the Papa Truck.

I mentioned that in my first post, but there's not much difference between 1:24 and 1:25 and it must be possible to modify the 1:25 part to fit a 1:24 scale engine, maybe make it a bit longer and wider and you must be close...so it can't be that big a problem. afx: I have no idea what type of Weber intake manifold the Chaparral cars had, I just mentioned the ones I know are available wich isn't much, but it can't be that hard to modify the intake to resemble the one in your pic or maybe even scratch build one with some Evergreen plastic stock, the shapes looks easy enough to copy. Bill: Yes it's from the AMT 63 Corvette and it's in all issues after what I know...and even the 63 Corvette Convertible has this set up.