yellowsportwagon Posted December 30, 2016 Share Posted December 30, 2016 I'll start it off . My tips being Pictures find as many as you can. Sometimes you will have to be satisfied with only one however. My second tip is STANCE. Really study the relationship of the cars wheel tire combo to the body.Specifically to the wheel openings. Look at how the wheel openings were modified on the real car.From about 1966 forward almost all of these cars had at least some opening up of the frt wheel openings and sometime the rears also. Tim Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oldcarfan Posted January 8, 2017 Share Posted January 8, 2017 Stance is a big part of it. A lot of them were lowered in the front to add a little streamlining. From the 60s on most cars had at least the front wheel wells modified. Also look at the way things are blended. Bumpers often were tucked in closer to the body with aluminum fairings to smooth them to the body, sometimes they were sectioned so that they didn't stick out side to side as much as the street car. Google is your friend. Find everything you can on the car. If there isn't much on a particular car, maybe look at other similar cars to see how they were put together. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 9, 2017 Author Share Posted January 9, 2017 Stance is a big part of it. A lot of them were lowered in the front to add a little streamlining. From the 60s on most cars had at least the front wheel wells modified. Also look at the way things are blended. Bumpers often were tucked in closer to the body with aluminum fairings to smooth them to the body, sometimes they were sectioned so that they didn't stick out side to side as much as the street car. Google is your friend. Find everything you can on the car. If there isn't much on a particular car, maybe look at other similar cars to see how they were put together.Exactly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Tim, I notice on a lot of builds you use an AMT Thunderbird chassis. What donor kit does this come from? Also, are there donor kits that accurately portray mid-70's NASCAR chassis? I know that the AMT Chevelle/Laguna variants had a kind of generic chassis but is there anything you can use that is more accurate for that period? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 Tim, I notice on a lot of builds you use an AMT Thunderbird chassis. What donor kit does this come from? Also, are there donor kits that accurately portray mid-70's NASCAR chassis? I know that the AMT Chevelle/Laguna variants had a kind of generic chassis but is there anything you can use that is more accurate for that period?The AMT Thunderbird chassis gets you close to what a 70s cup chassis looked like. The most accurate way to build it would be to do it like my Pearson GTO. Which would be to take the front frame and suspension from the TBird kit and graft it to the stock rear frame and use the truck arm rear suspension from the TBird. The kit I use is a mid 90s AMT NASCAR Thunderbird. I usually scratch build an earlier dash . The chassis will also need to be stretched for the correct wheelbase. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 I'm going to build a replica of the Herb Adams/Team Associates NASCAR Grand Am using one of my bodies. I have the cutaway illustration of the chassis but wanted to start with something close to what a Cup car would have in 73. Thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 10, 2017 Author Share Posted January 10, 2017 I built HB Baileys 73 using your body on a TBird chassis I think the hardest part was getting the roll bars to fit. I'll look at it tonight and post some pictures. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 10, 2017 Share Posted January 10, 2017 Thanks! It was very clean and made my raw body look fantastic. LB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 11, 2017 Author Share Posted January 11, 2017 Larry the cutaway drawing doesn't show frt or rear suspension so you can get away with standard operating practices of the day Here is a pic of the bottom of your Grand Am Body on a TBird chassis. I stretched this chassis 1/16 inch to get the wheelbase right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 11, 2017 Author Share Posted January 11, 2017 Larry the cutaway drawing doesn't show frt or rear suspension so you can get away with standard operating practices of the day Here is a pic of the bottom of your Grand Am Body on a TBird chassis. I stretched this chassis 1/16 inch to get the wheelbase right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 Here are a couple of period chassis shots that I will try and copy. Slightly different than the Thunderbird, but both pictures show basically the same chassis. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 Those both look to be Nichels built Chrysler chassis. The stripped down one looks newer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 The car is a Nichels Road Runner. The other I found on the web. It was a for sale ad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 How close are these to period correct? Was that the chassis used in your GTO? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 No the chassis in my GTO was built by Nichels but was built with a Holman Moody frt clip welded to a GM frame with long truck arm rear suspension. The cage was kind of a cross between a Nichels design and a Holman Moody design. In those years the car had to run the same springs design as the factory car used. If it had coils in the frt and leafs in the rear that's how the race car had to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DoctorLarry Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 So the Adams Grand Am would have had coils and truck arms as well? Would they have used the stock rear frame section like Nichels GTO with a welded on front frame clip? Is the TBird representative of what H-M would have done or would it look more like the Nichels pictures? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbowser Posted January 16, 2017 Share Posted January 16, 2017 The best advice I can offer when doing a NASCAR is take your time with the decals. The correct suspension and all are nice, but when it's on the shelf what you see is the body. They are moving billboards after all ! I've done dozens of both the Monogram and AMT kits, which is what got me back to building in the '90s. Start with good decals, either kit or aftermarket, and familiarize yourself with using some type of setting solution. Search the tips forum for topics on decaling, it's every bit as difficult as laying down a good paint job. It takes practice like anything else, I've got a box full of less than stellar builds to prove it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 So the Adams Grand Am would have had coils and truck arms as well? Would they have used the stock rear frame section like Nichels GTO with a welded on front frame clip? Is the TBird representative of what H-M would have done or would it look more like the Nichels pictures?It would look more like my GTO under neath. H&M frt welded to stock rails with truck arms added in back. All this is speculation however because I've never seen pictures of the cars suspension. This was standard practice for GM and Ford cars from the era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yellowsportwagon Posted January 16, 2017 Author Share Posted January 16, 2017 The best advice I can offer when doing a NASCAR is take your time with the decals. The correct suspension and all are nice, but when it's on the shelf what you see is the body. They are moving billboards after all ! I've done dozens of both the Monogram and AMT kits, which is what got me back to building in the '90s. Start with good decals, either kit or aftermarket, and familiarize yourself with using some type of setting solution. Search the tips forum for topics on decaling, it's every bit as difficult as laying down a good paint job. It takes practice like anything else, I've got a box full of less than stellar builds to prove it. Good one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim N Posted February 5, 2017 Share Posted February 5, 2017 When making the red or yellow stripe on the wheels, I do this. If the wheel does not come in white, paint it flat white. When the white paint is dry, paint the wheel flat black. When the black dries (the paint really has to be dry before doing the next step), hold an xacto knife at a very shallow angle to the wheel. You want the knife almost flat against the wheel. Then drag the knife around the wheel slowly in about 1/8th inch lengths at a time until the white paint shows through. When there is a white stripe around the wheel, use a red or yellow Sharpie and color the white stripe the appropriate color. Apply a semi gloss clear coat and the wheel is done. Below are a couple of examples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bbowser Posted February 5, 2017 Share Posted February 5, 2017 When making the red or yellow stripe on the wheels, I do this. If the wheel does not come in white, paint it flat white. When the white paint is dry, paint the wheel flat black. When the black dries (the paint really has to be dry before doing the next step), hold an xacto knife at a very shallow angle to the wheel. You want the knife almost flat against the wheel. Then drag the knife around the wheel slowly in about 1/8th inch lengths at a time until the white paint shows through. When there is a white stripe around the wheel, use a red or yellow Sharpie and color the white stripe the appropriate color. Apply a semi gloss clear coat and the wheel is done. Below are a couple of examples. That's a great tip! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim N Posted February 5, 2017 Share Posted February 5, 2017 Thanks Bruce. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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