bobss396

I believe it was vinyl. Some said the pebbled texture was an aerodynamic advantage. BUT... team Petty would at times do something to distract people from looking at other things on their cars.

I saw that car run at Shady Side, a great gasser!

I just pulled out a set of old kit decals to use on some other stock car. They were old... I just used a portion of the sponsors and the border was badly yellowed. Not good on a white body.

I bought a "project" Nova stock car in 1982. It came with a black pipe roll cage from something else. Possibly an old coach modified. The cage was loose, so out it came. We borrowed a frame table and tackled it. Cut off the ugly and replaced anything sketchy with good quality roll cage tubing. It wound up being a good cage. The trick with those cars was tying it into the unibody construction.

Black pipe (less the cast fittings...) was permitted in the stock care we drove. Heavy, but strong. It was standard for rub rails and bumper embellishment. We built one stock car with 2" water pipe, fairly thin wall compared to black pipe. We got to tech inspection and with some back and forth, they tested it and it passed the crush test. Another guy rolls in with a new car, it goes to tech and draws a crowd. The workmanship on the welding was great.. only it was made with SWING SET tubing. The inspector just said... OUT. It wasn't even painted, still green and yellow. One guy we raced with had this huge "fuel cell" in the trunk. Most of us back then used VW tanks. This thing was a huge cube, the owner said it held 20 gallons and it was FULL. It was made from .050" thick COPPER. With paint, it passed for steel.

Our club show is on the 11th. I'm a kit vendor, but hope to find one of these kits, maybe 2. I had the whole lineup when they came out years back. I recall them as being pretty basic and easy to build. I would like to do one with some after market parts, like wheels and tires. Maybe add a fuel cell and do some wiring and plumbing. The supplied roll cage is over an 1/8" in diameter, so that has to be fixed up.

I generally use Zap-a-Gap medium CA glue. I have a few tubes of the thinner stuff from Ace Hardware. I'll have to try a couple of samples of each.

I'm sort of afraid to get any deeper into it. I have been to seminars with psychics at schools and libraries. 2 told me I have a blue aura. My mom also had some sort of powers. I have strong gut feelings that I listen to. One has already saved my life.

The first I saw was in 1979 or so. My racing partner bought an old house in Babylon Village a couple of years earlier. Both he and his wife told us of a ghost, that looked like a native indian boy. I said... right. One late night we were watching something on HBO. His wife was asleep on the couch, my friend was dozing. The room got colder suddenly.. I saw the dog looking into the dining room... and I saw the ghost. I shook my buddy awake and he just smiled. The spirit hung around for maybe a minute and evaporated. I later found that the area was a Revolutionary War battle site... sometimes the locals got got... The next was in a machine shop I worked in as a side gig. I had been there for maybe 10 years by then. Most of the time I worked alone in the evenings. The owner's dad had owned the shop and the son took it over when the old man died. A few times I had the feeling I was being watched. Then... I saw the spirit. It was the owner's dad. In total I had seen it about 6 times. I called out to it... George.. and it stopped for a second and vanished. The shop moved in 2000 and we were setting it up. One other guy mentioned, maybe the ghost will stay in the old shop. I never mentioned it to anyone and never knew anyone else had seen it. The last, so far, was in 2014. My wife was in hospice with cancer and I always stayed until they got her ready to go to sleep. Usually after 11 at night. She was in a larger room with a vestibule with a row of storage closets. I was on my way out and only one light was on. There it was, a ghost of an old lady leaning on a closet door, looked to be in pain. It was gone in a few seconds. I asked one nurse at the desk if she ever saw anything at night... she just nodded yes. I grew up on a house with a poltergeist. It came soon after my grandmother died in 1970, in the hospital. We would find ceramic figures my mom had on a high shelf sitting on the floor, upright and not damaged. We heard footsteps on the stairs late at night, we would call out, "who is on the stairs" and it would stop. The cats would follow something now and then. My brother was around 12, talking with us before school and suddenly one lens in his glasses shattered with no explanation. If I had not seen it, I would have never believed it. Then one day, it just stopped. My sister is clairvoyant, she says that it is a curse. She has told me things that have made the hair on my neck stand on end. My dad had it to a lesser degree, he would warn us about things that turned out to be true. This was around 1974, I was headed out after dinner and my dad asked me if I was going to the corner bar. I asked him if he needed help with something. He said no, but whatever you do, do not get into a car with anyone else. If I needed a ride home, give him a call. I said I would walk home and not get into a car with anyone. It was around midnight in the bar.. a friend walks up with me and asks if I want to go with him and a couple of others to another bar. It was like someone splashed a bucket of ice water in my face, I was sober in 2 seconds. I told him about my dad's vision and he laughed. I could not talk them out of going. It was maybe a 1/2 hour later... we got word that there was a huge car accident near by. It was those 3 guys. 2 were dead and one badly injured. I told my dad the next morning that he was right.

I was over at a model buddy's house yesterday and he cracked one open. It does appear to be all new tooling. The slicks are 1 piece vinyl pad printed, no more 2 piece slicks. The body is crisp and clean, no emblems at all. The decal sheet is new as well, many sponsors to choose from. I will be picking one up soon.

My first outing there was in 1999... I think I have only missed one since.

I recall it being applied with a foam brush, can anyone confirm this? I have one model I may want to try this one very shortly. Any hint on drying time would be appreciated. Thanks.

The show used to be in late March, which was interesting with the possibility of snow. The date was switched so not to interfere with the Masscar club's annual show & contest.

Super job! I never saw that color combo before. There were a lot of one-off cars even back then. A later Road Runner he had was the one with the peeling vinyl top and the advent of 200 MPH tape. The team was so disgusted with Plymouth by them and jumped ship to Ford for the '69 season. As Petty Blue was trademarked, Ford had to come up with a new color for them to use, Grabber Blue.

All of the AMT kits had the loose trees of parts, the tires were loose too. The axles were at times held together with white tape. I never saw an AMT kit with marked up glass from tires. The MPC Southern Stockers were known for tire melt on the glass. It was tinted glass on some kits, hard to polish out in some cases.

Thanks, I will try to find some soon, I guess Ace or a big supermarket will have it.

I just had a clear-coat job go bad on a Richie Evans coupe. Clear was Krylon Acrylic 1303 over kit and Ace decals. The clear reacted with the roof stripes even though I used light coats spaced out. Oven cleaner to the rescue, paint was Tamiya orange. The body is back in primer, I have to shoot some white primer next, followed by the orange. No clear this time. I have 2 other stock cars right behind it. I'll just trim the decals as close as possible. I was considering some sort of wax I could apply over the decals. One car is a 2-tone with pearl white, I would need something that would not yellow.

This is true plastic surgery... wow...

On my '32 they hung off the sides of the car. So I made "J" brackets. I'm doing a stock car with 3/16" tubing for exhaust, that will be pinned to the floor pan.

I had these big reddish spiders on my back porch. The body was as big as a penny. These would put up webs outside at night to catch whatever came along... then they took the webs down during the day... diabolical to say the least. Early one late summer morning, I was walking between some bushes and the pool. I got mixed up in the web... I had to dive into the pool to get it off me. A few hours later I had a welt on my forehead as big as a half dollar piece. Little bumps all over it and it itched. Off to the doctor, got an antibiotic and tetanus shot. It took a few months for the spot to fade. I got my Ford delivered from Denver in 2014. That had spider NESTS under it and I got bit on my hand in 3 places. Luckily it was not poisonous and while it swelled for a few days, no permanent damage.

I never watched the show, but 54 is way too young to die. I had a massive heart attack 7 years ago, I wasn't taking care of myself and ignored some of the signs. Since then I had a triple bypass and now take all sorts of pills. I am in better shape now that I was then. I had my annual echo-cardiogram done earlier this week. My heart doctor says I have no damage to my heart, but a funky valve he wants to watch. High BP runs in the family, it killed my mom at age 52 and she smoked. Mine at the heart doctor was 120/80. My recent blood work was good too.

I read that Dick Trickle had one in his cars too. He smoked when he drove.... I knew lots of short track locals that would light up during yellow flags. Here's one... there was a southern driver, Neil Castles that drove with a pistol in the car.

That looks like a great kit, nice work! What did you use for seat belts? This is something I struggle with.

Drill and pin works. I made up a set of brackets for a '32 Ford application out of .010" aluminum with success. About 1/8" wide and longer than what was needed. I bent a 180 degree bend on one end using a 1/8" piece of aluminum rod as a mandrel. Then cut them to length. I used CA glue to put it together. I used 2 per side. I have to dig the finished car out, I am unable to locate it right now.

Thanks, I will work on them. So far I give them peanuts in the shell and some big sunflower seeds. Of course stale bread and they like fortune cookies.