36 Ford roadster 50's racer

[JustanotherKiwi]

Hey all,

Just got back into the hobby after about 2 years away.

Pulled this 36 Roadster out of storage, it is rough, with a broken windscreen, plan is to do a 50's weekend type drag racer out of it with some Bonneville salt influence.

Questions are would they have retained the bench seat or installed a bucket seat? And, were there any regulations on bonnets?

Thanks

Edited January 19, 2016 by JustanotherKiwi

[JustanotherKiwi]

I am also thinking of using as much "vintage" parts as possible, not new castings, kinda in keeping with the instructions age of kit.

[DumpyDan]

Cool

[Jantrix]

Great idea.

[JustanotherKiwi]

Yea, Thanks guys. ?

I am going with the kit engine with triples at this stage, will use the little racing pipes that go under car.

I have not built this kit in 25 yrs, I am liking it a lot, from what I read the reissue is pretty good too, so I may get one of those.

Moving house at the moment so progress will be slow, this current house is small, so no real room for modelling, the next house does though, and quite a bit, so I am pretty lucky.

I am looking forward to a model bench again!

I just bought one for $1, so will be good there to start with,.

[espo]

Looks like you're off to a good start. I'm sure you're test fitting all of the body panels, but on the ones I have built the grill shell  and the hood  sometimes are difficult to line up with the front fenders and the body.  Depending on the era of your build, most of the early builds still had the bench seat in the pictures I've seen. Just before and after WWII there just was not a lot of money and every thing was cobbled together with what ever you could find. You might Google the " Salt Flats " or even  " Land Speed Racing " just to see if there is any pictures that may give you ideas.    

[JustanotherKiwi]

@espo Thanks for the reply, I have the book The birth of Hot rodding, where a lot of the inspiration comes from for this and a few other builds to come, it says rightly so, that as you say money was tight, normally they would start by stripping bodies of all "un necessary" parts, then when money allowed they would replaced with factory engines that had more power from mid forties cars until the birth of the ohv V8, that's when the real fun started! So much knowledge gained during the war, used to great effect after.

I love this era.

Edited January 20, 2016 by JustanotherKiwi

[vintagercr]

That's going to,look neat.....

[JustanotherKiwi]

I was mucking around with it today, the primer was well . . .sticky, and it has sat for 4 years after getting it as you see it above, pulled out some 240grit and rubbed it off.

i need to open up the wheel arches a bit more as when I originally did them the only slicks I had were some Goodyear Eagles off a NASCAR parts kit I had, I found some period(or just after) correct Firestone skinnies.

Pic of white wheel is the Firestone, I will put steel wheels front and rear, keeping it simple, I would wire the motor, but wonder whether it would look to modern with the way they look.

Engine will be factory colour, with a smoke wash.

Thinking grey primer over red oxide as they would have had a bit available post WWII

 

[JustanotherKiwi]

Missing one of the original kit engines rocker covers, so will see what I have to replace them, want something that looks steel over alloy, sure I will have something.

[JustanotherKiwi]

Update, we have moved house as of 3 weeks ago and got all our stuff put away now so the house is looking like a home rather than a bomb site!

In setting up a corner of the spare room with a massive desk left by a friend(1metre x 1.5metres) I was able to pull everything out of the box it was stored in, and found a container I forgot I had with a spare Ponty 389 and the missing Rocker cover, which is weird because I can't think where it came from? Oh well!

Does anybody have an idea of the vintage of the kit motor?

I hope to get a factory correct paint for the engine soon, and will update again then.

What colour should I go with? I am thinking primer grey or some sort of military colour that would have been left over from the war.