LATEST PROJECTS ROADSTERS

[mattb]

I've put up pix of the guys racing the hot rod coupes at Bullitt on the Blue King. I try hard to build cars equal to a guys driving skill to make it equal for everybody. I've found a couple critical factors, #1 being the weight and center of gravity of the body. I had a couple Jimmy Flintstone chopped 3 window coupes that looked great, but just would not handle like the Snaptite 34 3 window coupe. I weighed both bodies and the resin coupe was like 90 grams and the snaptite 30. That's a lot more weight high up in the chassis and I gave up on the resin coupes. One guy gave me a built up 32 touring car to use for his car. I stripped it down and built it hi-boy style. The COG of that body was really low and he became a good racer with that body! To vary things a little, I took a built up 32 roadster and stripped it down and made a mold for some fast slush cast bodies. While heavier than injection molded, but not much, the COG is really low. I did one for myself and 2 for a couple other racers and they have turned out to be competitive cars.

Here's the bare body, thought about cutting out the driver area and putting a driver in from the bottom like an old salts flat racer. If the cars were raced a little more carefully, I might have done that, but we end up on the floor some nights. I should have mounted a Cox driver and made it part of the mold, but I didn't think of that until I started finishing the body!

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This is the first one I built for myself.

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This one is for the guy that ran the touring body.

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I did one un-painted for a young boy that likes the fun we have with our crash and burn racing. He is painting his this week, so it should be a surprise what he will come up with. One is on the desk now that is going to one of the other racers for finishing. We have fun with this style car on a flat brass or H&R chassis with Slot Car Corner Jaws motor. The motors are great and easy to get all our guys running at about 8 seconds a lap. Fast, but not too fast.

More pix in the next post.

[mattb]

Wanting to build a better coupe, I chopped an old 5 window coupe body and built this one from an injection molded body, it runs equal to the roadsters and snaptites.
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Here's the Flintstone coupe body I really like, but it's just too heavy. Not as easy to drive.
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This is the first car I built on an H&R chassis, another used model kit body. It ran great from day one and is still as fast as the other cars and still runs the MT5 motor.
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[Mitch58]

Great looking cars. I have several of these in 1/32 and am trying figure a way to either alter a chassis or scratch build one for them.