Rick Voegelin

My experience using Super Clean to strip lacquer off resin slot car bodies has not been good. While the Super Clean did remove the lacquer (MCW), it made the resin soft and "rubbery." There are many different resins used by casters, so I'm sure that they react differently to various strippers. Like others have advised, don't try a new stripper on a body that you can't afford to lose. My $.02, Rick V.

Yeah, I'm seeing little boxes with "This image or video has been moved or deleted -- Photobucket". Maybe someone at Photobucket has something against car haulers <g>? Please post the photos again -- I'm getting ready to start a hauler project, and would really like to see your project in progress. Thanks, Rick V.

Drag Monster, I was going through some old Super Stock and Drag Illustrated issues looking for some AWB Funny Car photos when I found these in the "Strictly Stocks" coverage of Super Stock Nationals in the November 1966 issue. The car looked familiar, and then I remembered your post. The photos are black-and-white, and only about 4 inches wide in the magazine, but they do show some of the front end and lettering detail that's not visible in your color photo. The caption for the first photo: "The Warren Brothers' GTO won the class on Sunday, eliminated Tom Crutchfield during the "Mr. Stock Eliminator" runs." Second caption: "Tom Crutchfield, from Kokomo, Indiana, drove this '63 Dodge wagon to three straight class wins in the B/SA class. Tom is the former national record holder in this class." In Stock Class Results, the car is listed as B/SA winner on Friday, Aug. 5, (12.64/112.10), Saturday, Aug. 6 (14.71/71.09), and Sunday, August 7 (12.67/111.80). I love those old Max Wedge wagons, and it looks like you picked a winner. Hope this helps! Rick V.

Well, I think that investing in a '70s Pro Stock is smarter than investing in the stock market these days <g>. Great job on the Missile, one of my all-time favorite race cars. I've been gathering bits for a low-budget version of this build, and your work inspires me. I'd welcome more info on the aftermarket parts and pieces you used. Cheers, Rick V.

I'm gathering up parts to model the '67 Camaro Super Mod, but that's taking a back seat to the Lions Open '55 Chevy project. The Camaro never ran at Lions, but if there's an OCIR or Irwindale Open in the future, I'll be all over it with the Camaro. Yes, the performance of current Super Mods is simply astounding. Of course, the investment in our entire racing operation, including spare parts and C-30 ramp truck, was probably less than the cost of a clutchless 5-speed today <g>. The original Super Modifieds were virtually street cars in comparison. I still own the 1:1 Super Mod Camaro, and have plans to take it to the Hot Rod Reunion in 2010 in celebration of the 35th anniversary of the first Super Mod race at '75 Winternationals. Here's a pic in its current state: The car last ran at the '81 World Finals at OCIR -- the final Modified Eliminator race -- in K/Gas with a Chevy V-6. I'll have to remove all of the Gasser stuff (Porsche seats, motor plate, etc.) to return it to Super Mod trim. I'll probably restore it 1976 period with 292ci small-block V-8, 4-speed, and stock Lucerne blue paint -- of all the combinations we ran, I liked that one the best. The car was runner-up at Winternationals and won the Division VII title in '76, so there's some history there. There are some great builds already underway for the Lions Open . . . can't wait to see where this goes. Cheers, Rick V.

Hondo, You may not think it's one of your best, but it looks terrific to me! The Slixx website says that the original car was finished with red metalflake gelcoat. What paint color did you use? It looks to me like you nailed it -- at least the way I remember the car. Cheers, Rick V.

Thanks, Marshall. I think I do vaguely recall seeing an S&S Exxon truck back in the day at OCIR (Of course while I can remember what Bill Jenkins ran in the final round of Pro Stock at the '70 Winternationals, I now have touble remembering my own telephone number <g>). Those one-piece flip front ends were mighty handy. You could sit on the front tires and work on the engine without bending over (like an 18-year-old wannabe knew anything about tuning an engine, but at least we looked like we knew what we were doing). Unplug the headlight wires, remove two bolts, and the whole thing came off in about 30 seconds. Two guys could change a short-block with a piece of chain wrapped around a 2x4 -- no engine hoist required! I've bought a couple of '55 Chevy two-door sedan kits to start work on my Lions Build-Off entry. The irony is that with postage and tax, I've spent nearly as much on the kits as I did on the 1:1 car in 1966 -- and that's without adjusting for inflation <g>. Cheers, Rick V.

Very nice! I've been gathering up a variety of 1/32 Funny Car kits to convert to slot cars, but after seeing what you've accomplished with this kit, I think I may have to try detailing a few of them. The Mustangs, Dusters and LN7s seem to turn up fairly frequently, but the Prudhomme Firebird is a relatively rare bird. Can't wait to see what you do with the body! Thanks, Rick V.

Tim, Well, at the risk of too much information, here is the back story on my "Lions Open" entry. I'm certain there is a similar tale behind every one of the hundreds of doorslammers that raced at Lions in the '60s. My stepfather found the '55 on a vacant lot in Santa Barbara. Fifty dollars sealed the deal, and he flat-towed it home to Pasadena with a U-Haul tow bar behind my mother's '65 GTO. I pulled the original inline 6 and three-speed and bolted in a 327 with mail-order FI heads and a Man-A-Fre intake (four two-barrel Rochester 2GC's -- can you say overcarbureted?). Installed a '58 Oldsmobile rearend (open differential) and Muncie 4-speed, 16" American mags with M&H slicks off the Horsepower Engineering Top Fuel dragster (you can't make this stuff up), Kellison one-piece fiberglass front end (chopper gun fiberglass, probably heavier than the original sheetmetal <g>) and fiberglass bucket seats -- no rear seat, utility sedan style. I radiused the rear wheel wells with a saber saw and a piece of twine. Mike Hoag at Blair's Speed Shop in Pasadena (later of M&S Welding fame, where he and Sherm Gunn built Don Nicholson's Pro Stocks) welded in a four-point roll bar and made a Gasser-style tubular rear bumper and front nerf bars. I drove the '55 on the street for a couple of years before deciding to make it a full-on race car in '68. Ported the heads and slick-shifted the 4-speed in a one-car garage following instructions in Hot Rod articles, and Santa Ana Speed Center did the machining on the block. My big-time sponsorship from Santa Ana Speed was parts at their cost -- a heck of a deal for an 18-year wannabe racer. Al Martinez Body Shop sprayed the car dark metallic blue for $35. I'm not sure that was such a good advertisement for Al, because I did all of the prep myself (removing chrome spear, filling holes, fiberglassing hood scoop, etc.), and I wasn't exactly the best body man on the block. It didn't look too bad from the grandstand seats, though. Eventually it ran a best of 11.40-something at OCIR with an Erson 990C solid lifter cam, Edelbrock TR1 box manifold and a single Holley 950 cfm three-barrel carburetor (anybody remember those?). Our arch-rival at the County was Hollins Auto Machine's turquoise '55 Chevy, and our nemesis at Lions was the Nobu's Automotive '67 Camaro SS. We flat-towed to the races on the San Diego Freeway with my '64 El Camino (200,000+ miles and 5 psi oil pressure) or my partner's '56 Chevrolet Sedan Delivery (straight front axle, 389 tri-power Pontiac, Olds rear end -- the perfect tow car for a Gasser-style '55). Sometimes we could borrow a friend's Ford stake bed truck for a tow vehicle, and we felt like full-time pros when we'd pull into the gate at Lions with that rig. I sold the car for $1200 in 1971 when I went off to grad school. I never saw it again, but heard that the new owner put it into the guardrail at Lions. Man, I sure miss that car. I guess that's why I want to build a 1/25 version so badly. That's the way it was at Lions. I've dug up some old photos out of the scrapbook as reference for my Lions Open entry. Apologies for the long-winded post, but thanks for asking. Cheers, Rick V. P.S. Here are some WIP photos taken in our driveway (circa 1965-66) and a shot of my partner, Joe Chapman (the best mutton-chop sideburns ever grown in the '60s) with his '56 Chevy sedan delivery tow car in the tech line at OCIR. I just found that Modelhaus offers a '56 sedan delivery resin body, so there's yet another project <g>.

Great builds! The hauler is fantastic -- back in the day I had a '68 Chevy C-30 ramp truck, and we put a lot of miles on it going to the races. Three of us sitting bolt upright in the cab for 48 hours straight, L.A. to Indy -- and we thought we were having the time of our lives. So I've got to build one of these. Question: Where did you get the truck wheels and rear duallies? Of course, for an accurate model of my old ramp truck, I'll have to paint them black . . . I spent the big bucks on 12-ply Michelins instead of chrome rims. Thanks, Rick V.

Oh, man, sign me up! I've been on a Lions jag recently, and am currently working on an HO slot car version of the track circa 1968. But now I've got a reason/excuse to model the '55 Chevy that I raced there in the late '60s. We ran Bracket 2 at Orange County International Raceway on Saturday nights, and AHRA classes (F2 D/Hot Rod) at Lions on Sunday. I've got a couple of '55 Chevy post-sedan kits in the closet, so it's time to get them out of storage. Here's the prototype, photographed at OCIR around 1968. I've got some tiny snapshots of the car at Lions as well, and I'm still kickin' myself for trashing the Lions class winner's trophies during a move . . . Thanks! Rick V.