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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2016 16:48:42 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Dec 9, 2016 16:54:44 GMT -5
Quick little update. The front & back of the homebrewed roll cage is coming together. I still need to add braces/dash support to the front, & fab up a dash: The body is also starting to show some of the effects of rough & tumble dirt track action: I've also started scribing the trunk lid to open it & making the mods needed to the rims to make them like I want. I need to get the toe board attached so I can measure the distance for the upper & lower side bars for the roll cage & get them attached & the roll cage properly square. Once that's done, the front, rear & side nerf bars are built & attached & the trunk interior is built, the rest is just basic building, painting & detailing. Oh, and I am going to form a new hood from embossing metal. More to come..... Since Bob commented that he'd like photographs of vintage modifieds ran like this, to start with I'm going to provide two links from 3 Wides Picture Vault, one for 50s modifieds & one for 60s modifieds, as this car straddles both decades in that it could have ran in the 50s to about 1963-64 before being obsolete, as least as far as the flattie being competitive. The site won't allow right clicking of their pics, so the links will have to be perused at one's leisure. 1950s modifieds: www.3widespicturevault.com/3wides50s_before_1a.htm1960s modifieds: www.3widespicturevault.com/3wides60s_1a.htm
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Post by Dennis on Dec 10, 2016 13:14:05 GMT -5
I'm glad Bob gave a green light to share this here. Digging it!
Do you know of any source for 50's / 60's modification rules and classifications for these cars? I don't know why I thought they had to have stock-type engines but some of the pictures in the links you shared definitely show otherwise.
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Post by Bernard Kron on Dec 10, 2016 13:29:02 GMT -5
I'm glad Bob gave a green light to share this here. Digging it! Do you know of any source for 50's / 60's modification rules and classifications for these cars? I don't know why I thought they had to have stock-type engines but some of the pictures in the links you shared definitely show otherwise. The rules were highly regionalized with many small local jalopy series. Some required purely stock motors as well as chassis and bodies. Others evolved to more sophisticated specs.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2016 13:46:08 GMT -5
Me too! No I don't Dennis. So many different tracks set their own rules that unless you're replicating an exact car from a certain track & era & have the reference material needed for that build, you're left kinda winging it. Flathead Fords, inline Chevy/GMC sixes, & even inline eights were used in the 50s & 60s until the SBC began to slowly take over, (unless the class was specifically an inline six class of course), though teams ran BBC, different Ford V8s after the flathead, & the occasional V8 from other manufacturers as well. As long as the car followed the rules from a certain track, it pretty much was "run whatcha brung". The rules were usually fairly close, so you could run several tracks in an area with your car., but could also differ just enough from track to track to keep certain drivers that were popular at a track at that track. Like i told Bob in a PM, I'm doing somewhat of a generic build. I'd had this planned for ten years or more, but kept running into things that precluded my building it. About eight years ago in an article in Scale Auto, Clay Kemp built a model of the 34 Ford dirt tracker his dad raced here in Iowa in the 60s which has served as a guide in building mine. Even before then in SAE around 1997, Doug Whyte built a mostly scratch built 32/33 Chyrsler modified powered by an inline flathead Chrysler V8, a replica of an actual 1/1 car that ran in CT ins the 60s. That was my first inspiration, along with a single pic in that same issue of a 34 Ford dirt tracker built & in a contest. For building early dirt modified Big Donkey resin has a lot of great parts, as that's all they specialize in: www.bigdonkeyresin.com/In this case however, I'm using parts I have on hand, along with what aftermarket parts I already have that I need, & scratch building the rest. For example, the tires I'm using are the universally unloved Goodyear Rally GTs found in many AMT kits from the 70s on. Why? Because the profile, sidewall sipes & tread pattern is perfect for the look I'm after, with the Rally GT lettering sanded off: Either three of the large tires, or two of the larges ones on the back, with a smaller one on the right front, along with a Firestone Supreme as the left front "pony tire" in either case will work perfectly. The rims are the 36 Ford stock with the "Wide Five" pattern used on so many short track cars for years, & mated with the deep dish trim/rim rings from the AMT 66 Galaxie kit. I can adjust the depth of those, along with using a more shallow ring, (& placing either ring in back or in front), to replicate any look I'm after here.
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Post by dodgefever on Dec 10, 2016 16:40:57 GMT -5
Now it's been given the green light I'll be following this here. I must admit I don't know a lot about this type of racing, but it's striking how similar some '50s and early '60s modifieds appear to our UK "stock cars", even now. Ours are now purpose built cars with fabricated chassis and bodies, raced on shale (dirt) ovals, but they did evolve from jalopy type cars with stock bodies and they've more or less kept that appearance.
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Post by cturner on Dec 10, 2016 17:53:45 GMT -5
RMCM has some gorgeous dirt track tires! 3 widths..plus a pony tire another guy and I in the club gave him to cast! Also...a bit wider wide 5 wheels (36 Ford wheels) to fit his middle sized dirt tire! He also does the 36 Ford wheels from the kit that we can use for dirt cars..those also fit the pony tire mentioned earlier. Along with all his flathead parts...there is no reason to fail at making a vintage dirt car! THANK YOU BOB for allowing them now!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2016 18:41:42 GMT -5
I'm trying to avoid the aftermarket route, (other than what I already have on hand that works with this build), in favor of kit bashing & scratch building this time. I love R&MoM stuff & have used it in the past, along with many other aftermarket vendors items, but I'm enjoying actually creating this from my own ideas & my own hands. I'll be using some Detail Master PE linkages, a throttle return spring from another vendor, (I'll have to dig out the parts from my aftermarket box when I'm ready to use them to remember who makes them), & some other aftermarket parts as needed, (even some craft items, stay tuned), but just like the 1/1s they built like this "back in the day", most of it is going to be homebrewed.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 10, 2016 20:23:59 GMT -5
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Post by cturner on Dec 10, 2016 21:41:34 GMT -5
With that rollcage..it definitely ran in the late 50's early 60's.
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Post by spex84 on Dec 10, 2016 23:04:53 GMT -5
Woohoo sewer pipe rollcage! Haha...these cars have not been my primary interest over the last number of years, but I've been very curious about them, and a while back collected a bunch of photos off the internet of wild crashes and other action featuring dirt track jalopies. I love the idea of a "run what you brung" rough and ready style of racing, and it looks like your project will do the idea justice Did the early cars have such fat tires? I know by the 60s lots of guys were stretching tires onto wide wheels for their dune buggies, but not sure about what level dirt track jalopies were at in the 50s.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 11, 2016 8:19:11 GMT -5
Chris since this build straddles late 50s-mid 60s, those tire just fit in under the wire. Plus, in that single photo I mentioned in that 1997 edition of SAE the 34 Ford modified had those, & they just looked "right". Other than building models as a kid in the 70s with those Rally GT tires in them, (back when they looked cool on street rods & street machines of that era just because they were wide), I've never found a good use for them until seeing that photo. In this case it's not so much the width, but the tread pattern, sidewall sipes, & those nice fat sidewalls themselves that capture "the look" for me. Once dirtied up & weathered, they'll actually look more right.
Yep, the roll cage is made from Evergreen 3/16" styrene which scales out to 4.69". A bit large, but the local Hobbytown didn't have the next smallest diameter. That link I provided from HAMB shows some similar sized bars.
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Post by spex84 on Dec 11, 2016 11:32:37 GMT -5
I've seen photos of surviving drag cars and dirt trackers that had roll cages and nerf bars made from actual plumbing pipe...and sometimes from whatever tubing the builders could find. You can't scrimp when it comes to safety, right? Ha!
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Post by cycolacfan on Dec 17, 2016 5:55:02 GMT -5
Interesting project, be watching this one with interest.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 17, 2016 19:11:56 GMT -5
Look for another update Monday/Tuesday. I ordered the next size down Evergreen tubing, because it's more correctly sized in scale from the photos I've combed over, & it's supposed to arrive Monday, so I'm temporarily stalled on the project until then. Luckily I can use the overall dimensions of the already built cage to make the new one from. I'm seriously jonesing to get back to this one!
Some more work has been done, but I'd like to get to the point of having things in primer before posting more pics.
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