Brett Barrow

The first NASCAR race broadcast live flag-to-flag was the 1979 Daytona 500. Everybody remembers that Cale Yarborough and Donnie Allison got together on the last lap and Richard Petty beat Darrell Waltrip and AJ Foyt back to the line and the Allisons and Yarborough got into a fist fight. I can close my eyes and see it. I can remember the sponsors on the cars. I can't for the life of me remember what make of car any of them were driving, I had to look it up. Oldsmobiles. All 5 of them, the only 5 cars on the lead lap at the time of the crash. Olds had the superior car that day, but does anybody say "Hey remember 1979 when those 5 Olds lapped the field at Daytona?".

First step I took in filing down the fender flares is marking the engraved line for the chrome trim with a fine Micron marker. Drag cars didn't have the trim, so everything outside this line needs to go. Took the bulk off with a coarse nail stick. Once all the marker was gone, I just shaped the flare with a little 400 grit wet-or-dry. I can't say exactly how long it took to do these, but I had all 4 done in the span of a WWF match (the wife's a fan... ) Not perfect, but muuuuuch better and they're good enough for me! Also filled the marker lights and side mirror notches with Bondo Professional Finishing Glaze. I luurve this stuff. Don't know how I ever got along without it! The 'cuda script on the taillight panel needs to go, too. The Sox & Martin car didn't have it (they were most likely built from body-in-white base Barracudas anyway). And that's the necessary body modifications!

1970 was the first year for the new Pro Stock class, they didn't have to run factory engine accessories like Super Stock and lower stock classes did. These cars still ran drum brakes all the way around because discs have a tendency to drag and would scrub speed.

I'll admit it, I don't get NASCAR, but that's their formula and it seems to have worked out pretty well for them. Nothing says innovation like a push rod V-8 that up until a couple years ago still had a carburetor. Also remember NASCAR doesn't exist for the drivers' sake, but rather for the fans' sake. I'm sure every single driver on that grid wishes he could have a superior machine that could lap the field 14 times over, but that wouldn't be a very good show, would it? I feel like more innovation is done when given a tight set of rules to operate within and you have to get the most out of that legally. See the innovation that went into Super Stocks (later Pro Stock) and Junior Stocks compared to Top Fuel Dragsters in the 1960's. In Top Fuel all the teams would just switch to whatever the hot setup was - a Don Long chassis with a Keith Black Hemi or whatever (they were the ones doing all the innovating) ... then Garlits comes along with the rear engine and everybody switches to that. Take the paint off and you can hardly tell them apart. By 1970 Pro Stock's Bill "Grumpy" Jenkins was the 2nd highest-paid sportsman in America (behind Wilt Chamberlain). So who were the fans going to see, the all-out Top Fuelers, or the Stockers? If it were all about unlimited all-out speed and performance, we'd be flocking in droves to see land-speed cars trying to break 1000MPH on the salt flats. But we aren't. I'll ask it again, is Mercedes' current domination in Formula 1 a good thing for the sport, or a bad thing?

If there ever was a Nascar star car, it's Petty's 64 Plymouth. Much better choice!

Bruno's pic shows how the cool can itself if plumbed, this shows how the fuel lines are routed to the carbs - Note that the 1:1 lacks an alternator and power brake booster. I wonder what the thing on the driver's side is, a tach drive?

You can also mix in a little bit of the leftover leaf dust/flakes into the size to make it visible, especially on dark surfaces. Learned that from furniture restoration (my first experience working with gold leaf).

The irony is that they reached the height of their popularity while doing the exact same thing! They've always done it! Seriously, who wants to tune into a race when they know what car will win? Is Mercedes' domination of Formula 1 this season good or bad for the sport? The problem with NASCAR is today's drivers are boring, buttoned down, corporate sponsor-friendly types and anytime NASCAR tries to inject a little personality into the sport it comes off like a scripted WWF storyline.

"Stock cars" stopped being showroom stock cars when they started running truck tires in 1950. They stopped being stock frames and suspension when Holman Moody built the "half-chassis" 1966 Fairlanes (because NASCAR had refused to allow the 427 SOHC without a weight penalty and Ford boycotted and this was how NASCAR was able to lure them back) by allowing the unibody intermediates to run with Galaxie rear-steer front suspension and a fabricated frame to tie the two together. Junior Johnson would pioneer the use of truck-trailing arms and coil spring rear suspension a year or two later and this basic combination or something similar has been under almost every NASCAR racer since. If you're talking stock-bodied, then the Chevy Lumina was the first car that the NASCAR body templates wouldn't match up to its street car counterpart, but long before that the cars were almost entirely fabricated, the hood skin, roof skin, and decklid were the only mandated stock parts for years. The teams petitioned NASCAR that it was easier and less time consuming to fabricate body panels than to modify stock ones. NASCAR never let any particular car or team dominate for long, see what they did to the Hemi, the Ford SOHC 427, the aero cars, etc... NASCAR has never been an "unlimited" type of racing series. They've always had pretty restrictive rules.

The cars have been standardized far longer than most people think. Really since they went to a standard wheelbase in the early 80's. And they weren't stock frames and suspensions since the 60's when the GM Truck trailing arms and coilspring rear and Ford intermediate front suspensions started becoming the winning combination. NASCAR let everyone use that setup.

Funny that you chose a picture from the small-block standard wheelbase purpose-built fabricated racecar TV-era. And the car is more than half cropped out... It's a star, alright!

You'd have to ask NASCAR for a definite answer. I know they'd like to keep the cars as even as possible and insure that no one make dominates because that's bad for business. They've contemplated going to a HP-restricting tapered spacer that would help make easier passing on the bigger tracks, but they haven't done it (yet). But has of now there's no HP limit. My view is (and I have to admit that I am not a NASCAR fan, but I grew up around it in a NASCAR town so it's something I've been exposed to all my life) that back in the "real car" days you often had dominating performances where a driver would lap the field, or one make might sweep the top 5 places. But for most folks, unless you were in the stands, your exposure to that was limited to reports in newspapers or magazines. I imagine Ned Jarrett winning the 1965 Southern 500 by 14 laps was far more exiting to read about than to actually watch. Once NASCAR got on TV they had to put out a different product. The cars moved to the background, and the drivers became the stars. Parity makes for a better TV product. I imagine in NASCAR's dream world every race would in a Ford-Chevy-Toyota photo-finish for the win...

That's a bingo!

Finally turned up that pic I knew I had of an S&M oil pan, this one is on the 68 Cuda that also underwent a restoration around the same time as the 1970.

Ummm, the engine is simply measured on the dyno. It's not a pass/fail test. Seriously, NASCAR turning into "liberal america" ?!?!? If there's a more red-state activity on the face of this planet than NASCAR racing, I don't know what it is. Hilarious...

NASCAR has done a post race inspection on the winning car forever. In fact, the winner of the very first NASCAR race was disqualified for failing the post-race inspection.

I used silver leaf once to detail a bunch of bolt heads on a 1/12th motorcycle engine. Was easy, the leaf only sticks where you've applied the size. Just brushed a dot on each bolt head, let it tack up for a few minutes and applied the leaf. I've yet to find another application for it, but it's there in my toolbox for when I need it. Wish I had a picture, but I sold the model soon after completing it and didn't have a camera to document it at the time. One of these days I'd like to try making race car lettering with actual leaf. I've also thought about using it on scripts but haven't tried it so far.

Spent last night filling the marker lights and slots for the side mirrors. Also trimmed off the molding around the wheel wells since a drag racer wouldn't have them. Just doing that makes a huge difference in the look of the fender flares. Not perfect, but soooooo much better. I'm now convinced that Revell must have used a car without those fender moldings during the development of this kit and the chrome moldings were added later (probably in the computer) . I had prepared one body that I had totally sanded off all of the fender flares and was going to rebuild them, but after just removing the molding from this 2nd body I'm 100% satisfied with the result. I'll snap some pictures this evening.

RPP shops have them now, everybody else gets them end of the month. MSRP $12.95 which is around $2-3 cheaper than the standard snap kits.

One bit of good news is the 7-cylinder distributor has been corrected...

edit - I didn't see Jeff's earlier response, I was busy scouring the Google looking for homemade versions! Milodon makes deep sump oil pans with centerlink tubes already in there. Theirs have square tubes, but I've seen the homemade versions with round tube. Appears to be something necessary for Mopars with the stock K-member. I did find a pic of a homemade version on a Ford. You get the idea...

I've seen pictures of the tie-rod-through-the-oil-pan setup and basically it's just a tube welded inside the oil pan and the tie rod passes through it. The ID of the tube is probably 3-4 times larger than the OD of the tie rod so there's some wiggle room. I've been trying to find a picture of it, but no luck.

Yes, "complete" was an unfortunate choice of words. My advice is always assume Japanese kits are curbside. When you get one with full engine detail it's a bonus! I believe that Tamiya's 66 Beetle is the only Beetle from the Japanese companies that is full-detail. Also pretty sure that the Mr. Hobby (Gunze-Sangyo) and Aoshima Beetles are the same tooling. *edit* - nope I'm wrong it's Aoshima and Imai that are the same... As others said, ask here first, or you can check out a neat site called Scalemates that aggregates kit reviews and also provides a timeline of a kit's provenance. It's not a complete listing of every kit ever made, but it's pretty good. http://www.scalemates.com/products/

I sent Ed Sexton at Revell an email today letting him know how much of a hit the new Mustang was and he told me that they would be offering it in the Make 'n Take program, along with other new ones in this new super-simple Skill Level 1 line. They've announced an Audi R8 that should be out in a month or so. The 34 Ford is one of my favorite kits. It's rare to find a snap kit that has building options and that one can be built full-fendered or highboy. You could drop me on a desert island with a case of those and a parts box full of various wheels and tires and I think I'd be just fine. I was just schputzing around with one on the coffee table as I read this. Wheels and tires from the brand-new Revell Sox & Martin 1970 'cuda. Think I'd need to go a tick smaller on the fronts...

Great job, Tim. I just walked in the door with mine about 5 minutes ago. One thing I noticed was the slicks are almost EXACTLY like the new AMT Parts Pack M&H Racemaster 10.50-15" slicks except they're made from a stiffer, shinier material and the "step" in the bead has been removed since the Revell wheels are a tick bigger than AMT's typical size. Same thing applies to the stock front tires and the AMT Pack Pack Goodyear Polyglas GTs. Wouldn't surprise me one bit if these came out of the same molds. Can't say that I blame them if they did, they're nice tires. I don't have any of the larger size "Jumbo" AMT Racemasters on hand, but I imagine they'd work if someone would like a little bigger slick. But these look fine to me at first glance.