# Pete's Saturday Night Workbench



## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Welcome to what will be an ongoing thread featuring the stuff I'm working on. I can't afford a nice garage like some people here, heck I have to borrow tools from my neighbors most of the time. And they always call the Sheriff on me 'cuz sometimes I'm hammering well into the wee hours of the mornings. Anyway, here's what's going on, on the workbench right now.

Lately most of you know I've been hacking away at various DASH '55's to make my own Fairgrounds racers similar to what Phil at Road Race Replica's offers. I have gotten the lowering of the body down almost to a science, using a brass tube that fits over the screw post as a template as to just how much I can remove and have the car not bind up the gearing. This works great so long as I don't confuse the front one and the rear one, I have them marked appropriately now. 

I've also recently started punching my own 12" air cleaners for use on my modified bodies, a show-and-tell for that is elsewhere on the forum so I won't rehash it here. Up to this point I've been pretty much limited to the DASH '55 and '55 Pro Stock, Road Race Replica's '55 Chevy, their '57 Chevy and Ford Fairlane, and the '58 Thunderbird, and odd ball cars like the '59 Impala and '57 Studebaker Golden Hawk. OK, that's a pretty good selection for racing, but the first race car I ever had to do anything with was a neighbors 1956 Chevy Bel Air Hardtop Sedan. 

The sedan differed from the coupe by having the post support for the top, the car I remember (hopefully correctly) had framed door windows, which was the first thing I had to get modeled into my '56. The other was the wider grill, which in racing form was generally removed completely and a tube or cage bumper was used to protect the front end, thusly:










Other details that seem to be lost on the RRR fairgrounds cars as well as my early conversions was the removal of the tail light housings, which were rarely tinned over. Many of the cars had no rear bumpers, or at the least they had a tube, as a stock bumper would be trashed so regularly they wouldn't be worth replacing every weekend. The tube bumpers were pretty stout, and if bent you could wrap a chain around a tree and the bumper and back the car up to straighten it. 










So to build a proper post sedan '56 with nerf bars and tube bumpers was my goal. I recently provided my daughter Sarah with her own purple and white YooHoo sponsored DASH flat hood 1955 Chevy, and since she has not yet repaid me for it in the manner that was specified I repossessed it this evening to start my conversion. First orders of business was to sand all the stock trim off the car, cut the tail lights out and start carefully forming the wide mouth of the '56's grill. 

I had to make a new bumper mount since the DASH car mounted the grill and bumper on one unit, and worked it into a support for the very skinny lower forward front fenders. I had to extend the lower lip of the hood a little, and have tried to work it to also support the forward body post. I filled in the wing windows, on the race cars these were always removed but I needed a little extra thickness in the A pillar, they will be trimmed back to about 2/3rds their width they are now. The new B pillar was also made thicker than needed so I could trim it back to a proper looking thickness later. 










The hole in the hood is about 15" across and will house my 12" air cleaner. The cars I have pictures of that ran the pavement of Pan American Speedway in the mid 1970's had larger air cleaners, the one's that had hood cutouts for them looked similar to this. As this can be either a pavement or dirt car I figured a larger air cleaner can't hurt. The picture shows the tube bumpers not yet trimmed in length and the A and B pillar thicker by about a third than they will be once done. 

I'm hoping to have this body done in a few days, I don't know how many '56 fairgrounds cars I'll do but I'm pretty stoked about how well this one is already coming out. Stay tuned for more from the Saturday Night Workbench.


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## kiwidave (Jul 20, 2009)

Cool Pete. Looking forward to your progress on this one!


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## Rolls (Jan 1, 2010)

Great idea to start this thread, Pete! And great start to the thread with your excellent post! It's great to see how you take these bodies from start to finish. It's also a huge help to have those reference pics, too, so we can see where you're headed with the customizations. I didn't realize some stuff, like the no-taillights deal. Really looking fwd to future posts in your new thread!


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## tjd241 (Jan 25, 2004)

*Nice cars....*



Pete McKay said:


> I recently provided my daughter Sarah with her own purple and white YooHoo sponsored DASH flat hood 1955 Chevy, and since she has not yet repaid me for it in the manner that was specified I repossessed it this evening to start my conversion.


... ya big meanie.


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## tomhocars (Oct 19, 2005)

Pete you can never have to many variations of '55's.Tom


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

The '56 is coming right along, for the moment I took off the 2 1/2" tube bumpers though. After mulling over the 1:1 weight I went out and found a 4' section of pipe, it was nearly 80 lbs, so off came the big tubes for now. I may put some smaller 1 1/2" stock on there later, for now there's sanding and shaping to be done.



















I still need to work on the lower grill opening/front bumper mount, it's still rough. But the shape of the A and B posts is all but done in these photos. I need to get my precision files out and square up the edges but it's pretty much the width I wanted. 

From here it gets a coat of gray primer to see where it's still rough, then a wet 440 sanding followed by a 600 sanding. Once I decided on the bumpers I'm going to shoot a couple of coats of gloss white Krylon so see where is may still need work. The air cleaner will be the last add-on, and then it's off to the race track.


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## DesertSlot (May 8, 2009)

Looks like it's coming along very nicely Pete!


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## slotcarman12078 (Oct 3, 2008)

Looking great Pete!! 55's were nice, but I always liked the 56 front end just a little more. :thumbsup::thumbsup:


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## joegri (Feb 13, 2008)

yeah man thats what i like! just get in ther and start cuttin and filin till ya come out with a picasso! old school race cars bring us all back to a different time.saturday nite bench sounds cool to. i,m having second thoughts of a shop. i think i,d rather buy t parts before i start buying lifts and such. nice pete keep that stuff commin!


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Some shots in white primer.




























Still rough in some spots, sanding later tonight will fix some of that. Decided to go with the stock bumpers, I just couldn't get the tube bumpers to look right. Thin nerf bars along the sides, air cleaner in place. The macro setting on my camera is helpful since I can see the rough spots even with my magnifier reading glasses. I need to even out the wheel well cut outs as well. I wonder what this thing would look like on a AWJL chassis with the big tires that are on the rear on all fours...


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## 1976Cordoba (Sep 20, 2000)

Cool - I am always down for a new shop opening up! Especially a racing shop.


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

Finally!!! A California shop!


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

*Wrapping this one up.*

I keep tellin' y'all, I do this work in my front yard!! OK, that does it, I'm ordering a country house, a couple of trees and and I'm going to do a front yard diorama so y'all can see where I do my work.

OK, a final set of pics to show the difference between a virgin (did that make it past the censor?) '55 and the '56. 










Weights: the virgin (oops, I did it again) '55 weighs in at a modest 4.0 grams as it arrives from DASH, the PMR '56 conversion is a whelterweight at just 3.3 grams. I used no putty, just CA glue, zip kicker and 0.015 sheet styrene to make the changes. In just over 24 hours it's 99% done. Smooth as a baby's butt now too after sanding down to 800 wet/dry.


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## bobhch (Apr 22, 2007)

*The crowd is going nuts....last lap and it's down to the wire coming off turn two....*

Pete,

Hey, Hey, Hey this is a cool build up you got going on here! Nice pics of your 56 fun conversion dirt ass kicking car.

Bob...and Pete crosses the line and takes the Checkered flag...zilla


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

The '56 is just the beginning, as we being to switch over to the late 1960's cars there will be conversions (some radical) of MM Mustang fastbacks, Chevelles, Camaros and others. The idea I have for the Model Motoring Mustang Fastback is going to be extremely radical, nearly as radical as making a '56 out of a '55.


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

*Contemplating another fairgrounds project.*

With the '56 being done I'm thinking about a project to do before the Mustang arrives that I will be converting. I looked at what is available from other vendors like RRR and want to do subject they don't offer, and one that came to mind was the 1959 Impala. 

Dave Ewing recently sent me a body that was going to become my wife's fairgrounds car, but since we have decided to race 1960's cars in 2011 that body now is in the parts bin. The '59 is not offered as a dirt car by anyone I could find so the chance to get something unique (like a fellow drivers '57 Studebaker) has been appealing. And who knows, if we ever go back to racing the hobby stockers I'll still have access to it. 

So now starts the research. The '59 isn't as popular as the tri-year Chevy's as a racer, it is a long and heavy car. The body weighs a whopping 4.8 grams, that's close to a gram more than a stock DASH '55, and over a gram more than the RRR '55 Chevy. Size-wise the dimensions are about that of the RRR '57 Chevy. It's already pretty low but with a slightly nose up posture, not good for the type of racing where the chrome horn comes into play a lot. The nose up impact tends to deslot the car, so the first order of business was figuring out how much I can bring the nose down. A simple clay push figures that out, I placed a small ball of clay on the front of the gear plate and pushed the body down on it. This showed me I have about 1/8th inch to play with. 

There are a few things that will need fixing. The convertible top needs to be reshaped into a hard top, since the entire top is a single glass piece this gives me a substantial challenge since I need to remove the windshield. Removal of the chrome is a given, and should I leave the grill work in it or not. A pillar issues need to be addressed, possibly by representing a roll cage to give better support. This is all things I look at in researching this into a race car over the next day or so.


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## joegri (Feb 13, 2008)

custom is custom! pete is adding posts to lil cars and i,m cutting them out. just a big circle!great job on the posts pete!


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

I can send you them posts if you want Joe. 

All glass parts piss me off, especially if you need parts of them removed. Removing the front and back windows, reshaping the sides to be a hard top, all of this was going to be tricky. Low speed Dremel work was the easiest way and I have two engravers I used when I did gun engraving work. By taking little bits out of the clear parts I avoided catastrophic breakage, I get the part close to the shape I want and then with precision files and sandpaper take it the rest of the way. 










This is not it's final resting place, I sat it on there to see if I can modify the back tabs a little, the vent windows will be back against the ridge on the top of the door. Once the top is glued back in place I'll continue to reshape the sides to the hard top size and shape the frames for the front and rear window, it'll be easier to work on it as a single solid piece.



















With the vent windows intact there is enough support, I may drill them out like the DASH '55's are just to keep that support. I'd love to keep scale thickness on the top supports but that's just not going to happen, they will have to be thicker than what will look scale. 

After getting the chrome out I don't think yet I will open those grill spaces. There are grills above the headlights, between the headlights and below. The grills under the bumper are already open, I'm just looking at the body thickness where the other grills are located, how much I'd need to drill out, and right now it's not worth it. That may change. 

The front post location is going to prevent me from using an air cleaner on the hood, so I'm considering a simple hood scoop instead. Of course the wheel wells will have to be opened but how much? Do I do it for the RRR wheel sets I use now or maybe just thin the body work for use of the narrows?


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## kiwidave (Jul 20, 2009)

Pete, your a machine!!!!!


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## resinmonger (Mar 5, 2008)

*Potential car...*

My dad had a 1950 Hudson Hornet. During an ice storm, a tree limb clobbered the rear window. Oddly enough, rear windows for this beast were hard to find in the late 60's... So, a guy bought it to run at the local dirt track. I'm hating the fact I don't have pictures. Dad was a sign painter and I think he got almost as much for painting the car as he did for the car...


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

A sign painter???? Man, that's a lost art.
I almost wanna get my work van hand painted lettering just for the nostalgia of it.


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## Bad Dawg Slots (Feb 8, 2009)

*nice work*

Pete,

I must say this conversion is impressive .Nice job on the 56 and look forward to see how the 59 turns out :thumbsup:


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Have I said how much I hate working with glass parts?

I have lost count of how many times I have broken this top, it may be 10, or close to it. Chances are this car will never see the track, one even slight impact and the top is history. I'm still thinking about a roll bar/cage representation on the inside, at this point I'm also considering a sledge hammer. 










I drilled two small holes in each wing window to set the length and opened it up with a hot xacto blade, there was no way I could cut it and not have it break again. I've been working with my needle files but the clear plastic is so much less forgiving than the styrene, it's hard to get the edges even without taking off too much. I can trim out the wing window frames with an engraver but it won't be today, the Parkinson's is messing with me a little and I'm in the middle of a walnut harvest and a man down. I'll work on it some tonight, may shoot a coat of primer to look for the rough spots.


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## Bill Hall (Jan 6, 2007)

Gee Pete...????

Given that you've done whittled up a gazzillion cars and bucks in yer day; I cant imagine why you wouldnt just whittle a roof up out of styrene stock instead of fighting with plastic explosives.

Am I mising something here?


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## Rolls (Jan 1, 2010)

And your roll bar idea is sweet, too. It might be a bunch of trouble and weight like the bumper episode, but if it did work out, it'd be a very cool design element.


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Bill, this one has already drawn blood, it has me PO'd. It'll be finished, one way or the other. :beatdeadhorse:

Rolls, the roll cage would be 4 simple bars about the thickness of a heavy paper clip, two just behind the A pillar and two just behind the door line. I may even model the overhead bars on the inside as well just in case I feel like painting them. They would be epoxied to the inside of the roof near the side edges and on the main body where they extend downwards. I have done this before on a couple of Concourse cars but never to add structural integrity. I have a feeling that once I start trying to open the vent windows a little more they will break. I looked at the MEV '59 and his A pillars are wrong; the real car has them curving back towards the windshield, his go straight up to the top. This car at least will have correct A pillars.....until they start breaking...

No scoop for the hood though, I have instead started to model in a low hood blister. The length of the hood is way out of scale compared to the real car, even a small scoop looked bad.


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Got the '59 Impala done this morning, the roll cage gives the top some serious strength and doesn't look that bad. I also did an air cleaner but I'm considering sanding it off now. For the moment it stays.










The chrome is still chrome, the top is a close representation of the hardtop top, it's still a big car with a hulking front end. What to do with it now is the question.


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## tjet princess (Oct 27, 2008)

*Working on the new season.*

The paint shop isn't entirely closed. I stumbled on these today poking around the workbench...










Left to right: Red and gold '67 Chevelle, White '67 GTX, White with light blue '67 GTX, Yellow '67 Chevelle, another '67 Chevelle that was red with a gold hood and roof sides, a medium blue '67 GTX, a white '68 Charger, a red '68 Charger and another red Charger with a black roof. There was a page of notes with the following names: Bobby Allison, Dick Brooks, Norm Nelson, Cecil Gordon, Coo Coo Marlin, Dan Gurney, Junior Johnson, Bobby Isaac, and Buddy Baker. I'm assuming the names cooresponded to the cars in order. 

Here's my car for the 2011 season, a '67 Chevelle, yellow with chrome wheels and I was going to run Firestone tires but I think Goodyear is the tire we're supposed to have. Since I'm an 'independant' I don't see why I can't run my 'stones. 










And here's Winter Series logo. I think it's going to be the same logo, just the Winter Series part will be changed. Not sure I like how the Palms look at the bottom.


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

Nice stuff.


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## resinmonger (Mar 5, 2008)

My Dad Got Me Addicted to Slot Cars - Next on Oprah! :hat:

Thanks for the inside view into the race prep shop, Princess. :thumbsup:


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## tjet princess (Oct 27, 2008)

My sister used to always steal my Barbies so I had to find something to do that she wouldn't mess with, and that was slot cars. A side effect was it made me sort of popular with the boys probably a lot sooner than I should have been. My dad kept a really tight reign on both of us because I'm totally deaf and my sister is 80% deaf and is legally blind. She can see, just not good enough to race slot cars, so she left my cars alone. Since I was about 14 I guess I became a car girl, got my first bug when I was 17 and have worked on a lot of my own cars since then. Real cars, not slot cars, which I still don't fully understand how to tune things like pick up shoes and gearing. 

I got some foam board from the dollar store today, working on the blue print this evening but I'tll probably be tomorrow night before I start gluing stuff together.


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## martybauer31 (Jan 27, 2004)

So... ummm.... Pete....

When you and the princess are bored with these, let me know bud, I'll take em off your hands. The batch of stuff you just sent me is freaking awesome bud, thanks again! 

Marty


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## tjet princess (Oct 27, 2008)

Marty, dad is off on a second (third?) honeymoon on Catalina, he'll be back Wednesday. I'm assuming the batch you're talking about is the old bodies, the new cars are already starting to shape up nicely. I love my Chevelle and it actually handles a lot better than the DASH '55 I had before, same chassis but different body. The new bodies are the mass produced Model Motoring and other AW T-Jet bodies and they sit a little high on the chassis but still look pretty good. 

One of the things that the racing club wanted to do was get away from resin cars and back to the readily available cars. Unfortunately some of the 'readily available' cars aren't, so we both have been searching E-Bay and other places for Torino's and Fairlanes. I think the Fairlanes are only available on the friction motor cars, but the Torino's you can still buy on a running chassis. If you read about NASCAR in 1968 and 1969 it was pretty interesting with all the factory politics that was going on. There were not many Chevy drivers, most everyone raced Fords, Dodges and Plymouths. That's why it's a sort of scavenger hunt to find certain cars like the GTX. But one of the main rules is no resin cars, period.


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## ParkRNDL (Mar 20, 2002)

tjet princess said:


> I think the Fairlanes are only available on the friction motor cars, but the Torino's you can still buy on a running chassis.


I'm pretty sure the only Fairlanes that JL/AW put on slot car chassis were police cars... so yeah, if you want to do NASCARS, the pullback ones are easier, but if you're customizing/painting them anyway, it's probably no big deal to pull the gumball light off the roof...

--richard


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## tjet princess (Oct 27, 2008)

Richard, I'm talking about the bodies that had the #76 on the sides, those Fairlanes. Never saw one as a police car, only on the pullbacks.


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## wheelszk (Jul 8, 2006)

Same car .


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## tjet princess (Oct 27, 2008)

wheelszk said:


> Same car .


Huh, never saw one like that before. Would make a good pace car...


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

...really need to learn to lock my workroom door when I leave for a few days.


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## NTxSlotCars (May 27, 2008)

Pete McKay said:


> ...really need to learn to lock my workroom door when I leave for a few days.


LOL!!!!
707 iiii


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

The logo wasn't done, and some of those are customer cars. With those and what I have ordered and on their way I'll have 20 of the new Grand National cars. They include 3 '67 GTX's, 6 '68 Chargers, 4 '67 Chevelles, and 7 '68 Torino's. I'm hoping before the season starts to get a few of the '67 Farilane pullback cars to finish a 24 car field. Eventually (springtime) we hope to have a total of 43 cars.


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## 1scalevolvo (Feb 5, 2004)

:thumbsup::thumbsup:


:dude:


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## Pete McKay (Dec 20, 2006)

Welp, saw my new race shop this evening, looks nice. It's a lot bigger than I had expected, 12" wide and about 18" long, walls are all 3" tall. There's enough room for about 9 cars in the work bays and two paint booths and a small office. The contractor left off the showroom but that's fine, I can add it later if I want to. 

I also bought a brand new work table today, a nice "L" shaped thing with 6 drawers and an eye level cabinet for stuff. Sarah made me a really nice sign that reads "Grand National Garage" so I guess the Saturday Night Workbench will have to close up shop. It's going to take a while to outfit the new garage but I have so many cars in various stages of completion right now I won't have time until sometime in January. But as of this evening the Workbench is out of business as we move everything over into the new shop.


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## kiwidave (Jul 20, 2009)

Cool! Looking forward to seeing the new shop!


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