papajohn97

What a fabulous collection and a fitting tribute to a legendary racer/ tuner who was also known as one of the nicest guys in the sport. Based on your past postings Michael, you must have a huge collection of classic super stock model builds. I would love to see a few pics of all of them laid out like a pit line-up to the staging lanes at a mid-sixties drag meet. Thanks for another cool posting!

Punched out a hole in the hood for the FI velocity stacks to protrude:

Made a few more little parts, scratch-built a Hilborn fuel pump (probably not to scale but roughed out totally by eye, intended for mounting in front of the block) using Evergreen styrene rod and sheet: Scratch-built a fuel line routing block using Evergreen sheet styrene and a resin fitting to hang off of the left side of the FI manifold: Drilled out right .016” holes on the inside of each intake tube on the manifold to install fuel lines later: I would have liked to drill out two axial holes running down the base of each of the two rows of four tower inlets on this resin manifold to allow running wire down each row for butterfly axles but I was afraid of turning this delicate resin part into Swiss cheese as well as well as the near impossibility of keeping the drill centered thru each tower. Maybe I can bond short pieces of wire between each tower later to simulate these butterfly control axles? I primed all the little parts as well as the chassis and interior tub: The roll bar shown above was out of my spares box but I had to widen it by .20” by splicing in some .08” Evergreen rod so that it would adequately span the interior tub. It’s supposed to finally warm up to the 70’s to low 80’s here on the So. Cal. coast over the next few days so I hope to finally be putting some colors on these parts. This is mostly a “done by eyeball” build but so far it’s still pretty simple and fun (compared to the crazy over-engineered tank model I’ll building in parallel). Thanks for viewing my slow progress! John

Trimmed and sanded the sides of the styrene sheets added to the deeper oil pan: Made some progress on roughing out the headers: I’ll drill out the ends before priming and painting these. I will have to place these over the upper A arms on the chassis before assembling them to the engine block. The plugs are below these headers so I’ll need to finesse some wiring holes at the bottom of the heads to block area, not totally accurate but you won’t be able to see the plug end once the engine + headers are assembled to the chassis. Making these headers took about 3-4 hours of trial and error scratch building. They’re not pretty but they’ll be good enough once I airbrush them with Tamiya XF-1 or XF-84 (my favorite these days for exhausts). John

A little progress today…. I finished roughing out the weird Hilborn FI set-up and checked the rough appearance with the engine/ chassis/ body….looks about right? I then started the mods on the oil pan to deepen it by 3” (.12” scale) by sectioning it with a razor saw and then bonding three .04” thick Evergreen styrene sheets. I’ll flush out the sides of these bonded sheets after an overnight cure: I’m planning on using a Detail Master aluminum distributor on this engine and so I drilled out a .062” hole in at the rear of the FI manifold and block;: The next big mod is to scratch build the headers which my Car Craft magazine reference describes as 2” tubing, 40” long, individual tubes with no collector. I’m planning on using 2 mm diameter solder wire and will need to make a header plate out of styrene sheet with holes for the tubes spaced at the 4.84” (.194” scale) cylinder spacing. I made similar headers for an Arnie Beswick ‘64 GTO a few years back: It doesn’t appear from reference photos that these individual tube headers on Seaton’s car extended out to the outer edge of the body like on this GTO, I’m hoping I can approximate how long they were based on the 40” length (1.6” at scale), these GTO headers look closer to +2” long. I did similar scratch-built headers for a ‘65 Chevelle A/FX build but with collectors: Scratch-building headers can be a laborious time-consuming trial & error effort so bear with me if I disappear for a while. Making them symmetrical is the hardest part. Thanks for following along! John

Nice job on Landy’s “last stock wheelbase” drag car. I’m particularly impressed with the painting of the black raised wiring details within the engine bay, not an easy detail to paint.

Thanks Mike. Like other drag cars at the time, they raced on a variety of wheels on this car. The triangular slotted Howard’s mags were on several of the pics I’ve seen and unfortunately with the closure of Modelhaus they are now likely unobtainium. I decided to use these Fireball oval slotted wheels because they are close to a few of the photos I have and I prefer the look over the triangular slots. I hope to apply a unpolished light magnesium/ dark worn aluminum Alclad which should contrast nicely with the white & orangery-red two-tone.

Finally got back on this one after being distracted by a 1/35 Miniart M3 Lee with full interior tank kit I’m doing simultaneously (little risk of parts mix-up!). I mounted front and rear axles/ suspensions with a .18” hike up in the rear and a .20” in the front, total eyeball estimate based on 1:1 photos. I used a lot of Evergreen rods and tubes to make these changes: Here’s a rough reality check with the body/chassis balanced on some wheel/ tires: I’m planning on using some slotted wheels from Fireball Resins I purchased a few years ago and will paint these with black base coat and Alclad aluminum. The rear wheels came with extended center hubs which I had to drill out and replace with styrene rod to simulate the flush axle ends. Here’s a shot of the wheels with driver’s fiberglass seat I’m planning to use: I’m starting to rough-out how I’m thinking of modeling the weird Hilborn FI set-up on this car. The Car Craft reference that I wrote about in a previous post stated that Seaton adapted a Hilborn FI manifold for a 427 Ford to the BBC but then another reference I just received, Super Stock & Drag Illustrated magazine (Oct ‘65), stated Seaton adapted two Hilborn FI’s intended for 4 cyl. Offenhauser Indy engines….maybe they tried both? I’m not going to sweat absolute accuracy and will just try to approximate the set-up shown in the photo in Scott8950’s post above by adding two four/hole manifold plates and short cylindrical extensions around the velocity stacks above the BBC Hilborn FI resin manifold that I have. Other than a little priming here and there, Im going to keep assembling unpainted parts/ subassemblies before doing any serious painting. Nothing worse than having to modify painted parts! John

Incredible build! How did you do that chassis? If not scratch-built, what kit(s) did you bash it from? I picked up this AMT Merc kit last year at a swap-meet and it comes with a bare-bones one-piece promo chassis if I recall. The chassis frame looks like a ‘60 Starliner but the stamped sheet metal bottom pan looks like a different kit?

Nice to see a white one built, beautifully executed! So many fit issues with this kit but worth the hassle because it’s such a cool legendary iconic race car.

Progress over the last few days: Sanded out to 800 grit and primed the puttied body using Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 white primer (nice stuff). It’s not perfect but should pass the “viewing at 18” test and hoping the final red-orange on the lower body + decals will camouflage remaining defects: I added a .28” extension at the rear of the chassis using Evergreen .040” styrene: I then attacked the two bumper guards on both front and rear bumpers (after removing the chrome with oven cleaner) using an X-acto knife and sanding sticks. Not an easy task!: I puttied the damage where I could and then sanded and primed both bumpers: I found a fiberglass type driver’s racing seat in my spare parts box which I hope to include in the interior tub along with a scratch-built roll bar, hydro shifter and column mounted tach. I also think I need to tackle the headers and the modification and dry-fitting of the Hilborn FI and stacks so I can rough-out the cut on the hood before diving into painting of the body and sub assemblies. Going slow on this one but still having fun!

Hi Ian, the Car Craft reference I cited above stated that the transmission used in this car was a Turbo Hydramatic modified by Tom Nell (a GM guy). Other references I’ve seen state that the first TH released by GM was a TH400 offered in ‘64 Caddies.

I've made some progress at fitting that big resin TH-400 trans into this chassis: I plan to make my own headers using solder wire, should be fun going around the engine mounts and such: I boxed-in a new transmission tunnel within the interior tub using .020" thick Evergreen styrene to cover up the larger opening I had to make to clear this large resin transmission: And then I fixed the two rear wheel wells on the chassis to allow more room for the larger rear tires: On the subject of reference materials, I splurged on eBay for a rare original copy of Car Craft Magazine Dec 1965 with included an excellent article on this car. I'd love to post the article but don't want too violate any copyright laws so I'll just note the following things I learned and were able to confirm: They described the car as a "match car", not to NHRA A/FX rules I assume, although the photos of the car in the article have "A/FX" on the rear roof column on each side. A three-speed Turbo-Hydromatic transmission was used in this car. They included a floor shifter which allowed manual selection of each of the three speeds or an auto drive option (at 6500 rpm!). No front brakes, no radiator. They included a 5 gal water tank in the trunk with a small electric water pump that allowed them too cool the engine between runs Very little modifications to the stock chassis (positraction and uneven coil springs to counteract the crazy torque). The body was shifted rearwards 7" (maintaining the stock wheel base) and lifted 1" (which I'm probably not going to worry about). They used a full-sized Chevy sedan differential with 4.56 gears, I'll probably just use the stock Chevelle diff. The car/ decals label it a '396' but in actuality, it's a prototype 427 that Seaton was able to get from GM They used a Hilborn FI intended for a Ford 427 and jerry-rigged an adapter manifold. I have a resin BBC Hilborn FI manifold that I think I'll still use but I might add two four hole plates between each of the two lines of four bosses on the resin manifold and the metal velocity stocks too try to mimic the appearance of the actual BBC-to Ford Hilborn FI set-up. A 3 gal Moon fuel tank was mounted in front of the engine. Interior was gutted for racing (fiberglass driver's seat, no passenger or back seat, stock inner side panels but all hardware removed, stock dash and steering wheel with tach mounted on. column, roll bar and five point racing harness). Exhaust headers are individual 2" ID tubing, each 40" long, no collector. Oil pan was 3" deeper (need to add .12") Cheers, John

A few minutes left before I knock off for the day, I decided to box in the remaining two gaps between the engine bay wheel wells and the firewall with .040” sheet styrene so that I can prime the body tomorrow to check my putty job:

Thanks Ron for the saw name correction! I love my Tamiya razor saws, they must be +12 years old and they still work great! Today’s update: Sanded out the putty patches on all four wheel openings down to 800 grit, will test primer once my engine bay wheel well fixes are done: Bonded the two engine bay wheel wells back into the body and shifted them .28” forward to coincide with the new front wheel openings (still need to add fill-in styrene between these wells and the firewall): Removed the four speed kit transmission and bonded the resin TH-400 automatic into place with CA: This TH-400 automatic is significantly larger than the kit manual transmission so I cut away material around the front of the transmission hump in the interior tub. I’ll box in this opening with sheet styrene, hopefully a larger partial conical piece, once I rough out the final position of the engine in the chassis/ body assembly: In roughly checking the rear slick tire fit in the chassis/ body assembly, it looks like I’m going to need to enlarge the front portion of the two rear wheel wells on the chassis in order to better center the rear wheels in the new openings as well as to clear the chassis with these larger tires. I’m planning on using AMT M&H pie crust slicks on this car, my favorite period slicks and they still appeared to be used on some of the photos of this car, other photos seem to show wider more modern (lower pressure?) slicks. When were M&H pie crust slicks phased out of use in drag racing anyways? ‘65? cheers, John ps - I’m walking my dog one mile each day now so I’m making progress on my medical recovery!

Thank you Mike for taking all these pics and writing up the details, very helpful! I originally bought the new Moebius ‘65 Nova gasser kit with the thought of using it as a basis to build Doug Thorley’s ‘65 AWB “Chevy-2-Much” (I have the Fremont Racing decals) . You’re right, it’s too nice a kit to sacrifice for the front clip. I think I’ll take a look at how Moebius did the front clip and straight axle and copy the aspects of it that I like and can apply to the Harrell ‘66 Nova. I have a bag of resin leaf springs I bought from Speed City awhile back and can probably find a pair that can work. I have yet to get tired of scratch-building these classic 60’s drag cars, they are fun “puzzles” to solve and sure are a lot cheaper then messing with 1:1 vintage drag cars! Much thanks Mike! John

Thanks Mike. I’ve been incredibly healthy for nearly 70 years and was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in Feb, so I guess I was overdo for something! My doc performed a “robotic assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy” on me on April 3 and I’m recovering pretty well despite the usual side effects. My amazing wife, our family, my dog and my scale modeling hobby have really helped me get through these tough weeks. And my wife says I’m not allowed to die until I finish the +250 unbuilt model kits in the garage so I better get heathy and back to work! Thanks for the clarification on the different appearances of Seaton’s car in the various photos online, makes sense. I plan to build the initial car with the Howard slotted wheels and what looks like an aluminum front bumper. With the weather finally drying out and warming up on the West coast, I’m suddenly wanting to start a bunch of drag car builds (I.e.; my interest in your Harrell Nova ). Thanks, John

I decided to dissect out the radiator from the front bulkhead and bond the bulkhead to the body, making sure that the chromed headlight/ grill part fully seats and is positioned correctly relative to the front edge of the body: There was no radiator in the actual car and I’ve cleaned up the cut and removed radiator features from this part since the photo was taken. I moved the two engine mounts rear wards by .28” (7” at 1/25): The photo above also shows that I cut .28” off of the front of the chassis to clear the front bumper/ grill/ bulkhead. I also had to cut .28” off the notch that the interior tube bears against to allow the chassis to shift forward by the .28”: I bonded sheet styrene to the rear of the interior tub to replace the back seat. Once this is fully cured, I’ll cut the back and seat portion of the rear seat off from the tub so that the chassis can shift forwards .28” relative to the body + interior tub: And finally, I took a leap of faith and applied Tamiya putty to the four wheel opening repositioning seams: I’ve never been crazy about this Tamiya putty filler and have been using Vallejo acrylic gap/ seam filler on all my planes/ tanks/ ships lately which is easier to work with and excess can be whipped off with IPA. I decided not to use the acrylic putty here because it’s much softer and I was worried that it might react with lacquer based primer and paints. I’m going to give this Tamiya putty a few days to fully cure before attempting to sand this down, hoping I don’t regret this choice of putty….?? I hope to re-position and bond the two inner wheel wells to the body engine bay next and then get going on clean-up and dry-fitting of the chassis/ engine/ interior components. I’ve learned it’s best to solve all the assembly ,and fit issues before even priming any parts.

Hi Mike, I missed this build that you posted a few months back and just ran a-crossed it in searching how others have approached recreating this legendary Dick Harrell/ Bill Thomas injected Nova - very nice job! So how did you do this chassis? Did you cut the front end off of the Nova pro-street chassis and scratch-build the tubular front clip and straight axle/ leaf spring assembly? I’d like to copy your build here (highest form of compliment, right?) using the same ‘66 Nova pro street kit but am also wondering if it’s worth sacrificing a Moebius Gasser Nova kit for the tubular front clip + straight axle assembly? What would you do if you were to build a second one of these? Scratch build the front end or pull parts from the Moebius kit ( still a $25 kit)? BTW, I love all your builds that you so prolifically assemble and post here, you ‘da sixties door slam’in drag car MAN!!!!! John

I made progress today on re-installing the four wheel openings on the body for the 7” forward shift. I bonded strips of .015” thick Evergreen styrene inside the body along each square cut-out profile to give the remounted wheel cut-outs and filler styrene something to engage with for bonding other than butt joining everything together: I then bonded each wheel opening back onto the body checking a few distances between the pieces and the front door edges to try to get symmetrical between right and left sides: As tedious as this was to do (about 4 hours work), I’m hoping this method will minimize putty gap filling and sanding….we’ll see! I’m happy with the look of this shift, especially the front wheel wells. It always bugged me that AMT did not adjust the front wheels/ wheel wells on their AWB “funny car” kits such as the Mustang and Chevelle. If this build works out, I’ve got a ‘66 Nova kit which I’d love to try this on to build that cool red Dick Harrell/ Nickey Chevrolet Injected AWB car.

Thanks for the transmission feedback Len. Half the fun of doing these parts-bashing vintage drag car builds is the fun of researching and learning new things. I just noticed on some of the period photos of this car and my decal sheet a reference to “Hydro by Tom Nell” - which gave me an additional clue that I overlooked as to what type of automatic transmission was in this car. Unless there were two ‘Tom Nell’s’ involved in mid-60’s drag racing, I believe the Tom Nell painted on Seaton’s car was a Pontiac engineer who was deeply involved in modifying the first GM TH400’s for racing in 1964 - 65 (TH400’s were first available on Caddies and Pontiacs in ‘64 followed by Chevrolet in ‘65): https://www.motortrend.com/features/hppp-1209-pioneers-of-the-pontiac-v8/amp/ This article implies that Tom Nell was helping Arnie Beswick on tuning the TH400 for drag racing during the period of this ‘64-‘65 Seaton’s Shaker. Pete Seaton’s dad was a big shot at GM which may have given Seaton some inside access to back-door GM tech help during this GM race ban period (or Seaton/ Heinelt just connected with Nell at the drag strip?). I have a 1/25 resin B&M Hydro with a Chevy bell housing and could also order a resin 1/25 PowerGlide but based on the “Hydro by Tom Nell” decal, I think I might just stay with the TH400 for this build. I’m a ways from starting the engine/ trans subassembly and am happy to be corrected on this with a better reference or a photo showing what trans was used (maybe they started with a Powerglide in ‘64 and switched over to the TH400 in ‘65?). Much thanks for the feedback!

This is a project I’ve been procrastinating on starting for a few years. I had major surgery three weeks ago and am finally feeling good enough to take X-Acto knife in hand and build again (two weeks since the last Vicodin so my wife says I can play with sharp knives, drills, saws and airplane glue again). I am also very happy to be alive and the last thing I fear these days is botching up a model build in WIP public view. I’ve also been inspired by all the wonderful classic super stock drag builds being posted lately by M W Elky and others here and would like to join in on the fun. This is the car I want to recreate and my hope is to accurately shift the body 7” rearward (.28” scale) relative to the chassis while maintaining close to the stock wheelbase. I read this 7” shift while maintaining a stock WB description on the HAMB (it was on the internet so it must be true!) so short of a verifiable reference, I’m going to go with it. Car Craft magazine featured a two page article about this car in their Dec 1965 issue, if anyone has a copy, I would love to know if it supports this 7” body/ chassis shift as well as if there are any photos of the interior or under carriage in the article. I'm starting with this Revell 1/25 kit: I plunged into cutting out the four wheel openings from the body using a jeweler’s saw, X-Acto knife, .030” drill and Dymo tape for a cutting guide. I drilled out each of the two corners to act as a strain relief for bending after each vertical cut is sawed and the horizontal cut scored with the knife against the Dymo tape. I also had to cut each of the two wheel well shapes out of the engine to allow repositioning them forward to correspond with the new front wheel cut out positions. Then I tackled the front wheel well cut-outs: So here’s the final parts cut from the body (I haven't yet removed the .28" section from each of the front fender cut-outs): Here's an eyeball check of the wheel wells shifted forward, hoping it look's close enough to the B&W photo of the actual car above (may to adjust the rear cut-out some?): Here's a view below with the fender cut-outs taped forward and the chassis shifted forward to roughly match. I will have to trim .28" from the front of the chassis and add .28" to the rear. I also plan to shift the engine mounts on the chassis by .28" rearwards so that the engine remains in the stock position relative to the firewall. I purchased Yesteryear decals and a resin Hilborne injection manifold and velocity stacks from Speed City for the 396 BBC supplied in the Revell kit along with a resin automatic (the internet tells me they used a GM Turbo Hydramatic 400 on this car, the Revell kit engine block comes with a manual): I'm hoping to re-install the four wheel cut-outs and engine bay wheel wells onto this body using additional cut and shaped Evergreen sheet styrene as gap fillers and hopefully minimize use of putty. I only have acrylic-based Vallejo putty and Tamiya one-part tube putty at the moment and am wondering if I should resort too one of the two-part epoxy or polyester fillers - suggestions? Looking forward to making progress on this cool chassis-twisting wild ride in the coming days.... Cheers, John

I love the dark grey over red, very understated and the overall build quality is excellent, really clean neat workmanship. Your window frames on this one (painted or foiled?) are fabulous. Where did you get the Rudge wheels? They look great and give this gull-wing a racier look than the kit wheel covers. This Tamiya kit is one of the very best auto kits out there, I built one when they were first released and ordered a second to build again because it was such a fun stress-free modeling project. Bravo!

Great job recreating one of the more creative drag machines from my childhood. I recall AMT offered an 1/25 Allison among their boxed accessories when I was a kid (60’s), was it ever re-popped or did you have to pull your engine out of that Model King “Allison Wonderland” T-Bird kit for this build?

Sweet! A shiny red super stock Dodge! I’d love to see that little old lady from the famous song terrorize Colorado Blvd. (or Grand Ave in Chicago) in this beast. While I applaud their decal subjects and efforts, I’m not a big fan of SMP decal graphic quality (I believe they use course raster graphics vs crisp sharp vector graphics like Slixx) but I must say these decals look great on this old Lindberg kit (which I keep building too!). I have a set of Grand Spaulding decals for a ‘65 AWB A/FX Dodge (the lavender and blue one from Fremont Racing) that I’m looking forward to using on the upcoming Moebius kit when it’s released. Another beautiful classic SS’er Mike! Keep ‘em coming!