Post by Mr.409 on Nov 26, 2015 8:06:16 GMT -5
This project started out as an AirTrax resin body that I bought from a local Model Car Show about two months ago. It was a body only as AirTrax was selling their resin kits in there, but they also had some of these bodies where something had gone wrong during the molding process. Some of these bodies had bigger mold issues in them, but this was so good that I still don't know what's wrong with it... The price was about $4 so I just had to have it.
When it's body only, I will have to buy separately bumpers and grille and some other little parts for it, but that should be no problem as Juha and Tapani at AirTrax are great guys to deal with and I've done the same thing before.
My plan is to build a Finnish Street Altered Drag Car from the early '80s. At that time, Drag Racing was a pretty new thing in Finland (First race was driven here in 1975) and Drag Cars were home built... And they looked like that too. Their driving abilities weren't often very good and tracks had no prep on them so usually it was quite slippery even though drivers laid some track glue on the ground after burnout and spinned the wheels in that liquid. Street Altered cars had to have naturally aspirated engines running on gasoline, but otherwise engine tuning was pretty much free. It was allowed to build a new frame and suspension components were free as well.
My plan is to scratchbuild a frame from square styrene rod and all suspension components will be taken from my spare parts box. Interior will be very simple and overall I'm not trying to make this too cleanly finished so that it looks like it could have raced in Street Altered back then.
So that you get the idea how these cars looked, here are some old pictures of Street Altered cars from Finland...
Esko Ahola's Flat Top Plymouth and Jarmo Tolvanen's Wheelie Valiant
Kotten & Pommen's "Hitler's Revenge" VW Beetle
Veikko Hohtari's Ford Escort
Jokke Wilander's Beaver Rocker Cortina.
My car won't be an exact replica of any car that was racing, I just want to build something that could have been racing back then. One of the reasons for this is that there's not much reference material found on those cars.
I started by removing mold flash from window areas and then I started to mock up tires. Rear Slicks are from Jo-Han '69 AMC AMX Super Stock and front tires are 13 inch tires from AMT Chevy Monza. Because most guys didn't narrow their rear axles on their 1:1 Street Altereds, rear wheel openings had to be cut larger and then rear tires stuck outside the bodyline. That's why I did the same on mine:
Stance should be something like this:
Building the frame needed some careful planning. I knew I should build the basic frame first before I can do any mock ups on front or rear suspension or engine, but after some planning I figured out that I can't build the frame too much before I have figured out where rear and front suspension, engine, driveshaft etc will be located.
Start of the frame was very simple...
I couldn't add any crossmembers to the rearend of that frame piece yet, because as I said, it's not sure where the driveshaft will be located. Rear section of the frame was built according to some reference pics of an old Street Altered car. At least one crossmember needs to be added there as well, but I can't do it quite yet.
After those two pieces were glued together, I needed to add some material to both sides of that basic frame. Before that, though, I needed to remove some unneccessary resin from underside of the body. A Motor Tool took care of them easily, but next time I know to wear a breathing mask when doing this...The resin dust is pretty nasty stuff!
And then some more plastic was added to the frame...
I found good wheels for this one in my parts box. Slot Mags were a popular choice back then and these look pretty good under the Cortina. Unfortunately my rear slicks are not in a good shape... Chrome stripping and some magnesium paint color will be needed on the wheels, too.
Inner wheels / brakes are from parts box as well. They don't fit perfectly, but they're pretty close.
But because there was no way I could find another set of those Jo-Han slicks, I had to try restoring them. In this picture you can see an unrestored and restored slick tire next to each others. For restoration I used 600 and 1000 grit sandpapers and a fine file. After that I painted textes with a toothpick and Revell Flat White.
Rear axle came from my parts box, too. This seems to be one from Monogram '56 Chevy but someone had cut leaf springs apart from it a bit roughly, so it'll need some smoothing out. This axle was a bit too wide, but I narrowed it a little to fit better under the Cortina and drilled holes to the wheels so that axle ends go in those holes properly.
And here's a little mock up.
This is where I am at right now. Only problem so far is that with those small front tires that I'm using, I'm not sure where I can find front wheels that are small enough. I'd prefer it having steel wheels but I can't find any that are that small. Hopefully I can find a set somewhere.
When it's body only, I will have to buy separately bumpers and grille and some other little parts for it, but that should be no problem as Juha and Tapani at AirTrax are great guys to deal with and I've done the same thing before.
My plan is to build a Finnish Street Altered Drag Car from the early '80s. At that time, Drag Racing was a pretty new thing in Finland (First race was driven here in 1975) and Drag Cars were home built... And they looked like that too. Their driving abilities weren't often very good and tracks had no prep on them so usually it was quite slippery even though drivers laid some track glue on the ground after burnout and spinned the wheels in that liquid. Street Altered cars had to have naturally aspirated engines running on gasoline, but otherwise engine tuning was pretty much free. It was allowed to build a new frame and suspension components were free as well.
My plan is to scratchbuild a frame from square styrene rod and all suspension components will be taken from my spare parts box. Interior will be very simple and overall I'm not trying to make this too cleanly finished so that it looks like it could have raced in Street Altered back then.
So that you get the idea how these cars looked, here are some old pictures of Street Altered cars from Finland...
Esko Ahola's Flat Top Plymouth and Jarmo Tolvanen's Wheelie Valiant
Kotten & Pommen's "Hitler's Revenge" VW Beetle
Veikko Hohtari's Ford Escort
Jokke Wilander's Beaver Rocker Cortina.
My car won't be an exact replica of any car that was racing, I just want to build something that could have been racing back then. One of the reasons for this is that there's not much reference material found on those cars.
I started by removing mold flash from window areas and then I started to mock up tires. Rear Slicks are from Jo-Han '69 AMC AMX Super Stock and front tires are 13 inch tires from AMT Chevy Monza. Because most guys didn't narrow their rear axles on their 1:1 Street Altereds, rear wheel openings had to be cut larger and then rear tires stuck outside the bodyline. That's why I did the same on mine:
Stance should be something like this:
Building the frame needed some careful planning. I knew I should build the basic frame first before I can do any mock ups on front or rear suspension or engine, but after some planning I figured out that I can't build the frame too much before I have figured out where rear and front suspension, engine, driveshaft etc will be located.
Start of the frame was very simple...
I couldn't add any crossmembers to the rearend of that frame piece yet, because as I said, it's not sure where the driveshaft will be located. Rear section of the frame was built according to some reference pics of an old Street Altered car. At least one crossmember needs to be added there as well, but I can't do it quite yet.
After those two pieces were glued together, I needed to add some material to both sides of that basic frame. Before that, though, I needed to remove some unneccessary resin from underside of the body. A Motor Tool took care of them easily, but next time I know to wear a breathing mask when doing this...The resin dust is pretty nasty stuff!
And then some more plastic was added to the frame...
I found good wheels for this one in my parts box. Slot Mags were a popular choice back then and these look pretty good under the Cortina. Unfortunately my rear slicks are not in a good shape... Chrome stripping and some magnesium paint color will be needed on the wheels, too.
Inner wheels / brakes are from parts box as well. They don't fit perfectly, but they're pretty close.
But because there was no way I could find another set of those Jo-Han slicks, I had to try restoring them. In this picture you can see an unrestored and restored slick tire next to each others. For restoration I used 600 and 1000 grit sandpapers and a fine file. After that I painted textes with a toothpick and Revell Flat White.
Rear axle came from my parts box, too. This seems to be one from Monogram '56 Chevy but someone had cut leaf springs apart from it a bit roughly, so it'll need some smoothing out. This axle was a bit too wide, but I narrowed it a little to fit better under the Cortina and drilled holes to the wheels so that axle ends go in those holes properly.
And here's a little mock up.
This is where I am at right now. Only problem so far is that with those small front tires that I'm using, I'm not sure where I can find front wheels that are small enough. I'd prefer it having steel wheels but I can't find any that are that small. Hopefully I can find a set somewhere.
Honestly I think I just have to live with them as I believe I'm not going to find another set of them anyway.
I've used them before on a couple of builds and they are great quality.
It's an interweb thing.....