How about a Bonneville/dry lakes category?

[W Humble]

How about considering a category in the forums specifically for Bonneville/dry lakes/LSR/beach, etc racers?  The venues are hotter than ever (despite how the surface is) and I am considering building a few salt shakers from the apocryphal old days.  I realize that the kit offerings are limited, but not barren.  And, there are so many types and styles of cars in classes going for records, to say nothing of bikes!  Endless possibilities!  Easy dioramas, too!

The biggest problem I have now is the availability of accurate scale high-speed tires, as are run on the salt -- my phantom twin Cad V-16 car* can use the original wires, since it's a period piece, but now I'm wishing I hadn't discarded all those old Indy and ?? tall, skinny rubber Firestone-type skins from Comet, Mono, and so on!  We'd need lots of Halibrands in resin, and more belly tanks to work from, among other things.  I'd like to build Tommy Milton's Stutz/Miller, or the Keech Triplex special (three Liberty V-12's!), or one of the Brit record holders; think how much fun it would be if those famous engines were released (3D printed?) for us.  M/T's Challenger, the Goldenrod, and Breedlove's car(s) are okay; the Arfons Boys 'Monsters' would be nuttier!  What do you think?

Wick

*Calling it "The Catholic Comet"... vs. Ab Jenkins' "Mormon Meteor"

[Richard Bartrop]

What I find odd is that we have categories for drag racing and NASCAR,  but nothing for competition in general.  It's like that club owner in The Blues Brothers who proudly says that his guests like both kinds of music, Country, and Western.

[1930fordpickup]

This has been discussed before. It was explained that all straight line racing goes on Drag Racing category. All other forms of racing go in  NASCAR . 

 

[Art Anderson]

A very small category in automotive modeling.  Not many ever turn up at model contests, for example, if at all, in my experience.

Art

[Casey]

"If it goes in a straight line, post it here!"

[Roger U]

I agree, I would like a category for LSR machines (Bonneville, dry lakes, beaches). I've been to Bonneville twice and El Mirage a couple of times and enjoyed seeing and hearing the big variety of cars and bikes running there. I've been wondering where to get the proper style tires and wheels to use for building these models.

[Pat Minarick]

Sounds like a good community build.

[426 pack]

14 minutes ago, Pat Minarick said:

Sounds like a good community build.

I would join in on a that. I’ve been looking for a good reason to biuld a LSR car. 

[StevenGuthmiller]

I think racing fans already have it pretty good on this forum.

There are dedicated categories for "drag racing" and "NASCAR" builders.

Where are the "factory stock", "muscle car", "hot rod" or "custom" categories?

I believe that these four categories most likely constitute the vast majority of builders on this forum.

 

 

Steve 

[afx]

This forum is all about racing if you care to check it out.

Motorsports Modeling

Edited November 26, 2018 by afx

[Greg Myers]

11 hours ago, Roger U said:

beaches

We don't need no stinkin beaches. 

Recent editorial in Hot Rod Delux discusses the new phenomenon.

With two letters in their scrap book section.

The gist being a rant on the new  (Jersey) beach ROG. Race of Gentlemen being no more than a step above rat rods.

Granted, the Daytona Beach early NASCAR type racing is part of automotive racing history, but as Art has pointed out, few if any show up at the contest table.

[Ace-Garageguy]

12 hours ago, Roger U said:

... I've been wondering where to get the proper style tires and wheels to use for building these models.

Wheels depend on the era being modeled and the budget the real car would have been operating on. Wire wheels in the early days, sometimes with metal streamlining covers. Then steel disc wheels from production cars, or cast/forged alloy aftermarket units and wheels made for other types of racing, all of which were...and still are...commonly fitted with "Moon" discs for streamlining.

Tires ran the gamut from totally stock street items, to the same with the treads shaved off, to Indy race-car tires, and specially constructed custom tires for the big guns.

In 1958 for instance, Goodyear invested in excess of $30,000 to build a set of 500MPH-rated tires for Mickey Thompson's Challenger I. All they got for it was one small decal on the car, and rights to use it in their advertising. Not like today, where the car would be emblazoned with the sponsor's name in letters you could read from space.

Edited November 26, 2018 by Ace-Garageguy

[Roger U]

 

5 hours ago, afx said:

This forum is all about racing if you care to check it out.

Motorsports Modeling

Thank you for the link afx. I didn't know about that forum. it looks quite interesting.

[alan barton]

James, I agree with all your opening comments but as a separate category is unlikely to happen, can I suggest you start a thread called "Put your Bonneville and Dry Lakes cars here"  Come to that, you could add Lake Gairdner, the far superior surface in the middle of outback Australia.   It would then work a bit like Tim Boyd's boat thread, where those of us with an interest in this niche have a place to go and compare other models.  I have a bunch of cars that would fit your category and if various contest annuals are anything to go by, other people do as well.  It is always nice to have one thread to go to to compare all.  The H.A.M.B. hot rod forum uses this idea very successfully and has threads that are over ten years old yet alive and kicking.

Start it and they will come!

Cheers

Alan

[Dave Ambrose]

We'll take a look at this once I get some technical problems ironed out with our server. The board gets more complicated, and less useful when you start adding more forums, so we have to be careful with what we add. 

In the meantime, you can use tags on the postings to distinguish them. I'd suggest:

• Racing
• Bonneville
• LSR
• CanAm
• Indy
• Formula 1

The racing tag is generic, and we can use new ones as we see fit. 

[Harpo]

I love LSR cars, I've got one done ("QuickSilver" - Pirahna-based retro LSR Car) and one under construction (Another LSR Fantasy Car: Caddy Cat?).

But upon reconsideration, a separate section wouldn't be well populated.  I'd rather keep them in "Model Cars".

Edited November 27, 2018 by Harpo

[Ace-Garageguy]

I suppose it would be nice, in an ideal world, to have easy categories for everything.

But over the years, I've shown several "lakes" and LSR cars here. As they don't actually belong in either NASCAR or drag-racing, I just post them with the generic "cars".

Never had any shortage of lookers and comments, so I don't really see the need for additional complication.

[bamadon]

Just change the headings from "Drag Racing" to Straight Line Racing and "Nascar" to Closed Course Racing. Covers pretty much everything.

[Ace-Garageguy]

13 minutes ago, bamadon said:

Just change the headings from "Drag Racing" to Straight Line Racing and "Nascar" to Closed Course Racing. Covers pretty much everything.

...except for traditional rally cars...  

[bamadon]

16 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

...except for traditional rally cars...  

I just knew there would be something that wouldn't fit, there always is.

[afx]

23 hours ago, Roger U said:

 

Thank you for the link afx. I didn't know about that forum. it looks quite interesting.

Your welcome Roger.  Think it has (nearly) all the racing categories covered.

[StevenGuthmiller]

54 minutes ago, bamadon said:

Just change the headings from "Drag Racing" to Straight Line Racing and "Nascar" to Closed Course Racing. Covers pretty much everything.

How about just "Racing".

Then instead of adding another category or two, we can eliminate one.

"Drag Racing" & "NASCAR" combined only have a little over 100,000 posts as is.

Is there enough interest in racing subjects to justify a third category?

 

Just checking a couple of other forums that have separate "factory stock", "rod", and "muscle car" categories shows that there are nearly 3 times as many posts as racing categories.

Yet there are zero dedicated categories for any of those on this forum.

But we need another racing category?

If you ask me, there should be "street car", "racing" and a "truck" categories.

That pretty much covers everything. 

 

Steve

[Xingu]

In the past, I have petitioned for a new category called "Other Racing." Nothing ever materialized.

I was once told that the categories on the forum roughly follow those of the magazine.

[Harpo]

3 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I suppose it would be nice, in an ideal world, to have easy categories for everything.

But over the years, I've shown several "lakes" and LSR cars here. As they don't actually belong in either NASCAR or drag-racing, I just post them with the generic "cars".

Never had any shortage of lookers and comments, so I don't really see the need for additional complication.

I really like LSR cars (see post above), but on reconsideration I agree with Bill.  I would like to see a Community Build though!

[W-409]

As a Drag Racer and a guy who likes to build Drag Race cars in smaller scale, too, I think the Drag Race category is a good thing. It would be great to see Salt Flat cars in the same section as they both run straight line, but unfortunately they're usually posted in the regular On The Workbench or Under Glass sections.

But on the other hand, I hope we will never have different subcategories under On The Workbench and Under Glass for Factory Stock, Street Machine, Hot Rod etc. I've tried to be a member on some forums that have this feature, and even though it sounds pretty good at first, at least I get tired of clicking through the several subcategories before opening the first thread. And because of that, I usually stop visiting on those forums. I'm not the only one who thinks this way, so I definitely hope that we never see so many subcategories in here.