Tom McEwen 1968 “Tirend” Sponsored AA/Fuel Dragster

jlucky · Monday at 09:59 PM

In the quest to enhance my “History of Dragsters” model collection and build known cars, here comes Tom McEwen’s “Tirend” sponsored AA/Fuel Dragster, one of the first dragsters to promote a non-automotive sponsor. McEwen was a great salesman and his efforts would eventually lead to the Hot Wheels sponsorship coming in to the sport and changing the whole dynamics of drag racing sponsorship. But that’s a story for another time. With the release of MPC’s Tom McEwen dragster (in tandem with the Don Prudhomme dragster of a couple years later) I thought it was perfect timing.

Well, what seemed like an easy build turned into something a lot more complicated. You might think it was easy just take the released kit and build it up…but…oh…no. It wasn’t quite that simple. You see there were a number of things not quite historically accurate about the released kit.

What I chose to do was take the front nose-piece and front wheel assembly of the Atlantis Don’ Prudhomme Hot Wheels kit and join it to an Altered States (RIP) resin cast short body. I also needed to shorten up the nose-piece to achieve the proper wheelbase of approximately 185 inches. Then I had to replace the reissued kits 426 Hemi with a proper 392 which came from a Wild Willie Borsch Altered sitting in the spare parts box along with resin cast headers. Then it was simply a matter of adding a 3D printed distributor to the kit’s magneto base, adding the appropriate wiring, Pro-Tech fuel lines, Detail Master fittings and 11.75 M&H AMT slicks and voila!