"The 777" Tasca Ford '63 lightweight Galaxie

[Brutalform]

9 hours ago, Sledsel said:

The build is looking great! I did notice an issue, the traction bars on that car are rear mount, I can see them in your photos. You can see them in these photos also. Here is a pic of installation, FYI...  I think the AWB Falcon has a set

 

Gas Ronda’s maroon 63 used these bars also. Very easy to make a set with some thin styrene sheet, and rod. 

[Brutalform]

Your interior mods are coming along nicely. What front seats do you plan on using? I’ll have to check, but I might have a pair from the MCW tub, that I ended up using a bench seat in instead. If I find them I can ship them out to you. 

[customline]

1 hour ago, Brutalform said:

Gas Ronda’s maroon 63 used these bars also. Very easy to make a set with some thin styrene sheet, and rod. 

Making them is not a problem. Reversing what has been done could be. Luckily, Andy weighed in before I got the whole mess painted and I heartily thank him for that. I would really appreciate somebody telling me just how these rear mounted traction bars work. What do they actually do to improve the situation.... and what situation? 

1 hour ago, Brutalform said:

Your interior mods are coming along nicely. What front seats do you plan on using? I’ll have to check, but I might have a pair from the MCW tub, that I ended up using a bench seat in instead. If I find them I can ship them out to you. 

That's a kind offer, Tom. I think I can fab something close with junk I have around here. My smooth, well-oiled-machine-like building technique has been blown up because I made some very bad assumptions, so my seat fabrication is now on hold until I can get the traction bar thing straight. If anyone has first hand knowledge of these strange traction devices I would appreciate your input. Pictures would be great.

[dwc43]

37 minutes ago, customline said:

Making them is not a problem. Reversing what has been done could be. Luckily, Andy weighed in before I got the whole mess painted and I heartily thank him for that. I would really appreciate somebody telling me just how these rear mounted traction bars work. What do they actually do to improve the situation.... and what situation? 

That's a kind offer, Tom. I think I can fab something close with junk I have around here. My smooth, well-oiled-machine-like building technique has been blown up because I made some very bad assumptions, so my seat fabrication is now on hold until I can get the traction bar thing straight. If anyone has first hand knowledge of these strange traction devices I would appreciate your input. Pictures would be great.

It's not really a traction bar so to speak. As you launch a car the pinion climbs the ring gear, that's how you end up with a wheel stand on cars with too much rear traction, usually too much percentage weight to the rear. Anyways, when the axle rotates up the spring stops it at some point and if you could see it, the front segment of the spring looks like an S laid down on the side. All of a sudden that spring unwinds and jerks that axle back down. That's when it goes into wheel hop and the tires bounce up and down on the road and chirp and spin and lose traction. That bar is trying to prevent the axle wind up that turns into wheel hop. It's also going to try to pull the rear of the car down and that's not good cause you are actually unloading the rear tires by doing that.

If you put 4 scales under a car and raise the rear end with, say leaf spring shackles, the scales will show more weight on the rear tires than the front. Opposite if you lower the rear.

That's why they use forward facing ladder bars. They do two things at once. They try to raise the car up making weight shift to the rear at the same time using that leverage to push the tires into the track. Lower the front of the bar closer to the road for more traction and vice versa. 4 links work the same way, except you have two bars to adjust on each side. Lower bar is a big adjustment and the upper bar is a fine tuning adjustment. Upper bars have more mounting holes than the lower ones do too.

[R. Thorne]

I think you will find that they were made by Traction Master and were used to induce squat in the rear, also (thought to be a good thing at the time).  Les Ritchie was one proponent.

[customline]

Ok....I removed the T-bolt style traction thingies and (and this is my lucky day ) I discovered that I never glued the shackles ? so I was able to just remove them easily and then I made new, shorter ones and, in less than an hour, had my chassis (virtually) back to stock. Yay.

[customline]

On 5/10/2024 at 3:15 PM, R. Thorne said:

Nice work.  Shows a lot of careful thought and attention to detail.  

This is an updated response to your comment:

Thank you, Ron, but I screwed up. See above ?

Edited May 14, 2024 by customline

[R. Thorne]

To err is human.  Looks like you are right back on track and moving on.  Nice work.

[customline]

On 5/13/2024 at 12:14 PM, dwc43 said:

It's not really a traction bar so to speak. As you launch a car the pinion climbs the ring gear, that's how you end up with a wheel stand on cars with too much rear traction, usually too much percentage weight to the rear. Anyways, when the axle rotates up the spring stops it at some point and if you could see it, the front segment of the spring looks like an S laid down on the side. All of a sudden that spring unwinds and jerks that axle back down. That's when it goes into wheel hop and the tires bounce up and down on the road and chirp and spin and lose traction. That bar is trying to prevent the axle wind up that turns into wheel hop. It's also going to try to pull the rear of the car down and that's not good cause you are actually unloading the rear tires by doing that.

If you put 4 scales under a car and raise the rear end with, say leaf spring shackles, the scales will show more weight on the rear tires than the front. Opposite if you lower the rear.

That's why they use forward facing ladder bars. They do two things at once. They try to raise the car up making weight shift to the rear at the same time using that leverage to push the tires into the track. Lower the front of the bar closer to the road for more traction and vice versa. 4 links work the same way, except you have two bars to adjust on each side. Lower bar is a big adjustment and the upper bar is a fine tuning adjustment. Upper bars have more mounting holes than the lower ones do too.

As I was driving this morning my mind wandered away from the road and I envisioned the Tasca traction bars. I guess my subconscious had been working on your explanation of how they work and, like these sort of things usually happen, I finally got it just at the moment I was turning right on a red light and then I heard the blast of a horn of the pickup behind me  ("where'd he come from? ?.)

Anyway,  I think I finally understood that the bar takes the action off the rear half of the springs and as the axle housing tries to turn in the opposite direction of the wheels,the bars actually pull down on the rear most part of the car without losing any energy from spring flexing. All that torque is used to pull the weight of the rear of the car down on the rear tires. I guess you said all that in different words but my brain couldn't "see" it until it ran it through that part of my brain that could deal with it  ?.....so....do I get it?

 

 

 

[dwc43]

8 hours ago, customline said:

As I was driving this morning my mind wandered away from the road and I envisioned the Tasca traction bars. I guess my subconscious had been working on your explanation of how they work and, like these sort of things usually happen, I finally got it just at the moment I was turning right on a red light and then I heard the blast of a horn of the pickup behind me  ("where'd he come from? ?.)

Anyway,  I think I finally understood that the bar takes the action off the rear half of the springs and as the axle housing tries to turn in the opposite direction of the wheels,the bars actually pull down on the rear most part of the car without losing any energy from spring flexing. All that torque is used to pull the weight of the rear of the car down on the rear tires. I guess you said all that in different words but my brain couldn't "see" it until it ran it through that part of my brain that could deal with it  ?.....so....do I get it?

 

 

 

Pretty close to it. AS the pinion on the rear axle tries to rotate upward, it will pull the rear of the body downward. Bad thing is that unloads the weight off the rear tires. If you had scales under the car at launch you could easily see that. The main idea behind it was to prevent the front segment of the spring from turning into an s and snapping back and forth causing wheel hop. If you have ever noticed intermittent black marks instead of a solid black mark, well the first one is a wheel hop. 

 

The old slapper bars did the same thing. They Lakewood yellow or chrome traction bars. They mounted to the spring under the axle tube and had a single bar on each side with a rubber snubber on the front that hit the front spring eye mount. It would try to raise the body which as a good thing cause raising the rear ride height puts weight on the rear wheels. But its real job was to stop the front segment of the spring from turning into an S and wheel hopping. 

By the way, never put those Lakewood type traction bars on a Mopar. They won't work cause Mopar's use a short segment on the front of the spring and a long rear segment. So, when they launch the rear springs arch up. If both segments were the same length, then it would work like a Ford or Chevy spring. If you notice, Mopar's do what I call a leapfrog when they launch. Front up and back up at almost the same time. 

 

 

[MeatMan]

Impressive work!
Great project.

[customline]

I'm so confused ?....but at least I got the right junk hanging under the trunk. Moving on to the interior/firewall/body length discrepancy/ tight engine bay/undiscovered surprises thing.

Edited May 15, 2024 by customline

[customline]

Error

 

Edited May 16, 2024 by customline

[customline]

I think I've got the firewall worked out. I nipped the top front corners off the '63 tub and added a strip of styrene to the top, inside edge of the '60 firewall.  Everything fits good in a mock-up but we all know how that goes.  

[FoMoCo66]

Wow that looks amazing! I've wanted to this with the amt 64 galaxie now I just need a starliner kit. 

[customline]

 

46 minutes ago, FoMoCo66 said:

Wow that looks amazing! I've wanted to this with the amt 64 galaxie now I just need a starliner kit. 

Be careful what you wish for, Ace ?.  I would caution you about getting the original issue from Y2K (the black car on the box art.)  Subsequent issues have some optional goodies you may want. I didn't know this when I pursued the Starliner kit. If you have not read my post  carefully you should be advised it's not a plug-n-play situation. I can't speak for any other full size FoMoCo kits but this is hard-core kit bashing. This isn't my first rodeo but it's pushing my skill set to some new ground. Don't paint anything till you have everything down pat because, if you do, you may end up looking like this guy-> ?.....jus' sayin'?.

Edited May 16, 2024 by customline

[FoMoCo66]

2 minutes ago, customline said:

 

Be careful what you wish for, Ace ?.  I would caution you about getting the original issue from Y2K (the black car on the box art.)  Subsequent issues have some optional goodies you may want. I didn't know this when I pursued the Starliner kit. If you have not read my post  carefully you should be advised it's not a plug-n-play situation. I can't speak for any other full size FoMoCo kits but this is hard-core kit bashing. This isn't my first rodeo but it's pushing my skill set to some new ground. Don't paint anything till you have everything down pat.  Or you may look like this guy-> ?

Thanks for the advice. This was just an idea I had. I won't try this till I've had a little more practice. 

[customline]

8 minutes ago, FoMoCo66 said:

Thanks for the advice. This was just an idea I had. I won't try this till I've had a little more practice. 

Oh, I get...I  love the '64 Gal too. And the Marauder.  It kills me that we have to combine kits at today's prices just to build a decent model, but it is what it is. And the Starliner is a very worthwhile build by itself. Great kit!

Edited May 16, 2024 by customline

[Brutalform]

7 hours ago, customline said:

Oh, I get...I  love the '64 Gal too. And the Marauder.  It kills me that we have to combine kits at today's prices just to build a decent model, but it is what it is. And the Starliner is a very worthwhile build by itself. Great kit!

I hear ya. I’m playing with the Model King 64 Comet, and building it into a 427 A/FX car. And I was just thinking we shouldn’t have to scribe the fender from the bottom sill. Many kits are like this. I noticed yours doesn’t have the line. I believe I skipped this step in many of my builds. But as we build more and more, we catch the little mistakes. 

[customline]

35 minutes ago, Brutalform said:

I hear ya. I’m playing with the Model King 64 Comet, and building it into a 427 A/FX car. And I was just thinking we shouldn’t have to scribe the fender from the bottom sill. Many kits are like this. I noticed yours doesn’t have the line. I believe I skipped this step in many of my builds. But as we build more and more, we catch the little mistakes. 

Yup. I've opined about this before but I had forgotten about it. Yeah, you have got to scrutinize these things because the mfgrs. make a lot of mistakes. To be fair, many builders don't really give a ?. What it boils down to is don't trust them and look very closely if you care about authenticity! 

BTW, what is "Model King"? Is it an entity like Round Two?  

[FoMoCo66]

13 minutes ago, customline said:

BTW, what is "Model King"? Is it an entity like Round Two?  

Good question. Looks like whatever it was did Revell and AMT. A double agent !

[customline]

2 minutes ago, FoMoCo66 said:

Good question. Looks like whatever it was did Revell and AMT. A double agent !

Maybe they bought molds from different mfgrs. to produce in their "Asian" facility under their name ?.

[FoMoCo66]

9 minutes ago, customline said:

Maybe they bought molds from different mfgrs. to produce in their "Asian" facility under their name ?.

I actually just found this topic on Model King. Model Kings not a company he's a person named Dave Burkett.

https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/87773-model-king/

[Brutalform]

1 hour ago, customline said:

Yup. I've opined about this before but I had forgotten about it. Yeah, you have got to scrutinize these things because the mfgrs. make a lot of mistakes. To be fair, many builders don't really give a ?. What it boils down to is don't trust them and look very closely if you care about authenticity! 

BTW, what is "Model King"? Is it an entity like Round Two?  

Sorry, I should have said “AMT” Model King. I never really thought about it, but the Moebius Dyno Don Comet is a Model King, and I believe the new to be released Moebius Strickler 65 Dodge AWB will be one also. But it’s this kit I meant. Needs a lot of work to convert it to the 427 car pictured. The 64 Comet is a curbside as it comes in the box. Great progress on the Tasca car by the way. 

[Brutalform]

I was just looking through some of my model car pics, and actually I only have a few that I corrected the fender gap on. Mostly all of my builds the fender remains part of the entire car. Just started to realize this mistake recently, and started to correct it.