Building a Crown Vic for the County Fair

[OldNYJim]

Thanks fellas! 

A little more progress on this one…

This is strictly a curbside build, but I was at least going to paint the underside flat black, and then I felt bad for going to so little effort so I did some drybrushing and added some washes:

And once those were dry, did some subtle brushing of some pastels to add a little dust and dirt also

Made a number board - local rules require a 12 x 8 inch board to be mounted to the roof; a lot of drivers will reuse these if they’re not totally destroyed - they’ll be lightweight aluminum, often with digitally printed vinyl so I designed a nicer graphic for these…

And finally, started working on the interior.  I don’t want it to distract from the rest of the car too much, so it’s mostly black, but I’ve got some extra little bits to add later…but I started a little weathering with some dust and added some mud from the driver’s boots on the checkerplate under the dash - figure it would get real messy under there pretty quickly….

Got a bunch more pieces in paint ready to detail and add - excited to start finishing this one up!  Thanks for looking - more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Edited September 13, 2024 by CabDriver

[BK9300]

Awesome weathering on the chassis and interior!

[OldNYJim]

9 hours ago, BK9300 said:

Awesome weathering on the chassis and interior!

Thank you!

Some more work on this one today…

Finished up the interior:

The plastic fuel cell and battery box are from the Revell 29/30 kids - added wiring and plumbing but otherwise dropped them right in:

Also designed and printed some seatbelt hardware:

With that done, I could assemble the interior to the body, and then get this thing on it’s wheels:

I wanted to make a simple little base to display this thing on, so I designed and printed some concrete blocks, and laid down some nice gloopy mud:

And then all that was left to do was a little weathering to the outside of the car, but not a bunch - just enough to make it look like it had got dirty in the pits and rolling out onto the wet track, and then it was a wrap for this one:

Oh, and a pic of the car with it’s little die-cast brother that inspired this one:

This was a real simple build, but I had a BLAST with it - already got three or four more grassroots-type builds like this that I’d like to get out of my head and onto my shelf!

Thanks for following along and for all the nice comments!

[DJMar]

Such a cool build, I love it! ?

[Mattilacken]

cool build! we have a simmilar series over here in Sweden wich is called Folkrace. Its a dirt track type event but you have mor of a street circuit layout and try to go as fas as you can in heats against several other cars. Cars gets banged up pretty good but you race them for years. 

 

[Thedragsterdude]

Man I love this and the little diorama stand 

[Spottedlaurel]

Great to see this given your customary care and attention, looks just right!

The WIP is very useful too, I have several kits which I would like to turn ino banger racers - our equivalent of the demo derby cars - but I know it's not going to be as easy as just applying some lairy paint and assembling it without the glass and interior....

[OldNYJim]

On 10/20/2024 at 3:04 AM, Spottedlaurel said:

Great to see this given your customary care and attention, looks just right!

The WIP is very useful too, I have several kits which I would like to turn ino banger racers - our equivalent of the demo derby cars - but I know it's not going to be as easy as just applying some lairy paint and assembling it without the glass and interior....

I’ve been researching ‘bangers’ lately - I really like them!  All the crashing of a derby car…but they’re racing them too!  I love that - WAY more interesting than just a demo derby, to me.

I’ve got some candidates picked out for a demo derby build - it’s tough picking a suitable kit because it seems like almost all the really cool and common ‘bangers’ haven’t been kitted in styrene…but that said, if you have any pointers, I’d love to hear them!

I REALLY like the super-intricate airbrushed paintjobs on a lot of them too - they’re, like, NICE race-car paintjobs often (REALLY nice!), and then they get wrecked in an evening.  Awesome!

[Spottedlaurel]

2 hours ago, CabDriver said:

I’ve been researching ‘bangers’ lately - I really like them!  All the crashing of a derby car…but they’re racing them too!  I love that - WAY more interesting than just a demo derby, to me.

I’ve got some candidates picked out for a demo derby build - it’s tough picking a suitable kit because it seems like almost all the really cool and common ‘bangers’ haven’t been kitted in styrene…but that said, if you have any pointers, I’d love to hear them!

I REALLY like the super-intricate airbrushed paintjobs on a lot of them too - they’re, like, NICE race-car paintjobs often (REALLY nice!), and then they get wrecked in an evening.  Awesome!

Most of the guys doing Youtube videos of UK racing do a bit of a pit walk beforehand,so that should give some ideas on what to use. Would love to see your paintwork skills applied to something in the style of how some of them prepare their cars. The paintjobs they do for big meetings like the world final is amazing.

Here in the UK (and Belgium/Holland) the favoured choices in the Unlmited class are big saloons and estates like Mercedes E-Class, Ford Scorpio and Granada Mk1/2, Jaguar XJ and various larger Volvos and Japanese saloons and coupes. Nowadays a lot of the racers fit a Ford 4-cyl engine, which rev's nicely and is very compact in a large engine bay so the car can take a lot of damage and still run, but it doesn't sound like the V6s or straight sixes from the days when they had to run the original engine.

Of things I can think of in kit form that I've seen raced there is the Italeri Volvo 740, Hasegawa Jaguar XJ-S, Tamiya Jaguar Mk2, various large Mercedes saloons and coupes from Tamiya and Italeri, Toyota Supra Mk3 from Tamiya or Hasegawa (a surprisingly effective and strong banger - look out for a guy called Tye Williams (639), who can race and wreck them with great skill), and quite a range of big Japanese saloons like Lexus IS200 and LS400, Nissan Cedric, Toyota Mark II etc. A big race meeting will also attract random American stuff, have a look at some of the things that were raced at the King's Lynn Stadium Halloween Carnival last weekend.....

Some of those kits aren't cheap, but it could give a new lease of life to a gluebomb or incomplete/damaged kit.

[Ragtop Man]

Enjoying this build so much, what a great change of pace and a great build to do with a pedestrian kit! 

FWIW, there was an episode of RoadKill where the main event was a 25 lap sprint in used up CVs - hilarous. 

They could have called it the Donut Cup... 

[OldNYJim]

On 10/28/2024 at 1:54 AM, Spottedlaurel said:

Most of the guys doing Youtube videos of UK racing do a bit of a pit walk beforehand,so that should give some ideas on what to use. Would love to see your paintwork skills applied to something in the style of how some of them prepare their cars. The paintjobs they do for big meetings like the world final is amazing.

Here in the UK (and Belgium/Holland) the favoured choices in the Unlmited class are big saloons and estates like Mercedes E-Class, Ford Scorpio and Granada Mk1/2, Jaguar XJ and various larger Volvos and Japanese saloons and coupes. Nowadays a lot of the racers fit a Ford 4-cyl engine, which rev's nicely and is very compact in a large engine bay so the car can take a lot of damage and still run, but it doesn't sound like the V6s or straight sixes from the days when they had to run the original engine.

Of things I can think of in kit form that I've seen raced there is the Italeri Volvo 740, Hasegawa Jaguar XJ-S, Tamiya Jaguar Mk2, various large Mercedes saloons and coupes from Tamiya and Italeri, Toyota Supra Mk3 from Tamiya or Hasegawa (a surprisingly effective and strong banger - look out for a guy called Tye Williams (639), who can race and wreck them with great skill), and quite a range of big Japanese saloons like Lexus IS200 and LS400, Nissan Cedric, Toyota Mark II etc. A big race meeting will also attract random American stuff, have a look at some of the things that were raced at the King's Lynn Stadium Halloween Carnival last weekend.....

Some of those kits aren't cheap, but it could give a new lease of life to a gluebomb or incomplete/damaged kit.

Some great leads and insight there - thank you!!  I found a banger forum online that has a BUNCH of cool photos on there, including a thread of ‘World Final’ paintjobs…amazing the amount of effort that goes into them!!  Murals, hand-painted lettering, airbrushing…there’s so much cool inspiration there!

[stitchdup]

On 10/31/2024 at 3:08 AM, CabDriver said:

Some great leads and insight there - thank you!!  I found a banger forum online that has a BUNCH of cool photos on there, including a thread of ‘World Final’ paintjobs…amazing the amount of effort that goes into them!!  Murals, hand-painted lettering, airbrushing…there’s so much cool inspiration there!

some of the bodies are available in 1/32 prints but they might be blocky when scaled up

https://cults3d.com/en/users/ainsliecarolina/3d-models