Ace-Garageguy

I HAVE seen showcars over the years that had dummy blowers...once saw one with a GMC 6-71 and injection that had an empty blower housing (just stub shafts for the pulleys) and a Holley 4-bbl carb inside the blower. It ran fine too.

...which reminds me of the time I was driving a brandy-new Porsche 914 in downtown Atlanta. Pulled into a gas station, opened the front hood for access to the fuel filler, and opened the rear deck to stow the fiberglass roof. Gas jockey looks bewildered and asks "engine ain't in front, ain't in back...where IS it??". I just went along and said "man, I don't know". We looked the car over and just couldn't find an engine anywhere ( ) and I eventually drove off, with him still looking awestruck.

The stretched Maser is definitely starting to work, but I think the greenhouse may be a tad high...it just may be the perspective too. Lots and lots of mods left to go to get that P1800, but you're certainly on the right track. Nice going.

Nice pix. That little orange Messerschmidt and the gray Citroen behind it were among my favorite builds there. Both started life as stamped metal toys, by the way, and the build quality was about as perfect as you get.

I'm particularly interested in the frame of the vehicle in the OP...rather a large cutout for exhaust header clearance where the frame would do well to be its strongest to support that massive amount of hardware. Just sayin'... The Camaro in post #26 should be quite a nightmare to tune too, if my understanding of the plumbing is correct. The turbos appear to be blowing through carbs perched on top of the Roots-type blower (under an apparently dummy injector hat) but it would seem that all the boost from the turbos would blow out the front when the throttle butterflies open. Those fancy S-curves coming out of the turbos are big flow-killers too. Someone please correct my understanding if I'm wrong here.

I built a custom convertible 240Z many years ago, and was driving it in primer, sans any ID. It DID have a leather-knobbed gearshift lever I'd pirated from a Fiat (still with the enameled Fiat badge on top). I came out of a restaurant and overheard a girl exclaiming what a cool looking car it was, and her boyfriend 'expert' told her it wasn't anything special...just a ratty Fiat. Another time I was driving a client's Pantera, and came out of another restaurant in time to overhear another 'expert' pontificating on it being a "Lamboriginie Kountak", though it had a powered-by-Ford badge on the butt, Ghia emblems on the front fenders, and huge PANTERA GTS graphics on the rockers.

Sounds like 'un-restored vintage' to me.

Now that someone's already brought it up, and for future reference, the ONLY American V8 engine that has exhaust-port spacing like your first version is the "nailhead" Buick. The nailheads also have other immediately recognizable characteristics, so if you're going for engine accuracy, it pays to research. The "tony navy" dragster you mention (actually Tony Nancy, a very famous hot-rod upholsterer and drag racer) has a Buick nailhead engine, accounting for the unusual port spacing.

My personal favorite dropped beam axle (which Bernard already mentioned) is in the Revell 1/25 Model A kits. It comes with mechanical brakes and pose-able steering, but it's easily converted to hydraulic post '39 brakes (hot-rod standard fare). Most of the 1/25 Revell A kits include both dropped AND stock. This one has had the ends drilled for different spindles and steering. For those of you who know what it is, a really excellent "dropped and filled" beam axle comes in the last release AlaKart kit. And a very nice tubular axle with a little drop, also easily converted to working steering, is in the old Revell / Monogram super-modified dirt track kit, shown here on another build... And honestly, the ubiquitous dropped tube axle in all the Revell 1/25 '32 Fords is really pretty darn good.

I really like the overall proportions on this, though I think you should raise the front of the body shell (at the firewall) just a tad.

Man, git 'er done !! This is still one of my favorite long-term builds going on here.

Yup. I suppose it really gets back to each individual's definition of "rat rod", and we've been down that long and winding (and long winded) road many times before. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The thing is, what would REALLY represent the SPIRIT of the original hot-rods would be something like...say an early MR2 with a Taurus SHO engine and driveline swapped in; a collection of fairly recently-manufactured but thrown-away bits, intelligently combined into a fast, reliable car that would rival the performance of new vehicles costing many many times more to own. The engineering and skills required to build something like that are EASILY within range of anyone with mechanical aptitude who's willing to make the EFFORT to learn.

Good looking progress. And just a thought...I've tried about all of the fillers on the market, and in my experience, it's hard to beat the Bondo brand "Professional" 2-part glazing and spot putty. It's some of the finest-grained putty around, which makes it very good at filling fine imperfections. Because it's a catalyzed product, you can put it on thick and it will cure all-the-way-through without cracking or shrinking. It has a very good working window before it kicks (if mixed properly), it adheres exceptionally well to 180-grit sanded styrene, it's ready to sand in 20 minutes or less, and it sands and shapes very well (it powders nicely and isn't as hard as epoxy based fillers). It also comes in modeler-friendly sized packages, which none of the other "professional", real bodyshop products do. I used to swear by USC Icing for model work (and full-scale work), but the Bondo product is the best I've ever used for models .

Agreed.

I just looked at this again, and it still makes me smile. Really nice build.

Good lines on that chop. The rear skirts will help to really differentiate this build too. Nice work so far.

Thanks for digging this one up; you must have read my mind. As soon as I finish moving, this one is next in line to complete. After all of the bodywork on Thompson's Challenger LSR car backdate, getting this one slick should be easy, and the guts will be mostly stock. Some of the materials and techniques I experimented with on the Challenger will carry over to this too...one of the problems has been keeping the scored lines in the roof sharp after doing the bodywork (they continue the molded lines that separate the center roof panel), and I've got it worked out - finally.

Yeah, the Hairy Olds is probably the most instantly recognizable and familiar of all the multi-engined cars...even to generations of guys who never saw any of them run.

I agree entirely with your perspective Harry...in principle...but I guess I just tend to hold my 'artists' to a higher standard. Ed Roth, whose sculptural and styling ability I greatly admired, also drove me crazy because some of his creations functioned very poorly (the Mysterion is reputed to have broken its frame once while being unloaded from a trailer). There wasn't anything so radical about his cars that prevented them from running as good as they looked...and the rats don't HAVE to be unsafe doorstops either. A car is a machine, involving an element of kinetics by definition. To me, a car-based artwork needs to respect the fact that it's "kinetic sculpture", to be entirely valid. But that's just my own perspective...other opinions are equally valid, if they can be defended.

A most excellent point.

I'm not sure exactly what the phrase "these cars back then aren't what they are made to be now" means in this context, but all you have to do is look through the pages of the early hot-rod mags, and research the history of the hobby, and you'll see that the majority of the cars at the dry lakes, and at the early drag-strips, were not shiny. They WERE mostly in primer, or just rough old paint. The shiny-painted and finished cars made it to the 'feature' pages of the mags, and they were what the average rodder aspired to (while he saved his lunch money for a paint job). BUT, the big thing that separates them from many of today's "rat-rods" is that they were built PRIMARILY TO FUNCTION, and to GO FAST...whether for all-out top speed on the dry lakes, or to excel at acceleration in drag racing...and MANY had to double as reliable daily transportation for their builder / owners. The majority of rat-rods that this old hot-rodder has seen (your experience may differ) have been, as I've said before, poorly engineered, poorly thought-out and poorly constructed abortions that fail to accelerate, handle or stop particularly well. Many are built solely for visual shock-value, and that was NOT the reason the original hot-rods were (and continue to be) built. It's also true that there ARE many rat-rod-looking vehicles out there that DO function very well, and are in the spirit of the originals they draw their inspiration from. Patina or surface rust doesn't define a hot-rod OR a rat-rod, and one car can be both. But a poorly-constructed, ill-functioning conglomeration of old parts is just junk.

It most likely would have steered the same way Tommy Ivo's Showboat did...the forward axles, universals and hubs were heavy-duty 4WD, front-axle components. It was a REAL car.

It's (was) a real car. Here's another shot of it nekkid... And one with the body on...

James Dean kinda liked Porsches, having a Speedster first, and later the mid-engined 550 Spyder he died in. He could afford to buy automotive performance. The whole hot-rod thing came about because guys who appreciated fast, competent machinery and COULDN'T afford it developed the skills necessary to BUILD it, on the cheap, from discarded junk. The "rat" thing was in fact a revolution against the high-dollar billet trailer-queen culture that had emerged (the cars mostly being BOUGHT-built, not built by their owners), but it quickly degenerated into a competition to see who could put together the ugliest, rustiest, and most useless pile of -----, poorly engineered, and in many cases, undrivable. I've followed rats down the road near Las Vegas that couldn't go faster than 30mph because all of their useless and poorly welded-on garbage was just a-shakin' and a-rattiln' too much, and dissolution seemed imminent. Thankfully, from my own perspective, that kind of automotive stupidity is fading somewhat, and again, the cars are returning to the hot-rod roots.

The trend I've seen in 1:1 is that the build-quality of the rats is improving (fewer bubble-gum welds, for instance), and the cars are becoming more functional and safer...gradually approaching what the original hot-rod concept was all about: building a fast, safe car from scrounged bits. I've never been a fan of cars built for shock value (including some of the sillier Kustoms, sky-high donks, insanely-cambered tuners, etc), but any genre that's well thought-out and constructed, with an emphasis on DRIVING (these things are CARS, remember), gets my vote as worthwhile.