Street Rod

[Papa V Racing]

Got supplies in the mail Friday, Now I am in building mode... I am wanting to try this body for Street Rod.. I need to go back into the archives to see body attachment... I see QT with a new hot car and I have watched video after video with the Street Rods.. I just like the older cars....

 

[Chief]

You going to put hydraulics on it man??? hahahahaha

 

[Papa V Racing]

I have a set for my 64 Impala..lol.. but not on this one...I sat this on a body we have now and it looks Swweeett...

 

[Crash Enburn]

Excellent, Vic!

QT had posted pics of how he mounts his SR bodies, but all the links to the pics are now broken.

I'll try and describe it (it's the method I've been using):

• Shape two blocks of wood approx. 1/4"x1/2"x1-1/2" to fit into the sides of your car (depending on room available and/or required). Slab-sided cars are easy, Lambos, Jag XJ220, Carrera GTs, etc. have intakes on their sides, making things more difficult.
• I use 1/2" Metal screws with a 1/4" drive head for my SRs.
• Carefully measure the distance between where the front and back mounting holes on the mounting block will be. Make a note of the distance between the spots, and how high from the bottom of the block they are. Place a pencil mark on the bottom of the blocks that lines up with the spot above it. Use a 1/4" (or 9/32") drill bit to drill the mounting holes into the spots. Between 1/8" and 3/16" to accept the head of the screw.
• Mount the blocks into the sides of the body, taking care to keep it level.
• I prefer my raw chassis to be 3/8" - 1/2" thick, to give me leeway in how low/high I can mount it in the body. I eyeball the position of the chassis in the body, and then use my pencil marks from the bottoms of the mounting blocks to mark where on the chassis the screws will go.
• Carefully measure out the point where your mounting screws will go, then pre-drill a guide hole for each to prevent the wood from splitting.
• Put the screws into the chassis, and then carefully match the heads to the holes in the mounting blocks.
• You're ready to find/mark where the wheels will go. (Take care not to have the car sit too low, as the tails on the older model cars tend to drag in the transition)
• Once you've marked or drilled out the axle holes, you can hog out the extra wood in the chassis. Just keep it strong at the mounting points as that will receive a lot of stress from manhandling the body on and off.

I've also considered using Velcro (which may well be easier):

• Measure out and glue blocks to the underside of the hood and trunk of your car. Take care to make sure the blocks are tall enough.
• Put one side of the Velcro under the mounting block, put the other on your chassis. Stick it.
• This should provide plenty force to keep the body on.

Instead of Velcro, you could screw through your chassis and into the mounting blocks.

Down4Derby uses something different still, as I understand it. I don't really know what it is though...

Just use the method that makes sense to you.

(I'll try and get some pics taken and posted to better show the QT method)

You can make out the mounting block inside here, with one of the mounting holes visible:

 

[Chief]

5kids has a good way of showing it too

 

[GravityX]

The Ole 70 Monte, rebuilt the suspension on one of these cars many years ago. Did it for a body shop, when it was finished it was a sweet looking ride. I've owned a couple Monte Carlos over the years, a '74 and '85.

 

[OLD BLUE RACER]

Hey Crash, let me get things right you all just use the body and anything that goes on the body for realistic value windows, chrome, and such. As far as paint, should you primer the body like you would a wood car or just go with the primary color and decals then clear coat. I have a 64 Pontiac GTO I am planning on running. Any information would be great before I start. It has been at least 25-30 years since I did my last car model lol

 

[Chief]

I dont want to ge to technical on you here, but in my experience, primers main purpose is to fix minor imperfections and to aid in adhesion of top coats. That being said with these cars I would use a primer based on the color I wanted. Darker primer = a darker value or richer deeper color and lighter primer is just the opposite.

 

[OLD BLUE RACER]

Chief thanks I have in mind to keep the Black Widow as realistic as I can on the box it gives me the colors to use so if I follow them for the body it should turn out fine

 

[quadad]

PapaV, I hope that sled is not over 8 1/4" long when you put it together. That spec kept me away from some of my favorites.

 

[Crash Enburn]

Quadad/PapaV: Depending on which source you best believe, the model would be 0.018" short of max (full-size car is 205.8"), or 0.01 long (full-size car is 206.5"). That's like two strokes of sandpaper on the nose... I don't think anyone here would raise a fuss over that.

Old Blue: You're right. You want the body, bumpers, headlights, glass, and tails to build up the SR. Most here put in side windows too — I use the clear plastic from packaging: cut to fit then glue it in. Paint the insides of the windows with a light coat of black — it makes them look tinted and hides the guts of your car, helping the illusion of real.
Depending on how detailed you want to be will determine how involved your painting will be. I prefer primer in all cases, but you can often get away without it. If you are really going for a smooth, realistic body, you'll want to sand off any mold seams, and possibly fill in any indentations. Primer will help you see those imperfections. Use lacquer paints. Duplicolor is my fave, but the Testors and Model Master paints do a pretty good job too.

Wash the body and parts in soapy water first, to clean off any production residues that might interfere with the paint.

I look forward to seeing the build!

 

[GravityX]

Quadad may be on to something here. The full-size, Monte Carlo, is 206.5" long. So... a 1:25 scale car would be 8.260" long, just a schimidge over length.

But as CE mentioned, a few strokes of the eraser would take care of this.

 

[OPARENNEN]

What is the length of this body?

 

[Chief]

What is the length of this body?

Well I put my tape measure up against my computer screen and got 7 1/2 inches long...HAHHA

 

[Crash Enburn]

Chief: Your monitor is too big.

Opa: The car is 6-7/8" long, and 2-3/4" wide. I used it as my entry in my sons' troop's Pinewood Grand Prix this year. It worked just fine there (I won the leader race again), but the nose to rear axles is only 4-3/4", so it is at a huge disadvantage in the SR class here. /images/boards/smilies/frown.gif

On the plus side, I did just finish packaging my '71 Charger and '90 Diablo for this week's race.

 

[OLD BLUE RACER]

As far as weight to get it right same as you would for a regular pwd thin car or something different siince the model body is involved

 

[OPARENNEN]

Back in the day (long, long, long ago), we used to strip everything off of our race cars, leaving only the body, which we would then drop into a large tank of acid (I don't even know if such exist any more), and let the acid eat away about a third of the metal. I did this on my '57 Porsche Speedster. By the time I put everything back together, the 1300 pound car weighed in at 900 pounds.

Now what we need to do is find some caustic liquid that we can dip our Street Rods into. That would allow us to put more weight into the rear end of the Chassis. Now, rather that or something else, the point is to take as much weight out of the plastic 1/25 body as possible by whatever means we could come up with.

Just a point. When I did this with my Porsche, I had to weld in washers inside of all the bolt holes, because the acid made them much larger, as well as many body edges. But it ended up working (other than the fact that SCCA rules didn't allow the car to weigh in at it's advertised weight less 15 percent (which we solved by welding steel plates on the bottom of the car's Chassis, which incidentally lowered the car's center of gravity).

But there are ways this can be accomplished on our SR cars. Now I will leave it up to you SR guys to figure out how to do this. There are many ways (unless John reads this and comes up with another new rule).

Excuse my ancient memories.

 

[Crash Enburn]

Opa, I would rather enjoy hanging out with you.

Ol' Blue: Yeah, the body weight of the model is something to overcome. I try to remove any extra plastic that might be needed for a model, but just contributes needless weight to an SR car. Firewalls, wheel wells, hood and trunk perches, etc. Also, Snap-Tite models use much thicker plastic, so they are heavier. You'll want to remove whatever extra wood you can from your chassis, to make that as light as possible.

I haven't lightened my chassis yet (taking baby steps on improvements to the cars), but in each of my SRs, I have ~2-3 oz. of weight placed behind the rear axles, and still have a CoM at an inch or more.

Next month's iterations will include lightened chassis.

 

[Kinser Racing]

Opa's a fun old fellow! I hope you all get the chance to see his hammer in action. /images/boards/smilies/biggrin.gif

 

[Crash Enburn]

Ol' Blue: I just realized that I didn't quite answer your question. Yes, you want to treat the weighting the same as what you do for a normal PWD car; CoM ~3/4" in front of rear axle. It's just a little harder to do as the body puts a lot of weight over all the car.