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Dirty Dave

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Everything posted by Dirty Dave

  1. I think he has some pics on his Facebook. I'll see if I can download them and post pics of that car on this thread, too. I have the feeling it was a little later than '51 though... '52 or '54, maybe?
  2. http://youtu.be/X7-FpwfPWMI I found a video of opening night - can't believe it's been that many years now... 2007!
  3. The Cadillac ran two nights worth of events, after a day of cutting, welding and straightening. The Chrysler ended up being used for two or three years, until they outlawed anything pre-1980 at the fairgrounds track last year. I'll see if I can scrape up some "after" pics.
  4. Scream and yell all that you want, but the Cadi was rusted beyond being worth repair, and that was before a tree fell on the rear quarter. The Chrysler? A low-line polysphere-powered four door, and this is California... that's a $300 car.
  5. Saw a build thread about building demo derby cars, and I thought I'd post some pics of one that I helped my brother with a few years ago. 1958 Cadillac Sedan De Ville:
  6. That's a very nice transkit. If one didn't have a fujimi porsche donor, I can picture someone doing one of the candy-painted V8 914 conversions I recall rolling around Hollywood and Santa Monica in the '80s.
  7. I usually use a thread spool or a small pulley to bend my tubing around. Keep the pressure even, and don't try to make too tight a bend, and it should be okay. Cut the bend on a bias angle, and you should end up with a nice eliptical opening.
  8. That's a killer ride, to be sure. I'd be tempted to replace both exhaust turnouts with some aluminum tubing.
  9. I don't anticipate the 1/24 body working well over the 1/25 chassis without cutting the siderails loose and fabricating new crossmembers and a new floor. The 1/25 chassis will be noticeably narrower than the 1/24 body from what I remember. The Lil' Coffin is a great chassis for a lowboy conversion, though.
  10. Out here, we don't see rusty rockers as much as we see body cancer in the rear apron and across the engine compartment. Seems like the drainage tubes get plugged, and the decklid seals leak, making for a real pain to repair on coachbuilt cars like these, where all the non-opening body panels are welded/brazed into place.
  11. This is a mockup while I smooth out the seams on my 1/16 Karmann Ghia project. There were flat spots in the body casting in the nose, right above the point where the lower apron glues in place, so I'm taking extra time in an effort to build up the proper contour. If it doesn't start coming together soon, it's going to get primer, rust, peeling paint and I'll pass the front end off as old body damage. Engine will be finished off with scratch-built manifolds and linkage for 3D printed Weber IDA's I purchased from Shapeways. I'm also contemplating a more traditional hot rod/low rider wheel and tire combo for the planned super-low ride height. We'll see how it goes, eh?
  12. Great build! A fine detail, but that's the second edition of the kit. The first one (blue truck on the box) was stock only - no Ardun heads, multi carbs or dual exhausts included. Either way, you did some fine work.
  13. I'm really thinking about robbing the rear end from a Miss Deal or Revell '41 Willys kit just for ladder bars. The Malco '33 Willys has parallel leafs with a couple of links to prevent axle wrap, but not the big ladder bars that would better complete the "look". The other thing that I'm on the search for is the right set of fender headers/dumps. There's not a lot of room between the frame rails, block and fenders, so I may have to get a bit creative in that respect. Wish me luck!
  14. Yeah, that ought to haul, allrighty!
  15. No new pics of the '36, but I did spend some time last night working on the front suspension, radiusing the rear wheelwells to clear some bigger rubber, and working on the fender unit up front to accommodate that big 427 SOHC. Nailing the stance of the Hot Wheels car is interesting - still nose down, yet tall in the saddle. There should be plenty of room for suspension travel when it slams back to earth after a wheelstand, and a few extra inches to clear the rears for "squat" during hard launches. I'll get the rear suspension together soon, mock it back up and get new pics then.
  16. Thanks to all! I've been building very little in the last couple of years, but am changing that now. With any luck I'll quadruple my model-a-year output that I've been averaging.
  17. I bet this thing would swap ends at the first blip of the throttle... which sounds like fun!
  18. The more I think about it, the more I believe that I should have posted this over in the Trucks showcase section.
  19. Roll bar should be wherever you can fit it, but 3 of 4 point bars were required by the time the early '60s came around. Just noticed the M/T Sportsmans in the back, which peg this as a street car, and not a racer, if we're really going to get nit-picky. I remember a compact 4-door gasser that sat about the way your ute does. Not all gassers relied on jacked-up nosebleed stances and weight transfer to get down the quarter. Some of them just burned the tires off like a digger, instead. By the mid-late sixties, tire and driveline tech was such that gasser builders could lower the cars down for top end stability. It all comes down to the period of car that you're trying to build, and how much thought you really want to put into it. Lots of mom and pop tracks combined similar classes when fields weren't as full, so local cars may not have always adhered to NHRA classifications so strictly. Example: Modified Sportscars, Street Roadsters and Gassers are often seen running against one another in old photos from smaller tracks. These are all fendered cars with drivers in the standard off-center driving position, but all have different rules regarding fixed roofs, weight/displacement classes, engine setback percentages, and such. I have seen a survivor '65 Vette convertible with a straight axle front end that supposedly ran in C/G at some point, but by the rulebooks of the time that I've seen should have been relegated to an MS/C classification due to engine setback and its lack of a fixed roof. All of that goes out the window if you define Gasser by what is legal in current nostalga drag racing classifications, which vary from organization to organization, but require a full cage, more lenient engine setback rules and an offset driver position.
  20. COULD be a gasser. That all depends on having proper engine setback (#1 cylinder behind front axle centerline no more than 10% of total wheelbase) and at least a roll bar, but most importantly, it's just a street car with slicks until it's got some class designations lettered on the body or windows.
  21. When brainstorming project ideas, sometimes I find it helpful to start with backstory rather than just starting with a couple of model parts that happen to fall together, though I've had plenty of projects begin that way as well. In this case, the project was sparked by a conversation in cluding the idea that swap meet spaces were claimed by a first-come, first-served method like the Oklahoma land race, and what kind of hauler one might use to sell at such an event. I went with a slammed VW singlecab, converted to a halftrack with a roller on the front bumper to help skid over larger obstacles (see the weeds caught in the roller and rear bumper, below). Based on a Freeman Cars VW DRAG TRUCK body and the treads from an old small scale Caterpillar tractor model, I built this slammer:
  22. This singlecab? Yeah, it's a slammer I built using a Freeman Cars resin body. I guess I should make a thread for it in the Showcase section.
  23. Cool build-up! Makes me want to buy one and do something crazy.
  24. My favorite Hot Wheels car as a kid was the '36 Ford NEET STREETER. The look of that chopped 3W coupe all jacked up gasser-style was pure attitude. I wanted a "quick" project to finish for an upcoming contest, so I grabbed an AMT '36 Ford, a Malco '33 Willys, and started putting things together: That 427 Cammer is going to be a tight fit. Notching the X-member got me an extra 3/32" of setback, which may allow the blower drive to clear the radiator. Originally, I was trying to find a Miss Deal to use as a chassis/suspension donor. If I come up on one, that still could happen.
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