RancheroSteve

I waited until I was a little ways along to start a thread on this one. The Revell Kurtis Offenhauser Midget, with a few modifications. I added a crossmember under the transmission (per Tim Boyd's suggestion), nerf bars to the rear radius rods, and modified the front nerf bar. I'm building a specific car (more about that later), so I've made some other body modifications, as well as custom decals. More soon.

You were the guy I was thinking of, Russell!

Ha, great - as a Deora fan I love it! What builder is gonna take this on?

I've probably got about a half dozen of those and have built a couple. Very nice curbside kits. Let me know if you need any info on them.

That came out great, Phil!

Revell/Monogram:

These are really nice kits - well-engineered and detailed. I'm using the chassis and running gear for the '36 Ford that I'm building.

Same here. I remember watching some of those races when guys were breaking axles left and right, and the announcers had no clue as to why. Of course later it became clear.

Yes, I have that issue - great reference for building the model. I found a lot of photos online, including some stuff from the shop that restored it, but there are some details in that RJ article that don't show up anywhere else.

Some more progress. I've spent a lot of time trying to get a passable rendition of the louvered hood and hood sides. I won't go into the details, but the hood top took three tries; not perfect, but it will have to do. Louvers are from the Revell '49 Mercury custom hood. Hood side louvers cam from the Revell '32 Roadster. The fit is actually better than it looks in these photos, since everything is just help in place with tape. I also made some structure for the underside of the trunk lid. On to the chassis and mechanical stuff next. Thanks for looking.

Thanks - decals are from the excellent VRM sheet.

In answer to the original question, yes:

Also keep in mind thy are running full floating hubs, which gives you more leeway with camber. I found this: "A year ago [2012] the four cars at Hendrick Motorsports had a significant advantage at midseason by creating a way to manipulate the rear axle housing. One side of the axle was able move forward and backward. That allowed the rear tires to work outside the track of the front tires to give the car more traction in the turns.The evolution of that change took months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to create. It cost the rest of the garage area millions to catch up. Now that all that work and money has been invested, NASCAR said rear housings must be locked in one position. Harry Gant won four consecutive races in 1991 when his team created a way to have the bottom of the right side tires stick out more than the top of the tires. By creating negative camber, the tires gained grip in the corners. Other teams eventually figured it out and did the same thing until they took it too far. NASCAR eventually mandated the amount of camber after several teams broke axles." None of this makes much difference in scale I suppose, but interesting if you care about the technical stuff.

A quick Google search turned up this: "Front and rear steer is where the steering box is located on the frame. Up until the early to mid 80s all Cup cars were rear steer meaning the box was located on the frame behind the front tires. That style was known as Ford steering, Holman Moody and Banjo Matthews dominated the market of building rear steer Cup chassis for Cup. Then came Bobby Allison and Mike Laughlin with the Chevy style box in front of the tires, being the geometry was much easier to work out and the drivers preferring the feel of that style of steering it is now dominate."

Wow, excellent! Details and textures are very realistic. Nice photography, too.

I believe those ports are for the air jacks - the Grand Sport was at least one of the first cars to use them in competition, but not all cars used them at all races. Article here about the restored #005 with some good reference shots: http://www.superchevy.com/features/1811-penske-hall-1963-grand-sport-corvette-005

If you want to build an accurate stock version, you have some work ahead of you, but whatever you do with it, I'm sure it will be good. I'll be watching! There's a long thread on the kit here:

I'd like to hear that story, Dave. Just to be clear, Mitch - I really dig your build! I've got a real soft spot for this kit - the Motorcraft version was the first kit I built when I got back into model building in the late 80s, inspired by a trip to the IMSA race at Del Mar. Sitting here at my bench, I can see three Mustang and two Camaro versions new in the boxes on the shelf; one of them has a resin body and decals to build a mid-90s Valvoline Trans Am Mustang. One day, maybe!

Some of those shots are of cars a couple of years before your model. The big difference (visually, at least) during this period is that the IMSA cars were allowed to run wings, while the SCCA Trans Am cars used "blade" type spoilers. There were other differences under the skin - most of which escape my memory now, but the IMSA cars were little more sophisticated. The Roush IMSA GTO cars often ran turbo four cylinder engines, and depending on the year, Mustang, Cougar, or Merkur bodywork. I once spent a couple of minutes with Dorsey Schroeder in the pits at Long Beach and he told me that the IMSA car was a little faster and easier to drive. Not trying to rivet count or split hairs here, either - just trying to clarify for those that don't know and might care.

GTO was the IMSA class designation. Regardless, it's good to see one of these built!

Well done! The driver really adds to it. Those aren't easy to find for any kind of reasonable price over here - I finally got one that looks almost identical to your "before" photo just recently. I hope to do something similar to what you've done eventually, but it looks cool just sitting on my shelf.

Check out the front wheel openings on the race versions vs. the stock body!

I noticed the pictures weren't showing up all of a sudden and then I realized why - I had moved them to another album. It's too late for me to edit my post, so here they are.

That came out very nice! Reminds of the days when I watched the WRC on SpeedTV, or whatever they called it then. I've got that kit in my stash - one of these days, I hope.

It's finished: