Eddie Dye Roadster, Revell '29 scratchbash. Nov 28 chassis work

[Ace-Garageguy]

The Eddie Dye Roadster, built around '49-'51, is to me, the absolutely best-looking hot rod ever...period. There's a long and interesting story about the car, its early days as a dry-lakes racer, the people involved in building it, its reincarnation in a couple of different forms (including a 409-powered movie car), its "disappearance", and its fairly recent rediscovery and a movement to restore it to the condition shown here.

I've done a LOT of research, and have managed to unearth some photos of the structural details, all in an effort to get this one as right as possible.

I've been wanting to build this car in scale for years, but the necessary motivation just wasn't there to really dive into it until 1) I built a bellypan and a tracknose / hood very similar to what's under the Dye roadster for my '29 lakes car (learning what to do and what not to do in the process) and 2) the release of the new Revell '29.

The new Revell kit body is better, more accurately proportioned in the rear deck area, and the curve of the quarters is more correct than the old AMT '29 body shell was. This is kinda critical to get the model to accurately capture the look of the real car. The Revell body shell also has, to me, what appears to be a little heavy-handed, too thick body detail lines, especially in front on the cowl sides. This won't be an issue on the Dye car, as all of those details were smoothed away and the doors welded shut on the real one.

This is it, circa 1951/ '52

Edited November 29, 2015 by Ace-Garageguy

[Ace-Garageguy]

The car is built on a '32 frame with a suicide spring perch in front, which lengthens the wheelbase somewhat over a stock '32. It's also deeply channeled (7") and was said to be lower than a Jag XK-120 of the time.

The new Revell frame is much too nice to be hidden under a deeply channeled body and a full bellypan, so I'm recycling an old AMT '32 frame from another WIP to do duty under the Dye car.

Deep channel, and rear wheel wells being filled. Cowl details also in the process of being removed.

The floor of the Dye car was dropped between the frame rails to get the seating low. The nice extra Revell '29 floor will be trimmed to slip between the rails just the same way.

A slightly modified old AMT Ala Kart seat insert makes a good starting point for the interior.

 

Edited September 7, 2015 by Ace-Garageguy

[Bernard Kron]

Model Car Garage offer a pretty fair rendition of the Eddie Dye nose piece. But I think in your case you'll probably accept the challenge of scratching together your own. The Dye roadster is one of my modeling holy grails and one of the few builds where I would accept nothing less than a true replica. Good luck on this one! Along with the Louie Bettancourt '49 Merc, it is inconvertible evidence of the genius of the Ayala Bros.

[afx]

Always enjoy your builds Bill.

Edited September 8, 2015 by afx

[slusher]

Great start Bill.

[Skip]

The Eddie Dye Roadster has been one of my favorite early cars for a long time, probably from the first time I saw it in an old magazine!  The welded doors on this car were probably for more than styling, those Model A doors tended to pop open at speed especially on unpaved surfaces, (this was later addressed with Bearclaw latches).  Have fun, I'll be watching your progress!

edited due to autocorrect.

Edited September 8, 2015 by Skip

[om617]

Cool project. Pretty impressive rod for being designed in the late 40s. Never heard of hes name,it must mean i`m not a hot rod guy. 

[cdan delivery]

Couldn't think of a better practitioner to make this appear! Good luck and I'll enjoy the ride.

[Dennis Lacy]

One of the sleekest track nose A roadsters ever with a history as interesting as the car itself. Really looking forward to watching this come together and seeing how you go about replicating all of the custom bodywork. 

Of course, you could always forego all of the hard work and do the yellow Tom Branch version, hahaha 

[3100 chevy]

Great choice of car and great start!

Edited September 8, 2015 by 3100 chevy

[10thumbs]

Very nice start Bill.  The original car is amazing!  Super body, and the interior is well designed.  Reminds me of the old Chris Craft Century, those mahogany,  insanely beautiful sports boats.  I have a good memory of those babies.  To imagine such a finished hot rod in those days is really cool.  I like this topic.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Printed out several copies of the profile shot, tweaked the image size until the car body was in scale with the Revell unit. Cut up some bits and pieces, transferred them to styrene.

Beginning to get the general look. Sorry for the fuzzy pics, by the way. Still working on the photo-editing suite, trying to get it to run reliably under Win7.

 

[Speedfreak]

Looking good Bill, cool car.

 

[exesivefire]

Another well thought out plan, signing in on this one. Love to watch your builds. I always seem to learn something.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Thanks for the interest and comments, gentlemen.

To tell the truth, this is an experiment to see how difficult it is to capture accurately the first-impression "look" of a real car from nothing but internet images.

My Mickey Thompson first-version Challenger One in bare metal was a similar experiment in using subjective "interpretation" of photos combined with more objective techniques of photo analysis, taking into consideration things like lens distortion, parallax, etc.

That worked pretty well once I learned how to look at an image and see what's really there.

We'll see how this one goes.

[10thumbs]

Bill, the metal finish you did on the Mickey Thompson car is fabulous.

Michael

[Ace-Garageguy]

As always, thanks for everyone's interest and comments.

The Dye car is said to have been channeled 7" by some sources, but I've decided to build it the way I'd do it if I were doing it now in 1:1, channeled just enough the allow clearance for the exhaust system to run under the floor, with the frame rails extending down to the level of the bottoms of the bellypan sides.

This will allow much less channel depth, get the weight of the rails lower for better handling, and allow the floor to be dropped between the rails deeper for more comfortable seating (the real car is reputed to have been pretty uncomfortable due to the flat, thin seat cushions and limited leg room caused by the extreme channel job).

The car will LOOK the same from outside, but would be much more pleasant to operate this way.

I'm starting with an old blobular AMT '32 chassis that had the rear axle molded in originally. All the nasty stuff is cut off, and rough frame kickups made.

One side of the kickup is further roughed in. The old K-member molding will be removed too.

K-member removed, and temporary square-tube crossmembers (just wide enough to pinch the chassis enough to allow the body to slip down over it) installed to keep everything square and true. With one side of the kickup about done, a template is made to match the other rail to it.

Both sides matching...

...and the body slipped down on the rails.

This other-side shot shows the total channel on the rails will only be a couple of inches at most, rather than the full 7" the original is reputed to be.

Once I determine how much space under the floor I'll need for exhausts, I can finalize the ride height of the frame, dial in the amount of channel required to get the stance of the original car, and get on with working up the suspension.

 

sides matched, still square

 

[misterNNL]

Another classic street rod build under way.very cool choice.I'll be watching very closely.

[JTalmage]

Can't wait to see the outcome!