
Pierre Rivard
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Everything posted by Pierre Rivard
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Starting work on the rear end. The donor is the rear axle from the AMT Bobby Allison Monte Carlo. I will upgrade the components but for now it's all about setting the attachment points to get the proper location and mostly ride height, I have 6 mm front and 8mm rear measured from ground to rocker
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Spending lots of time setting track and ride heights. Here the front is still a bit high, I'll just bend it a bit before I add the upper structure. The rear is not started yet, just the base kit metal axle. That'll get chopped up.
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Chassis will be a bit of a dog's breakfast with parts coming from various sources and some scratch building as well. Starting at the front I grafted a Salvino's clip. Looks reasonably to a H&M setup except for the shocks which are more like what Nichels did on Dodges. I might keep it like that. It's a Nichels car after all...
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Update on the chassis work. Here are 2 reference pictures from the build stage in Nichels' shop. My take away is a H&M Galaxie style fabricated front end. Floorpan could be fabricated but I'll assume reinforced stock. No information on the rear suspension. I'll go with assumption of a modified short arm. Also taking note that the rear upper spring and shock mounts are not exposed but boxed in.
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Thanks Todd, I happen to have one of them in my spares and the fit is good.
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Looking good. I have worked with .020 rod lately and it is small and very difficult to manipulate. Good stuff!
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James, thank you for the nice feedback. This is the first time I try to flare fenders and I just guessed my way into it and it worked our reasonably well. The front sheetmetal is definitely dropped relative to a stock body but I did not feel capable of doing it properly, so I will give the car some lean on the chassis side instead. I got this pic from a fellow builder on Randy' site and it shows it clearly.
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I think you'll make it look great. An alternative would be a styrene insert with a grille texture decal. Slixx has many options available. I can post pic or send you a pm if you think it might work.
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I think they drew in the 66 chassis in the 72 kit. Mismatch in wheelbase, multiple body attachment pegs, none of which match. I think I'll just fab something with an axle from the spares box. Thanks.
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The winner is behind door #1 What's the deal with the 429 c.i on the hood of #3? Weird...
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I'm doing the purple one as it raced at Michigan Raceway. For the chassis I am set on doing a Galaxie front clip but still not sure about the back end. 1971 was sort of a transition year before fabricated chassis with truck arms became the norm for the GM and Ford teams. Thinking I might do some sort of beefed up short arm setup. I don't have pics of the car's rear chassis so it's a bit of a guess.
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Thanks Larry. I did consider it but chose to go the route of a hybrid chassis consisting of a beefed up road chassis with a Galaxie front clip. Now that I'm in the thick of it I'm not yet sure how this will pan out. Time will tell...
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So do I but I'm a long way off from the painting steps. Firs I need to fab some sort of chassis and test fit it to the body.
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Awesome scratch-building I love the checker plate finish
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Next the various small parts. Blanks over turn signal, front air dam bracket to body (the dam will added after paint), I fabricated a rear spoiler, again with guides. Front grille recess has been reduced by grinding the back side of the trim piece. Headlamps: drilled out outer lamps and added blanks. Inner molded lamps will be painted to mimic a mesh inlet cover.
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Next I scratch built rear window straps. I hate trying to glue them on a painted body...shaky hand and all. I tape the strips in position and drill through strip and body, then insert a guiding rod. the rod is glued only to the strip for now. I then trim the top part of the rod. When all is painted I will insert to body and glue from underside and trim excess rod before glass install. I use Evergreen 0.02 x 0.06 (0,5 x 1.0 mm) strips and 0.02 (0.5 mm) rods Same idea for windshield clips
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Next step were mods to the engine air intake plenum. I added the plenum box at the cowl and blocked off the hood ram intake which was not in use for racing the GTO
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I then built up the back end components starting with the sheetmetal adds to smooth out airflow around the bumper sides. The bumper itself was very wide fo I removed about 3 mm (1/8") by making 2 cuts and removing material as required. Typical of what the teams did on the real cars,
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Here is the result for the front opening. Some touch up may be required after primer but I think I'm close The rear wheel openings were moved back 3 mm to replicate a scale 115 in wheelbase typical of era cup cars. The GM A-bodies were 112 in and all had to be stretched to comply. I then had to flare up the rear part of the openings to counteract the body tapering off going back.
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I can't explain why but this may be my favorite NASCAR race car. I know it ran only a half dozen times and failed every time...but I love the way it looks. The basis for this build is the MPC road car kit. It's orange (we all love painting over colored bodies right?), the A posts are squished and the rest of the kit is a blob of unusable plastic. After my last project I wanted to do something easy but I can see this may require some work. I plan to release updates in batches: body, chassis, interior and final Body work for this project started with wheel opening flares. I made cuts, pulled the plastic strips outward with pliers, glued in wedges and then multiple steps of putty and sanding.
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Brave man. I would have chickened out and done a 67. Is there as much change needed for the back end?
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This is a great build. These old Dodges looked very purposeful when transformed into race cars and you rendered it beautifully!
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This is a great project and I very much look forward to seeing how you tackle it. Is this going to be a Bud Moore solution or a Holman Moody style half chassis?
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Wow Mario. Absolutely wonderful build. The car and diorama both look so lifelike. I wish I could do rust like that but that's beyond my capabilities. Epic effort!
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Thank you all for the nice feedback!