55 years after it won 4th nationwide in the biggest contest of 1968,,,a restoration fully completed:

[tim boyd]

Some of you may recall that the Dodge/MPC/Car Model magazine Dodge Coronet Funny Car Contest of 1968 was the year's biggest and most important model car contest.  A few of you may even remember that about four years ago I completed a complete reconstruction/restoration of the entry I built at mostly age 13 that eventually won fourth nationwide in this same contest.  The following update picks up just a weeks ago with these latest developments in this over a half century (!!!) saga....

When I first restored this project in early 2019, I chose to not recreate the tilting body feature of the original funny car built in 1968. The primary reason was that I wanted to keep the front and rear body portions bolted together. (When I originally built the car, and then later that year fixed the body that was damaged during the original photography session, I found that the front and rear body portions warped over time, and beyond that no longer matched when placed together.)

During the 2019 reconstruction/restoration, I was dedicated to make sure this body warpage did not happen again. Accordingly, I joined the front and rear body sections together with two well-hidden bolts in the underbody structure. I wanted to retain the option of separating them again in the future, but only after several years when any potential body warping over time would have been prevented by the parts being bolted together.

A secondary reason was that after three months of restoration activity, I was burned out and no longer had the time (with the 2019 NNL East right around the corner) to invest in recreating the hinging mechanisms that would allow the body parts to tilt open.

Now in 2023, four years after the initial restoration was essentially completed, and with the final GSL International Model Car Contest event presentation just around the corner (with the opportunity to display this model alongside the first and second nationwide winners for the first time ever), it was time to unbolt the body sections and attempt to recreate the hinging operation that would allow the front and rear body sections to open to the front and rear, respectively. Now, after a week and a half of work, including five repeated efforts to adjust the hinging mechanisms so that the body would remain properly aligned when in the closed position, I have finally restored the model to its original May 1, 1968 configuration.

And finally, here is an image of the display with the first, second, and fourth nationwide winners at the 28th and final GSL Model Car Contest in Salt Lake City, Utah (big credit to Mike English for designing and creating the posters behind the display):

I realize that to most of you this is of little interest or merit, but to me it finally completes something I've wanted to do for 55 years now - that is to fix the damage to the original model and return it to the form in which it won Fourth Nationwide in the most important model contest of 1968. Thanks again for your interest....TIM

**************

For those (few!!!;) of you who want to read more about this, here's two links with additional images and info...TB

Here's the info on how restored the body opening and hinging mechanism...

And here's the saga of the step by step restoration from four years ago (very long read).....

 

[chepp]

Thank you, Tim, for restoring it back to the original design. It was a pleasure to see it and your other early builds at GSL last week.

[Claude Thibodeau]

Hi Timothy!

Well, great restoration. It's easy to see why this model impressed the judges so many moons ago. Bravo!

CT

[showrods]

Staggeringly cool story Tim and great restoration.  One of the best that I've ever read.  Amazing how these still exist after all of these years.

I'd love to hear the story about how all of the nationwide winners were found and what happened to number three.

Thanks for posting this.

 

[bobthehobbyguy]

Cool. Glad to see the restoration complete.

It's neat that your model got to join the other winner in person for the first time.

It's always nice to see a piece of history restored.

[Bainford]

Cool stuff, Tim. Very impressive build for a 14 year old, and a top shelf restoration. Digging that cool fade paint. Was the original done with a spray bomb or an airbrush? Oh, one other question; How do you keep the front end down during a launch? Cheers.

[Phildaupho]

WOW - what a great piece in the continuum of model car history

[AMT68]

Great restoration and interesting back story. And thanks for posting the vintage magazine and article. 

[Dragonhawk1066]

Very cool and interesting story, and very impressive work for a then 13 year old!

Edited May 15, 2023 by Dragonhawk1066

[Rattlecan Dan]

I can hear that song in the background " Still Crazy After All These Years". That is a crazy good build. Thanks for the post, and the story.

[tim boyd]

22 hours ago, Bainford said:

Cool stuff, Tim. Very impressive build for a 14 year old, and a top shelf restoration. Digging that cool fade paint. Was the original done with a spray bomb or an airbrush? Oh, one other question; How do you keep the front end down during a launch? Cheers.

Hi Trevor....thanks for those questions. 

Both the original paint job and the restoration were done with Testors spray paint cans.  This "chapter" in the restoration saga shows step by step how I did the paint fade, both back in 1968 and in early 2019 during the restoration.  Chapter 10 - Recreating the Paint Scheme album | Funman1712 | Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy.

Key to the process was using a paint mask of sorts, held above the surface (rather than a hard mask), as shown in this image:  I moved the mask successively from the front to the rear of the body each time I sprayed the next color.  

As to the question about keeping the front end on the ground with a chassis so heavily biased toward weight on the rear, my then 13-year-old mind made a tradeoff between a more realistic (but less likely to gain the judge's eye) front engine layout vs. the radical (but of questionable drag strip traction) rear engine layout.  Back then I rationalized that the large wheelie bars would help; in more recent years I rationalized that the clutch and slicks would be tuned to deliver a slipping type of drag racing run (like the front engine diggers back then) rather than a hard hookup with the drag strip surface which would almost certainly cause severe wheelies.  But this remains a key shortcoming of the final design I used.  Still, it was worth it as more conventional funny car layouts finished lower in the Car Model magazine top 25 winners list. 

Best...TIM 

[tim boyd]

23 hours ago, showrods said:

Staggeringly cool story Tim and great restoration.  One of the best that I've ever read.  Amazing how these still exist after all of these years.

I'd love to hear the story about how all of the nationwide winners were found and what happened to number three.

Thanks for posting this.

 

Hi Peter...thanks for the comments. 

The original contest was a mail-in photo contest.  Contestants were told to send into the magazine two black and white images of their entry along with an explanation of their project by May 1st of 1968.  My dad took my model to his job at the Bendix facility in Ann Arbor and asked their staff photographer to take the pictures.  He did so using a Polaroid camera and some bright lights, which in turned caused the body to melt during the photo session, as explained in Chapter 1 of my saga on the reconstruction. Chapter 1 - Project History and Relevance album | Funman1712 | Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy.

Here's one of the Polaroid pictures (obviously aged during the interim) that did not get sent to Car Model magazine: 

Last week at GSL the overall contest winner, Jim Keeler, and I, had an interesting conversation about the contest.  He told me that rather than follow the instructions to the letter, he put together an entire packet of many photos, in 8" x" 10" format, and had them sent special delivery to the magazine, to make sure they caught the attention of the staff.  He then said that within a couple of weeks the magazine called him and told him that he had hands down won the top prize.  Contrast that with my experience, which involved no direct contact from the mag, my name appearing as one of the winners between 4th and 25th (but not which place) in the September 1968 issue of the mag, then the surprise of seeing that i won 4th place nationwide in the October issue.

All of which is to say that the top 4 models had never appeared together in reality until this year at GSL, when #1, #2, and #4 were shown together, and in one of the other recent GSL's where Jim told me that the #1 and #3 winners were displayed together.  

Thanks for asking...TIM 

 

[tim boyd]

To all of you who posted comments, thanks so much for your interest in this small slice of the history of the hobby.  It means a lot to me!   Cheers....TIM 

[ChrisR]

Very cool resto!!

[showrods]

14 hours ago, tim boyd said:

Hi Peter...thanks for the comments. 

The original contest was a mail-in photo contest.  Contestants were told to send into the magazine two black and white images of their entry along with an explanation of their project by May 1st of 1968.  My dad took my model to his job at the Bendix facility in Ann Arbor and asked their staff photographer to take the pictures.  He did so using a Polaroid camera and some bright lights, which in turned caused the body to melt during the photo session, as explained in Chapter 1 of my saga on the reconstruction. Chapter 1 - Project History and Relevance album | Funman1712 | Fotki.com, photo and video sharing made easy.

Here's one of the Polaroid pictures (obviously aged during the interim) that did not get sent to Car Model magazine: 

Last week at GSL the overall contest winner, Jim Keeler, and I, had an interesting conversation about the contest.  He told me that rather than follow the instructions to the letter, he put together an entire packet of many photos, in 8" x" 10" format, and had them sent special delivery to the magazine, to make sure they caught the attention of the staff.  He then said that within a couple of weeks the magazine called him and told him that he had hands down won the top prize.  Contrast that with my experience, which involved no direct contact from the mag, my name appearing as one of the winners between 4th and 25th (but not which place) in the September 1968 issue of the mag, then the surprise of seeing that i won 4th place nationwide in the October issue.

All of which is to say that the top 4 models had never appeared together in reality until this year at GSL, when #1, #2, and #4 were shown together, and in one of the other recent GSL's where Jim told me that the #1 and #3 winners were displayed together.  

Thanks for asking...TIM 

 

Thanks for the additional storyline.  Love it!

What happened that #3 didn't make it to this year's GSL?  How cool would it have been to have the top 4 together?

[Mopar2]

Awesome job restoring a classic build...

[carrucha]

Nice build.  Cool that you were able to finish the restoration.

[ea0863]

Just wonderful Tim, and thank you for bringing it back to original. For some reason, it just seems apropos.

[slusher]

Fantastic and unique rebuild of model history!

[ewetwo]

That is really cool.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

Nice to restore something that did so well in competition in your formative years.

I can remember those  pulp paper magazines of old from the very few I got to see over here in England at the time. I expect that the Model Car Builders Museum is scanning what they have of them for future generations to refer to.

[tim boyd]

On 5/16/2023 at 11:15 PM, showrods said:

Thanks for the additional storyline.  Love it!

What happened that #3 didn't make it to this year's GSL?  How cool would it have been to have the top 4 together?

Peter....good question about #3.  As i mentioned somewhere, Jim Keeler told me that #3 appeared at one of the recent GSL's.  I don' believe the builder has been active in the hobby as an adult, at least in the public domain, but I could be wrong on that (he was age 12 when he won third place).  

Best....TB

[tim boyd]

5 hours ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Nice to restore something that did so well in competition in your formative years.

I can remember those  pulp paper magazines of old from the very few I got to see over here in England at the time. I expect that the Model Car Builders Museum is scanning what they have of them for future generations to refer to.

Hi Noel....interesting comment about the MCBM scanning those old Car Models and Model Car Sciences.  I believe that something like that was underway at one point, but don't know if it ever got to the point of being posted online. Meanwhile, others have undertaken this to varying degrees and published their results on the web.  (I don't have any specifics to relay here, but I recall reading this year about one website with all the magazine covers, and another source with some of the issues page by page).  In any case, those old mags had a lot of not-particularly-useful-to- model car builders specifically) info, but many treasures for us as well!   Best...TB 

[tim boyd]

Again, thanks to all who have commented on this project.  Much, much appreciated!   TIM 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Nice bit of history there, sir. Nice resto too. Really glad it survived to be restored.