ScaleDale

Testing that theory. Can anyone see the Cunningham car? http://imageshack.us/a/img211/391/0l69.jpg ^^just the link Since it's marked Private, anyone should be able to see the image, but only I should be able to see it by clicking the link. This is on ImageShack, but the process is the same. It's marked Private.

If an album is Private and the link is posted here can someone other than the owner (me) see it? Dale Ace: Faster by 1.00 sec...

High bandwidth usage would mean that there is a lot of data coming and going in an account. Either uploading files or other people visiting and downloading them. It has nothing to do with storage space but it can slow a service down. I'm not sure how PhotoBucket works with this, but in a lot of my on-line research I've found car pics that opened someone's PhotoBucket account and allowed me to view and download chassis pics and stuff like that. Not sure what they intended. PhotoBucket has a bad rap from the Digital Photography forums that I follow and I no longer use it for anything. My model pics are on ImageShack as a free account and my other photography is on a Flickr Pro. When I get past my eye surgery I'll put together a tutorial on using ImageShack and Flickr as alternatives to PB. Dale

There are some decent kit chassis in the Revell Pro Sportsman series cars. The 55 and 57 Chevy and the newer Jukebox Ford. Try adapting a body of your choice to one of these kits as a starter. Scratch building a chassis is a big undertaking regardless of skill level. The Model King re-issues of Pro Stock racers have good chassis, too. Your Mothers Old and the Match Race Firebird. Dale

Thanks. I have a safety box that I keep finished sub assemblies like this in while I work on other components and I found the rear tire sheet metal in the box when I went to stash this. Forgot about it... Seems like I'm never done. Dale

Heres a Nostalgia Pro Stock link from another forum: http://theamcforum.com/forum/lets-go-nostalgia-pro-stock-racing_topic20972_page1.html And a shop restoring Grumpy's Toy X: http://bangshift.com/blog/shop-tour-gallery-high-speed-welding-westmont-illinois-they-have-grumpys-toy-10-photos-inside.html Dale

Ohio must be some sort of modeler breeding ground. My home town is Toledo. AKA 50 miles from Detroit (in the old days when horsepower was king). Dale

Another thought on the process here is that you need to finish all the body work before starting the chassis. Since the chassis must fit the body and the body is highly modded, all the pre visualization and measuring in the world will go out the window once the razor saw comes out. The finished product will be just different enough to mess us any finished chassis. ChassisWorks.com sells kits for ProMod racers (1:1, sorry) and they note that the chassis should be assembled inside the body to assure a good fit. Dale

My process with builds like this is to collect as much reference stuff on-line as possible and study the heck out of it. I take 1:1 profile photos and scale them to match their 1:25 wheelbases and compare the measurements to the decal placement pages in the assembly instructions. I mark all the differences on the stock kit and look for surprises like different shaped wheel wells or variances between the distances in the length of quarter panels. Then I start to get a better picture of what I'm getting into. I studied the 2010 Mustang for weeks and still wrecked a body by not noticing that the hood wasn't cut in the center, but on each side. The Camaro I was thinking about is so whacked out that I'm going to Pro Mod a '49 Merc just to relax and have a little more freedom to play. Dale

This is finally it for the chassis. After tonight the wheels and tires will be epoxied in place and it will be waiting for the finished body work and that will be that. In the process of mounting the 4 link, I lost one of the springs and had to scratch build my own from wire. Now there isn’t anything left at all of the coil overs from Future Attractions except a good idea of how to do this. Some things just work out like that. When I did a test fit of the tires on the suspension and body the fit was way too tight. The "Modern Pro Stock/Super Stock" tires from Competition Resins scaled out to 18 inches wide and around 34 inches in diameter which seemed a bit on the big side. I took a tour through YellowBullet.com forums, usual source of drag race BS and found a post from a Goodyear employee that stated the NHRA Pro Stockers run 16 inch tread slicks. I put them on my drill and turned them down with course sandpaper and they fit OK now. When the suspension was mounted and set, the wheelie bars touched the ground so I had to pop the axle and cut the upper bars to shorten them. I added sleeves of styrene tube painted red to join the cut sections and decided to just leave them separate rather than try to replace the axle with everything in place. What I wound up with was a set of working independently adjustable wheelie bars mounted to a stainless steel adjustable 4 link suspension. In 1:25 scale. Impressive! And now I will return to the body shop. I'm still not firmed up on a paint scheme, though. With the amount of body work I've done I seem to be leaning towards something dark to cover all the hacks, but then again a lighter color will let me goof with decals more. The paint on the Larry Morgan car is beyond my skill level but I think I could do the red on the Cunningham car. Or just go my own way. I'll figure it out. Thanks for your time. Dale

I'm in the process of converting a stock Mustang into a Pro Stock and have narrowed and lengthened the body. Here is a link to the thread. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=76723 Dale

The guy on the right was waiting to kick my butt after High School and the rest were his buddies. They are all old guys now. Dale

(From July 11) Hi, again. I have the chassis finished and the interior as detailed as I get on these things. Fitting the seat under the secondary roll cage was a bit of a hassle with the tight clearances I allowed but I managed OK. The seat is out of the Double Dragster kit in my parts box. The dash is from a road race Camaro I got free and has way too many instruments for drag racing. I scratch built the shift light and dash cowl. The transmission with the engine kit is a Lenco and these cars run gear boxes from Liberty Gears so I scratched up a Liberty style shifter and tunnel to go over the Lenco control rods. The motor is finished except for the radiator and headers and is glued in at this point. It’s out of the Jukebox Ford Pro Sportsman kit and the valve covers are generic “modern pro stock” from Competition Resins. I drilled out the spark plug holes to match the pattern I found in my research of the motor used in the current Ford Pro Stock cars. The distributor is scratch built and uses telephone wire. It took me three tries to get one that didn’t look either too big or small. I have the first round of several minor eye surgeries to clear up cataracts due in around two weeks from today (today being July 11), so I need to work on anything requiring depth perception before that. I’m not sure how long I’ll have one eye (then the other) patched. Thanks for your time. More to come. Dale

Go to YouTube and search "Doctor Cranky". He's the expert. Even has a book. Dale

The biggest mistake any builder makes is not starting a project in the first place. Remember that it's not an $80,000 USD race car and the NHRA tech crew isn't going to inspect it. It's a plastic model. If you don't like the outcome, just start over. I have more junkers than I will admit to. Now start building! Dale

Pretty much what Wayne said is better advise than mine. Pro Mod is the creative outlet of drag racing. Research, get a vision and create it. That's where the real fun is. Dale

Depends on the job, I guess. For spot stuff like small defects here and there, Mr. Surfacer 1200 brushed on in several thin coats before sanding. I've mixed it 50/50 with lacquer thinner and airbrushed it as a sandable primer and it fills OK but I'm not sure it's any better than Duplicator Sandable Primer.For building body mods I like Milliput two part epoxy putty. The extra fine white is what it's name indicates. Easy to work with and sets hard and still easy to sand and finish. I also use Tamiya White, Squadron and Bondo. I looked at Evercoat and didn't care for the warnings on the container but that was for a styrene application. Dale

For a quick reference on narrowing, the overall width of a stock 2012 Camaro is 75.5 inches at the B post (behind the front door). The approved Pro Mod version of this body is 69 inches wide at this point, so it's been narrowed 3.5 inches. The stock wheelbase is 112 inches and the NHRA limit is 115, so it's been stretched by 3 inches. On the '60 Impala, the 119 inch wheelbase is too long and it would need to be shortened by 4 inches. The width is 80 inches and the height is 54. You could narrow it 11 inches and chop it to 44 inches (10 inches). That's why the older body Pro Mods look like they have been chopped and channeled so much. They were so big to start with. Dale

Is that Humbrol in the background? I love their enamels, nice and smooth. The cans are a bit messy, though. Dale

Hi, again. With the comments regarding Future Attractions PE and fasteners from Scale Hardware and R&B Motion, I thought I’d step out of my timeline to where I am today to show you the rear suspension that is built using components from these folks. The 4 link came with brackets, rods and rod ends but no instructions or photos of the assembled part. I eventually went to SummitRacing.com and downloaded installation instructions for a 4 link and got it together correctly. I opted for better rod ends from RB Motion and connected everything with 0.85mm threaded hex nuts and bolts. All of the holes had to be opened up a bit with micro drills and a pin vise. The rear end is the 9 inch Ford from FA and includes spacers and nice disk brakes and calipers that aren’t in the picture. It comes with a steel tube axel, but I dropped it with heavy molded rubber slicks tacked on and bent it. I was able to push it out and replaced it with some 1.6mm wire core rod from Plastruct. It’s strong and has some flex. The coil over shocks were a real pain to work with even though they came with a nice clear diagram for assembly. The tolerances were so tight that a coat of paint rendered them unusable and I had to drill the resin core out in able to slip the tube through it. I eventually broke it and built my own from RB Motion tube, styrene tube and rod ends. the only remaining FA artifact is the spring itself and a small resin insert that managed to survive somehow. Having rod ends on both ends gives me more mounting options. The wheelie bars required a lot of fabrication, and Scott makes that clear on his web page. The wheels, housings and back axel are in the kit. I used tubing and rod ends to construct the rest after another trip to Summit. Good thing they don’t charge for downloads! It’s not exactly square. Using a Dremel and CA just isn’t exacting science. I was going to “X” the top bars to square it out, but was so relieved to finish this that I’m not going to. It is a model. Back to the past tomorrow. Dale

The NHRA has to approve the body design of a Pro Mod before it's built. Some are narrowed and some are not. All are chopped and channeled to some degree. I like to stick to real world examples as best I can with drag models, so I went and joined the NHRA just to get access to the rule book. Here is the Pro Mod section and an approved blueprint of a Pro Mod Camaro built by Five star Race Car Bodies. Pick a body you want to build your P/M from and compare the body measurments to the ones allowed with the Camaro and you will get an idea as to what you can do if you stick to the rules. That's how I did my Pro Stock Mustang. NHRA ProMod_Rules-2013.pdf dims_ProModCamaro.pdf Dale

The front end is probably the most straight foreword assembly he has, but some of the photos in the instructions are out of order. The tolerances are very tight, so don't paint anything until you're ready and handle it as little as possible. I am currently finishing a 4 link suspension and wheelie bar from Future Attractions for this project and have been using rod ends and tubes from R&B Motion and 0.85mm threaded nuts and bolts from Scale Hardware for it. I have two of those 1mm hex wrenches. Quite a trip working with stuff this small. Edit: Here is a lower cost source for scale fasteners with minimum orders of 144 pieces. JI Morris and Co Thanks for the interest and support. Dale

A slot racer no doubt? Gutter Drags? Dale

Have a look at this link. The Morgan SS might help. http://www.freewebs.com/martsmodels/howtos.htm Or this http://www.easybuiltmodels.com/spoked.htm Dale

I have this kit on my shelf for a rainy day build. Engine details set aside, some of the best injection molding I have ever seen. even the chrome is great. Love your choice of color. BTW: Saw the 1:1 of this car on the street once. It made my jaw drop. Dale