DustyMojave

Cool!!!! A 1:1 scale model kit!!!!

I get a little concerned about coming off like some sort of "know-it-all", but I grew up around sports car racing with a dad who had raced midgets, track roadsters and lakes before getting into sports cars in the early 50s, which led him to meet my mom at a race and I grew up around racing. I've been mostly involved with offroad racing since the early 70s, but I've made a living as a race car fabricator since the mid 80s working on a wide variety of race cars...from cars which have won their class in the Baja 1000 to race winning Super Modifieds to museum restorations of vintage midgets and sprint cars, to Championship winning Trans Am and other silhouette racers, and restoring Vintage TransAm racers (like the 67 Shelby-built Trans Am Mustang I've worked on recently and which just got an invite to the Monterey Historics), to the Basso, Klos & Kong Streamliner, to the Baja Bug my son drove in the Mint 400 Saturday...and many more. And rather than jealously keeping all that info to myself, I enjoy sharing it. So go for it before I figure out how to make a living off sharing it. BTW...I 1st became aware of the name Curt Raitz a number of years ago through magazine coverage of a "Group 5" 68 GT500 you built which dovetailed in with a "pre-Group 5" model project I started back in the early 70s using a 68 GT500 from a combo kit with a Ford Galaxie and a trailer. It was intended to receive large fender flares like a 1980s Trans Am car or Group 5, but like many of the early Group 5s, it would have been based on the Mustang unibody structure rather than a tube frame. I saw a similar concept 1:1 '69 Mustang driven by Boris Said at Willow Springs several years ago.

Gotta follow this one. The 1st race car I ever sat in was the Tom Beatty belly tank, which was a contemporary of this one and set a lot of its own records. http://www.bellytanks.com/?p=283 Tom was a close pal of my dad's and later my best friend's family were Tom's landlords for decades. I have a video in my head of sitting on small portable bleachers at El Mirage Dry Lake in the summer of 1958 watching my dad and Tom's helper "Fat Eddie" button Tom into the car and push it off with Tom's 40 Ford panel truck. Then watching the dust trail as it ran down the lakebed. I could tell ya LOTS of Tom Beatty stories... Also a few years ago, my wife's cousin Henry Gonzalez was manufacturing a resin kit of the SoCal car. Here is a shot of me at El Mirage in the cockpit of the Kelly & Hall Belly Tank in '06. If you look at the show-hall photo of the SoCal car above, the little "Kong" lettering on the side is for the "Kong Ignition" system famous on racing flatheads. Kong Jackson was a close pal and racing partner with my old close friend (and Tom Beatty's landlord) Ray Basso. So...Yeah...I gotta lot of interest going for this one.

You're welcome. Get 'em on the next one...

Now THAT"S what a "Mountain Bike" is FOR! Single track all the way. I've ridden mine to 9,000'. But downhill single track is my favorite...rough and fast like desert racing a motorcycle. That's why mine is fully suspended. An offroad race team (Pondella Motorsports Trophy Truck - http://www.pondellamotorsports.com/)my son is involved with includes a guy named Brent Foes. http://foesracing.com/site/

Looks great Curt. A little fyi, although I know you're past that point already. The dual Solex 40P11 carbs have aluminum bodies and should be aluminum silver, not phosphate gold like Holleys. The headers should fit to the exhaust ports on the front and back of the heads in the 1500. In the later dual cam engine, the exhaust ports are on the bottom of the heads. The crankcase sump from the kit looks like an oil pan with louvers, instead of part of the engine block left and right castings with a small rectangular (about 3" x 7") black stamped steel sump plate in the middle.

Hi Kolbenschmidt!!! How's it jumping? Have ya gotten the Baja muddy lately? My son just raced the Mint 400 in a brand new (finished Friday morning before hauling it to Tech) Class 5 open car yesterday. The other driver hit a large rock with the left front and cracked the frame rails near the beam, and they had a fuel leak from the left Weber.

The letters generally stand for the name of the car owner. It hasn't been done since the 60s. The letters are usually made of solid round steel bar. And PS...I already threw down an 'M' and an 'S'!

I think the ride height of the model is about right. It's just that the model body has the wheel arches too low in relation to the rest of the body. Compare the model photos with the photos of the 1:1.

Ahhh I see hardware built in my neighborhood. Space shuttles were built in Palmdale. I drive past the facility 2x a weekday. Every time they landed in the west, I could see them coming in from my house and hear the double sonic boom. Then they would fly the 747 with the shuttle piggyback at very low altitude past my house a couple of miles away on the way towards Florida.

Is that Matchbox the old Revell kit? Never seen inside one of the Matchbox kits, but I have a couple of Revells and a Fujimi. Last time I saw one of the Matchbox kits it was up in the same airspace as what you cite for the Fujimis, so I never bought one. Always thought they were probably the Revell kit inside anyway

Great stuff Curt! Dad went down for the 52 Carrera and a good friend of mine does Tech Inspection for the La Carrera. I love aircooled German stuff anyway. Had you considered using parts from one of the Fujimi 356 kits?

That Pegaso coupe used to be (maybe still is) owned by a friend of a friend. I consulted with him for fabricating the replacement mufflers. (pair of perforated tubes inside of a partly flattened larger tube) What a SWEET Noise it makes!!!! Peugeot used 4-valve Hemi combustion chambers on their race cars before World War I (that's not a typo...it is "one" not two). The Chrysler Hemi was designed by ex-Ford engineer Zora Arkus Duntov based on his Ardun aftermarket heads for flathead Fords, before he went to Chevy to work on Vettes.

Some other Midgets and Sprints I've worked on: This is an Edmunds-Offy from the late 50s-early 60s And a late 40s Kurtis-Offy Indy car, cut down to a Sprint car after Roadsters took over the brickyard. Wadded into a ball nearly killing the driver in the mid 70s. We cut the remains of the cage off and "unwrinkled" and re-heat treated the original rails: This is the same car featured in Open Wheel mag, so their copyright: This sprint car could be built from the Revell Kurtis Offy Midget, with a stretched frame and hood, V8 rear axle maybe from the AMT Grant King Sprinter, front axle maybe from the same GK, 255 Offy from the AMT 63 Watson Roadster, and wheels and tires from the Revell Orange Crate 32 Ford Tudor altered. That Orange Crate might also provide the front and rear axles.

Late 30s to late 40s Midget. Sweet! The rail frame and body style ID the era. V8-60 Ford flathead engine was good through the late 50s. I've worked on restoring some midgets. Here's a Kurtis with a V8-60 And a famous Kurtis-Offy. The Eddie Meyer, Meyer Engineering Special (Offy engines were manufactured by Meyer-Goosen-Drake) Both of those cars can now be built from the Revell kits. The Eddie Meyer car has a 1" tube hoop over the radiator with horizontal and diagonal bars to the cowl hoop. The horizontals are just under the edge of the hood.

Olds 442 like this one???... http://bringatrailer.com/2012/03/04/james-garner-baja-rig-1970-oldsmobile-442/

Beautiful! The blonde too. What body is that? (The Cobra)

What is amusing is how some people would find this horrible to have near them...It's kind of unfortunate that those people seem to have power in government while we who appreciate such things appear to be the oddballs. I mean...I get having a nice "beautiful" finely manicured home and surroundings, but what is junk and trash to one is art and potential to others.

I get the impression Danny, that you're a fan of 69 Mustang Sport Roofs. So just for you, here's one I worked on restoring [Me between the Mustang and Javelin] Maybe you'd lke to do more detailing underneath that red one?

Very nice! I've never been a trend follower, so the Billet Rods and then the overblown rat rods chill me towards hotrods. Both styles have their points. But dad was a hotrodder from way back when and so were a bunch of old friends. All the old dry lakes are close to my home except Bonneville. I can see El Mirage from my back yard and remember being on the lake bed for a lakes meet in 1958. So I "get" what I call "real" Hot Rods like this one.

There used to be a guy who lived here in my neighborhood who had a 57 Nomad Extended Cab El Camino. He had a Nomad with the back part of the roof rusted through, and he found another which had been sitting with the back part under a shed and the front was rusted. So he combined them and had the roof longer by a small 1/4 window behind the door. Then he had the upper half of the tailgate on the back of the roof and the lower part in its stock location. It had a storage area behind the front seat. It actually looked factory. The same guy also built a 56 Chevy Extended Cab pickup on a longbed frame. Neither was nicely painted, though the pickup did get a candy green with flames paint job after several years of driving in purple primer. Still neither was ever "Show" quality. The bodywork was quite well done, but the overall finish on both was more rat rod daily driver than magazine stuff. Still VERY cool stuff. This build brought them immediately to mind.

I agree with Dirk on this. Gloss german silver - not chrome - would look good and would show inside without standing out too bad. Although red would look quite good too and would probably get my vote.

Hey John. This looks like a great project! Your dad has quite an amazing project of his own. I remember meeting you at a model show in Victorville a few years ago. IIRC, it was your 1st competition. I was there with the offroad racer model group. Your cars were very impressive then and you haven't gone backwards since.

This is while doing a horse barn to house conversion at about 7,000' in the Sierras. Working Tech Inspection at an offroad race with my son on the left.