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Post by Keith Tanaka on Jan 18, 2013 21:20:10 GMT -8
Here's my newest post war NASCAR. It's a 1951 Chevrolet Fleetline. Chevrolet was not very active in NASCAR until 1955. The early Chevys such as this '51 model were underpowered compared to the popular NASCARs of that era. I did find only one '51 Chevy raced in NASCAR in the early fifties. I'll paint the body tomorrow and have it ready to run this Sunday for our monthly hardbody races. Keith
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Post by craigg on Jan 18, 2013 21:39:20 GMT -8
Looks interesting, haven't seen this model before. Lookng forward to it, willit beat my '55?
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Post by Keith Tanaka on Jan 18, 2013 23:49:28 GMT -8
Probably not. The '51 Chevy had a straight 6, 235 ci motor, while the '55 Chevy had the 283 ci I see some '51 Chevys still on the road, but they are usually low riders. '51 Chevy was better suited for cruising rather than racing Keith
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Post by craigg on Jan 21, 2013 6:05:06 GMT -8
For those who weren't there, Keith '51 went pretty good, was fast and handled well. Blew my '55 into the weeds.
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Post by Keith Tanaka on Jan 21, 2013 23:44:09 GMT -8
Here's the '51 Chevy ready to race. I took some practice laps at BPR this past Sunday and this new car runs lap times similar to my best 36D NASCAR as well as my '50 Olds. I decided to give this Chevy a rather plain paint job, no trim paint or attention to details. The interior is temporary and needs to be replaced with a more suitable/appropriate interior and driver. This new car handles well and I'm looking forward to racing it next month. total weight of this car is 195 grams. I initially tried a 10/46 gear ratio (64 pitch gears) and it was noisy. I then tried a 7/33 ratio (48 pitch gears, GT-1 bevel pinion, Parma crown gear) and it ran quieter and smoother. The plastic crown gear seems to make this car handle better than the brass crown gear setup. I believe the plastic gear gives the car a smoother acceleration out of the corners rather than an abrupt transfer of power with the brass crown gear. After glueing the front and rear bumpers using super glue, I used Shoe Goo to provide added "flexible" strength to the bumpers. Try it, you'll like it. I'm now looking forward to building the Tim Flock '53 Hudson Hornet before next month's race. It will be the first (and probably only) stock car to include a co-driver "Jocko flocko", a rhesus monkey which actually rode with Tim in 8 NASCAR races in 1953. Here's background info on Jocko Flocko georgiaracinghistory.com/2010/07/16/jocko-flocko-race-driver/Keith
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Post by Keith Tanaka on Feb 21, 2013 16:20:41 GMT -8
I decided to change the decals on this car. I didn't have any old style NASCAR numbers or lettering, so I decided to try printing my own decals using an inkjet printer and special decal paper. The result was not good. Inkjet printed decals (on clear decal paper) produce a "translucent" decal rather than an opaque decal. Also, inkjet printers cannot print white. In other words, whatever color you print (other than dark colors), the translucent colors do not mask the underlying car body color. I decided to try printing on white decal paper instead. This method would produce solid colors, but another problem instead. The white decal background presents a problem as far as the appearance of the transfered decal. How do you hide the white background? You can try cutting around the number/letter, but it's a lot of work and the end result will not look good either. I decided to try and print a background color as close to the body color as possible. The result is what you see on the following photos. The background color of the decal obviously does not match the body color very well. Matching colors is very difficult. Inkjet printed decals are ok if you have a car body color that is white or other light color, but having a printer which can print white is the way to go. Unfortunately, there's only one type of printer (Alps) which can print white and it's expensive and no longer in production. I guess I'll have to find decals online for these older NASCARs. Keith
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