A Belly Tanker on a budget!

[oldcarfan]

This is my attempt at a belly tanker in 1/25th scale. It is strictly curbside for now, but I might open it up at some time in the future. The body is fiberglass built over a carved balsa wood plug. I used it to make two halves, then glued them together. The actual material I used is from an old T-shirt that I stretched over the plug, then coated with fiberglass to get a thin, strong shell. It came out about the thickness a vacuformed shell might be. The axles and wheels are parts box. It is painted to represent a car that might have been built by a couple of kids on a budget in the 50's. Nothing fancy.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Again, very nice work, and again somewhat similar to an ongoing project of mine.

Edited April 1, 2013 by Ace-Garageguy

[iBorg]

Agree.....

Nice. Very nice.

Mike

[ratnasty]

coooooooooooooooooooooooooool

Chuck

[cobraman]

Cool. Love those belly tankers. Are there any kits ?

[george 53]

VERY ingenious! Sounds like a REAL modeler! It looks pretty good too! I've always liked these lil belly tank racers!

[southpier]

what did you use for a mold release?

[oldcarfan]

what did you use for a mold release?

Glad everyone likes it. Since the balsa was so soft and porous and I was in too much of a hurry to seal it properly, I just wrapped the plug in aluminum foil. I did wax that a little. I then stretched the T shirt material over it. Once I had 2 or 3 layers of resin on it, I sanded it until it was pretty smooth then trimmed the edges. Once that was done, I popped the body half off and did another. The inside was a little rough and had to be sanded because it takes on any wrinkles in the tin foil. Then I glued the two halves together and bondoed the seam and primed it like any model. Incidentally, I did the same thing to make one 18 inches long using a foam plug, but should have made it a little thicker as its pretty flexible.

[Mooneyzs]

Totally cool belly tanker. Nice job!

[Pro Wrench]

I've been wanting to build one of these and have actually even considered trying to find a tank of the proper size from an airplane model. Now that I see this, I REALLY want to build one.

[southpier]

thanks. any shared tricks you have for getting the plug symetrical?

seems you have the system down to a science.

Edited April 2, 2013 by southpier

[oldcarfan]

thanks. any shared tricks you have for getting the plug symetrical?

seems you have the system down to a science.

Most of the original belly tanks were a bit over 10 feet long, though some of the racers stretched them, so there is a lot of leeway for us modelers unless you are building a specific car. I don't have any drawing programs, so I found an old line drawing on a website, ]www.ww2aircraft.net/forum/technical-requests/p-38-drop-tank-blueprints-18116.html . I copied the drawing into Word and then enlarged it up to the size I wanted which for 1/25 scale is just a bit over 5 inches and printed it out. One note here, if you are doing a male plug rather than a female, make your plug just a little undersize to compensate for the thickness of the fiberglass part. I then glued the outline to a thin piece of basswood to make sure that both sides would be the same and then used another half of the same glued at a 90 degree angle down the center of the first one to get the profile. Then I filled the open areas with balsa and sanded it to the correct shape. I have since coated the whole thing with fiberglass resin just to make it waterproof. Here are three pictures I took this morning. I put a removable L-brace on it so I could clamp it into a vise to make it easier to handle. Then I stretched a single layer of T-shirt over the tin foil and stapled it to the bottom. I used T shirt material because I happened to have some old ones that were going to be thrown out. Then I coated the whole thing with a few coats of fiberglass resin, the cheap Bondo kind. While it was still a little soft, I trimmed the bottom close and then left it to harden. I wet sanded it next so the plug would support the part. Then I removed the handle and sanded the bottom flush. Repeat the process and you have two halves. These were then glued together and bondoed to smooth it out. I used some thin plastruct to make the seam where the real tanks are joined together. After that, you can cut open the hatches or what ever else you may want. This method may not be as good as one of the resin or vac kits, but the advantage is that the materials are cheap and you can make as many as you want using only readily available materials. The whole mold making process was only about 2 hours since balsa is so easy to sand. I made several parts before I was happy with them. Once I had them bonded together, I added the fairing behind the driver out of a vacuformed toothbrush package. Due to the flexibility of the parts, I would definitely recommend some bulkheads inside to keep the proper round shape! Hope all this helps.This is the drawing from the website that I used to start with.

Edited April 2, 2013 by oldcarfan

[oldcarfan]

That last drawing is from the mentioned website. Hope that is ok.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Hmmm...if I remember correctly, in actuality the majority of lakes belly-tankers were based on the P-38 316 gallon tank, which measured about 13.5 feet long with a diameter of about 36 inches.

EDIT: From H.A.M.B. archives...

... The hot ticket are WWII P-38 tanks which are 36" across at the fat spot.

As usual, Rich is correct ...

The larger (~316 gallon, 13' 10" long, & 36" wide) drop tanks used on WWII P-38 Lightning aircraft are the "hot ticket".

Note however that P-38 aircraft also utilized smaller (~150 gallon, 10' 9" long, & 21" wide) drop tanks:

884899

... and these smaller tanks aren't really suitable for use as a Bonneville Belly Tank Lakester.

Edited April 2, 2013 by Ace-Garageguy

[ChrisR]

Nice!