Ace-Garageguy

Almost a year later, and we're back. Some of the same stuff, almost exactly as on the big ol' 1/8 '32 model under the Big Boyz heading. After some more careful mocking-up, I decided to hog a little more out of the firewall to let the engine sit a bit higher in the chassis. And then the rear crossmember gets placed just the same way the big one did. After finally deciding to use a styrene Model A rear spring, it gets lightly glued to the rear axle to be used as a jig. I'll be using the trailing arms from one of the Revell '32 kits. I WAS going to do traditional split-wishbones, but after getting current again on buggy-spring rear suspension fairly recently, I found that the wayback split bones in the rear fell out of favor rather a long time ago. Seems the old bones will twist and crack with any power beyond what a mildly warmed-over flathead can produce, so the fabricated arms replaced the very traditional split wishbones in the rear almost entirely, many years ago. We'd used spacers under the kit's rear axle-positioner thingies to mock up the stance previously, and because these locate the axle precisely in the chassis at the right height as well as fore-and-aft, we'll tack the spring / axle assembly in place while we fit the previously-fabricated rear crossmember to just slip between the rails. Now, using the spring attached to the axle as our jig, we install the rear crossmember precisely where it needs to be to position the rear axle once the other jigs are removed permanently. Careful advance planning puts the forward ends of the trailing arms exactly where they need to be to catch the center crossmember we made earlier too. Looking more like a car all the time, and now we can figure out how high the trans tailshaft housing needs to be to achieve a realistic-looking angle between it and the driveshaft / rear end. This is where we'd get the rear end pinion-angle matched correctly to the centerline of the crank / trans mainshaft if this were a real car...and I can't help myself from trying to get it pretty close on my models.

This is the particular problem I have with the Sock it to Me kit, the white one: The front shape of the hood is entirely wrong... And the tiny headlight bezels are ridiculous. The old AMT '59 is on the right (red) and it's not right, but it's a lot closer than the SitM '61. I had an extra upper nose from another old AMT '59, and grafted it to the front of the SitM '61. It's rough, it's not right, but it's getting there. That's the Revell kit on the left, in white, for comparison. Top shot of the hybrid AMT '59 / '61, compared again to the fairly recent Revell kit. Though the Revell kit is really significantly different, we're kinda in the ballpark. Absolute accuracy isn't necessary on this hack job, as the point is to build a radically modified M/SP car...which probably would have had a heavily modified light-weight custom body anyway. Getting a good first impression of a '61-'62 Corvette is the point, and this is close to working for me. Yes, it's still very rough, but if you squint, you'll see it.

Sorry to hear you're still having problems, Steve. I just uploaded several pix of my 1/8 '32 roadster build, and P-bucket worked like a champ. 5 of six photos loaded in 10 seconds flat (one failed to load for whatever reason). Re-loaded the one that failed in another 3 seconds. Total of less than 30 seconds on the P-bucket site to load six pix, no freezing, no slowdown, no hay peoblema.

Thank you, gentlemen. I couldn't agree more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- So, I did a little measuring. Part of the idea of making this thing channeled was to use up a badly hacked gluebomb body I got a long time ago for cheap. If you recall, the driver's door had been crudely cut open, and the easiest fix was to simply glass it shut, like a welded-closed door. Many welded-door cars got built as lowboys, and you could just hop over the side...which was the plan here. This model is supposed to accurately represent something I'd build for myself, if and when I can ever afford to retire and get back to doing my own cars. However, upon actually measuring the height of the car after I had the thing looking like I liked it, it turned out the top of the door would be right at 38 inches. I'm in OK shape, but hopping over a 38-inch -high door every time I got in or out of the car is just too much of a PITA for me to contemplate, much less intentionally build something that would be that less-than-convenient to use daily. The modified plan: build the car with working doors cut up into the body shell so that they don't expose the frame rails when open. It's too much work to re-open the door on the shell I started with and then restore the hacked opening, but happily for me, I had another semi-started kit with a non-mutilated body shell. The shell I started with will be set aside to build a REALLY low lowboy, and the decent one will move forward to become THIS car. The new shell got scuffed with my trusty Comet... ...and 3 coats of Duplicolor sandable-red. These shells are really pretty lumpy, so a good primer base is necessary to see where you are during blocking. Since the new shell WILL be this car, I went ahead and removed the molded-in windshield base to prep it for the mods that will receive the leaned-back unit. That's all for now, and thanks again for looking.

I love engines, especially obscure or unusual engines, and I really enjoy seeing people take the time and put in the effort to try to get the details right. Very nice work, and your wrinkle-paint is probably the most believable it's possible to achieve in this scale.

Hey kids! Collect ALL 4 !!!!

I always enjoy seeing a sleeping project get up and get going again. Looking good.

Oh yeah... ... if Ken Block built a duster...

Never hurts to try to get people to pay attention and actually think...but you can't force it, that's true. Buy what you're told to buy, do what everybody else does.

I can't swear to it, but i researched it quite some time back, and though a lot of folks said it was an Olds engine, the more believable ones said it was a Y-block. Great movie too. Now you've got me wanting to find in on a nice clear DVD.

Pretty cool. And note the car was retired in '53...maybe because the old flathead wasn't a match for the tax men any more, and it was just easier to buy a later model car ...like a '50 Olds...than to swap in another engine.

The general consensus among people who claim to have either seen the car up close or studied high-quality photos of it or "talked to the guy who worked on it for the movie" is that it was fitted with a Ford Y-block engine.

Excellent points all, and worth repeating.

The '59 engine is still in the gen-one Caddy OHV family, and looks much like the earlier ones. 1949 1959

Short-shaft or long-shaft doesn't matter. The LaSalle was used for the strength of the gearsets. Either short-or long can be run behind anything. Anything. They were very popular adapted to flathead Fords too. WHICH particular trans came in which years I'd research IF I were building a REAL period car. It's not something I keep in my tiny little brain, but I recommended the '50 Olds KIT because it has the LaSalle-derived gearbox. The fact that it was an OEM gearbox fitted behind a "Rocket" Olds engine would make for an easier swap...if you happened to have one. Simple. One more time...hot flatheads WERE the norm until the free-breathing OHV engines from Detroit began hitting the junkyards. Not just ambulance engines...though that's what's endlessly repeated by the internet experts. The actual fact is that the Series 75 Caddy (massively heavy limos and other BIG cars) had some of the highest output engines. Probably available as ambulance power, but certainly not JUST ambulances...and not necessary to go really fast in a lightweight '40 Ford. ANY of the early OHV Detroit V8 engines would be a huge improvement over a full-race flathead, and you can bet the 'revenooers' had the hottest production stuff available. Anybody who could ran a new OHV engine. They made more reliable power box-stock than highly modified flatheads. A tank of 'shine won't do you much good if your engine comes apart while you're running, and big-power flatheads have a tendency to do that...especially when built with the technology of the day...no billet cranks or ARP bolts, etc. Flatheads have long strokes, tiny bores, skinny little rods, 3 main bearings and they don't breathe worth a damm. They have a relatively low upper limit to what peak power you can get out of one just for short drag-racing blasts. A road-racing engine (which is essentially what a 'shine-runner would be) would necessarily have to make less peak power than a drag engine if it was expected to stay together.

While the Olds Rocket engine and manual gearbox from a wreck could be ideal (in case you don't know, the 3-speed manual factory-available behind the early Olds OHV engine WAS essentially a LaSalle), what was best for racing isn't what always got built for tankers. The actual fact of the matter is that the Caddy was the prevalent engine for swapping into tankers, around here anyway...simply because it was the largest displacement, highest horsepower STOCK late.model OHV engine available at the time. The first-gen Olds OHV engine was a 303 cu.in. machine, and the same vintage Caddy was a 331. The box-stock Olds 303 was initially rated at 130HP, while the stock Caddy 331 put out around 160. The best machine shop in these parts is owned and run by the son of an early drag-racing legend and one of the planet's best machinists / engine builders. The old man is reputed to have got his start building fast cars for runners, and his own '40 Ford coupe...not a tanker, just a very fast street car...ran a full-race Caddy engine (which I know for a fact).

I would recommend the smelly EasyOff oven cleaner. It gets the clear undercoat too, which bleach sometimes doesn't. These were stripped with EasyOff, then scrubbed with Comet and hot water, toothbrush. WEAR EYE AND HAND PROTECTION.

The only kit that interior came in, as far as I'm aware, is this one. I've seen it in bright yellow and white too.

Yup...which is why I noted that the '50 Olds kit with the 3-speed manual would be the choice there. The Olds tranny in that kit is pretty much identical to a LaSalle. Other LaSalle transmissions are available in the Revell Miss Deal Studebaker funny-car and the Revell Mickey Thompson Challenger I (four LaSalles in that kit). Still, the Ford top-shift 3-speed WOULD hold up for fast road work IF it wasn't subjected to clutch-dumping acceleration, and the adapter for the Hydramatic in the Revell parts-pack Caddy engine would work very well as a starting point to mate a Ford gearbox to the Cad. It was a very popular swap too. Disregard the yellow on the illustration below. The part # you want to replicate is 0301.

Around 4:10 PM, EST Tuesday...hanging during posting and swapping between topics. Not bad, but annoying.

...And if you're going to build a tanker, don't forget to beef up the suspension. A tank of 'shine weighs at least several hundred pounds.

The Olds engine is available in the fairly recent Revell '50 olds kit (be sure to get the one with the 3-speed gearbox...one of the kits has an automatic, and it would not have been the choice...BUT...the Olds engine could be bolted to an adapter and then bolted to the standard Ford 3-speed trans too, as could the Caddy). One of the best Caddy engines out there is available as a vintage parts-pack kit made by Revell. It has a multi-carb induction setup and period-correct headers too.

Yup. Oldsmobile introduced the engine in 1949, and it soon dominated several classes of racing, as well as being one of the faster production cars of the day. The OHV Caddy was probably more common as a 'shine-runner engine though.

After 1949, the then-new overhead valve Cadillac V8 was a popular choice. The also new-at-the-time Olds V8 would have been a winner too. Prior to '49, the standard flathead hop-up mods would have been multiple carbs, a more open dual exhaust system, and reground camshafts...with of course porting-and-relieving done internally. The very similar but larger Mercury flathead was also often swapped for the smaller Ford engine.