Mooneyzs

Hello all.... sorry I dont have the time to respond to each of you at the moment. I am hoping to maybe get some benchtime in this weekend but I am going tbru some personal stuff at the moment and not really having any motivation to build.

John... I am so excited to finally see you post this thing here, Its about Dang time .... Dude you are more than welcome for helping out with some of the small details for you. I am just so Stoked that we are Both doing Stagecoaches together. I know you will be adding your own Teresi Flare to it and its going to Kick some butt.... Probably one of the First ever Alcladed Stagecoaches... hahaha. This means I need to get my butt in gear and finish up some more details for us and start on my Chassis. I know you are going to Hit this one out of the park.

Steven.... Why Thank you. Yeah its an honor to have John say that about this. I just though it would be a fun build and its something different. Joe... Thank you. Now I can't wait to get some of the chassis done, As well as for John to start a thread on his. Danno... You seem surprised.... lol Hakan... Its been years since I have seen it run but when I was in Vegas during the October race a few years back Ed Jones had the Jelly Belly Firetruck and didn't have the stagecoach at that race. When I talked to him it seems that he takes the stagecoach to the first race of the year in Vegas then the Firetruck goes the next time. Brent... Thank you. The initial progress may be a little slow as I am trying to get some stuff done to the funny car first. Henry... Thank you... You know I should make some little jolly rancher candy and lay next to the model when its displayed...lol Ray... Thank you very much. Glad it caught someones attention...lol Bob... Thank you. You know I never thought of having the chassis 3D printed I can look into how much it would cost since I have the file done on it. I actually chose brass because I wanted to practice for a different project that I originally was going to start. I would like to hone those skills a little better. Dirk... I have to admit that it will be nice to have something way different to work on and give me a break from other builds. Mike... Thank you so much for the kind words. I never though I would ever be on anyone's favorite builders list. Make me feel honored. Dave... Thank you. I am thinking it should be pretty fun Kerry... Thanks. I am super stoked to do this one. Mike... Thanks buddy... haha battle of the wild west.. that's too funny Dave... Thank you very much. Hey if you happen to find those pics of it at firebird I would love to have you post them. Finding pics of it as the Jolly Rancer hasn't been easy. I only have a handful of that paint scheme but found lots more of the Jelly Belly. Dave... Thank you very much... Yeah I have to admit that I wanted to plan it out so I wasn't going back changing things a bunch of times like I did on the funny car... haha Art... Thank you very much. Tim.. It is going to be a blast. doing this chassis in brass is going to be fun. I am even going to do the front suspension in brass and I am thinking about trying one of those Caswell plating kits for the front leaf springs and I-beam axle. I think one of the coolest things will be having pictures taken of both John and mine together when they are finished.

Clayton.... Thanks my friend. This should be a very fun build. Lately even though I have been itching to work on the funny car but I go thru moments where I have burnt myself out on it. I am looking forward to trying some new things on this one. As example doing an all brass chassis. Its definitely a build you don't see everyday...lol John... My Brother... what can I say but Thanks!! I have been really looking forward to us building these. It is going to fun doing these together.

Welll Fellas... Here is more work on what I got accomplished today. I still have a little more design work I would like to do to the chassis but Here is some updated progress on it. Here is what I will call a big update with the roll cage, the floor and seat. The seat was a model that I had downloaded from one of my cad sources that I know of where people share their designs and people can download them: Top view. There is still more work needed to the V-Drive unit that I designed and I need make the mounting bar a little better than what you see here: Side View: Front View: Side view with the body:

Ok Fellas.... I am sure that everyone has been wondering when I would show some progress on the Vega Funny Car. I have sorta stuck it on the back burner to get some deign work done on this first. I want to show you all some progress on this build. Well its not actual building progress but more of a Design progress. I have been drawing up the frame in my CAD system. I have got the basic frame design done other than I now need to work on the roll cage of it. But anyway here are some images from the CAD system to share... hope you enjoy.... Here is an Isometric view of the chassis: Here is a Side View: Top View: Front View: Rear View: Here is a side view with a ruff shape of the side of the body. What you see in the orange is the side of the stagecoach body that is from the kit. And the Blue is the side of the actual car. So as you can see the body will need to be chopped, sectioned and shorted: Here it is with just the chopped body:

Here is the kit that I got off ebay so I can rob the body from it as a starting point: Here I am using a printed out image to get some reference dimensions from. I knew that the wheel base of this vehicle is 119". So I first stated by measuring the distance of the wheel base on the drawing which is the 11.130 number you see. I then measured all the different things that I wanted measurements for. After getting all of my measurements. I used an equation and did calculations for all of the dimensions to get everything sized to 1/16th scale: Here you can see all of my mark ups I made when I measured with my calipers and then did the calculations on a separate sheet: Here is a shot of the Body which is going to get cut up, Chopped, Narrowed.... the whole 9 yeards... lol As well as some of the Brass material I will be using for the chassis. I have decided that I am going to make the chassis completely out of brass and should be a fun challenge: Ok Fellas.... I am sure that everyone has been wondering when I would show some progress on the Vega Funny Car. I have sorta stuck it on the back burner to get some deign work done on this first. I want to show you all some progress on this build. Well its not actual building progress but more of a Design progress. I have been drawing up the frame in my CAD system and I have it at a point where I am willing to share a little bit of the progress. I have got the basic frame design done other than I now need to work on the roll cage of it. But anyway here are some images from the CAD system to share... hope you enjoy....

Here are a few more pics of the Jolly Rancher Wheel Stander: And here is what it looks like now as the Jelly Belly Wheel Stander

Nice job on this.... it looks totally cool!!

Well Fellas… I wanted to give a little sneak peak of my next upcoming project which I have been debating on starting so it will give me something to work on when I get a little burnt from time to time on the Funny Car. I have seen a few wheel stander models people have built but I have never seen anyone do the Jolly Rancher Stagecoach. Growing up around Drag Racing in California I saw this vehicle many times and it was my favorite wheel stander off all time. As a kid I loved when they would be towing the car back on the return road and they would throw Jolly Rancher candy out so us kids could get it. I thought it was totally cool. Ed "The Outlaw" Jones is still taking the Stagecoach wheel Stander around to different events, although it is now under the sponsorship of Jelly Belly. Anyway I had been running this idea around it my head a little more after I saw on ebay some stagecoach kits in 1/16th scale which got the ball rolling even more for me. All the kits I keep looking at the sellers wanted so much money for them. And one day I ran across a deal I couldn't pass up and bough the kit just to use for the body portion for the stagecoach. After I had gotten the kit in hand I had run the idea past John Teresi and told him about wanting to do this build and he thought it would be so cool. He mentioned to me that he had always wanted to do some sort of stagecoach himself. I told him you know what we should do is a double twins build and you should build the Jelly Belly Version. I showed it to him and he told me "how about if I (John) do one similar to the Jolly Rancher but a little different because I (John) don't want to copy exactly what you are doing. He said…. "I would like to add my own twist to it, I will use a little different style motor and then I will do a custom paint job." I told him that I thought that would be a totally cool build. In the back of my mind I was thinking that this would be so cool for us to do a Twins build and told him that he needed to build one with me. He kept telling me "if you aren't ok with me doing one just let me know and I won't do it." I told him John… I don't mind at all and I really think it would be totally cool to do these at the same time. So in the meantime I had mentioned this build I wanted to do to another one of my model buddies that I have gotten to know over the past few years. Some of you may know of him, His name is Mike Garland and goes by Magic Photos here. He told me that he may know someone that may have Ed Jones number. He was able to get Ed's number for me and he talked to Ed and Ed told him to have me get a hold of him and he would be more than willing to help with any info he could. So since then I have talked to Ed a few times and he is a pretty busy guy this time of year. I have emailed him with a list of questions in regards to some specific details of the vehicle and currently am waiting on a response to the questions and also in hopes that he will be able to take some pics of details and send to me as well. I am hoping he can get to them soon as I would like to start tinkering on this build. Here is a pic of the Jolly Rancher Wheel Stander: You can find Johns Awesome build here: Click here to got to John Teresi's Stagecoach build Progress

Brent.... yeah I haven't gotten any bench time on this due to another side project I have been working on but hoping to maybe work on this tomorrow. I actually should just force myself to sit down and work on it. Henry & Scott.... I am sure you guys aren't the only ones waiting around to see updates...lol Well fellas... I have been debating on debuting a side project that I have been planning..... and as mentioned before it has a twin twist to it......

Tim... your work is Flawless!!! That puke tank is gorgeous and turned out great. You know in the glass sight you should add some clear orange with a touch of brown added to make it look like there is a little oil in there. I have to tell you that I was on Sherlines website today, making a list of goodies that I would like to get from them and seeing which lathe and end mill that I was really wanting to go with. I am hoping to maybe get to the bench on the funny car possibly later tonight (no promises) or even tomorrow. I am debating about debuting a project that I have been planning out. here shortly. It will be a fun one for sure....lol

Tim... all I can say is Wow.... your work is so impressive and I am.just in awe. Sorta speechless right now.

Clayton... you know what ticked me off all the time was that it would show that drag racing would come on at a certain time and all the time it would never start on time because of softball or little league or some other event. I was glad that I have it on record but I have to extend the time because i know it never starts on time. WOW!!! Be careful what you wish for, HUH??? I'll bet Jason Line and Greg Anderson are having hissy fits over that news. In the meanwhile, other teams will look at this as a wonderful opportunity to innovate. What a unique cconcept. Approach change with a positive attitude and anything is possible. Can't wait for the show tonite. Sweet. Joe... I have to say that I am tired of seeing the summit boys always winning... just my 2 cents... lol

I didn't do as good as I was hoping... I got 7 out of 11. was fun to take the quiz though

Joe... I have to first say I am a fan of both the Pro Mods and Pro Stock bikes. I have gotten to see Pro Mods in person when I went to Vegas a few years ago which was the first time to see them in person for me. It was awesome... It took me back to when I grew up around a Top Alcohol Dragster back in the mid 70's to Mid 80's the whining of the blower remindned me how dragsters and funny cars sounded back then. Another thing was that the Pro Mod guys were so cool and friendly. They didn't care what you took pictures of and I even had a few of the drivers let me into the pits to get some up close shots. My Suggestion would be to add Pro Mod to the mix and keep them all. I like the Line up you suggest with T/F, F/C, Pro Mod, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Bike. And who knows how it will be telivised since the NHRA will be going to Fox Sports.

Gary... Thank you so much. I appreciate you looking around. I do have some pics from my parents and have found a few others around searching but I am always look for more. I actually talk to Steve and his wife from time to time and they have send me a few shots as well but I am looking for as much reference of it as possible since I will be doing builds of a few of the different versions that I remember as a kid when I was around them.

Welcome Gary.... This is an awesome group of guys we got here. Many talented builders that's for sure. Since you have offered you wouldn't happen to have an pics of any Top Alcohol Dragsters from the Mid 70's to Mid 80's would you. I am specifically looking for pics of the San Paolo Brothers Spaghetti Bender driven by Steve San Paolo. I grew up on that team with my dad being part of the pit crew and I am trying to locate more pics of it. This car was driven all over California. Thought it couldn't hurt to ask. Thanks in advance.

Joe.... the house looks nice and the hobby room looks like it is ready to go.. now get back to the bench and put those minions to work. Who am I to tell you to get back to the work. I desperately need to get back to the bench on my funny car its calling my name.... but trying to finish up the twin twist first. lol

Gregg... I have to say that this new theme is a lot nicer that what it was when the switch was originally made. It looks great and the overall feel is better in my opinion.

Danno... look out the minions are taking over...

You Guys are welcome. Remember if you want the excel file just send me a pm with your email addy.

Joe.... maybe your minions stole your identity... lol. Your room or really shaping up and looking nice.

I like the direction you are going with this. I have to say that I like the look with the Weld Drag Lights better than the Centerlines. This is going to be a nice build.

Gregg.... another dumb question to ask but is there a mobile version by chance. It seems a little harder to see and read on my android then before but maybe it is because here is so much white space as others have mentioned.