Pre-Season Maintenance & Rebuilds

Any fan of vintage racing-or, any type of racing, for that matter!-knows that competition cars of every style and stripe need a lot of maintenance, and frequently require complete tear-downs and rebuilds to keep them at the top of the game. Even in sunny California, January and February are the best times to spend some extra hours in the shop. Regular visitors to this blog may recall my entry from the final days of October discussing how the big fall tournament had resulted in some unexpected engine fires; motor burnout began to rear its head multiple times as several of my fastest but oldest cars finally hit their limit and expired. The trick, of course, is to try to avoid these types of “forced retirements,” but some amount of “attrition” is unavoidable in motorsports. So, here’s a look at some of the “preventative maintenance” being done by some of the area’s driver’s and pit crews as they use this down time to gear up for the beginning of the next racing season…

“El Diablo,” the #56 Ferrari 206S belonging to Italian-born Rolando “Rapido” Ranallo, got a whole new chassis as well as new wheels. The translucent red chassis this car originally rode on looked terrific, but as I have stated elsewhere in this blog, I have been disappointed with the performance of most of the translucent red and blue Ultra G chassis I’ve tried. While there are 2 notable exceptions to this, I am now slowly phasing these out of the sports car fleet, and since the chassis was up for renewal it seems a perfect time to convert the wheel style as well, from the original Vincent “ATS” design to the more Italianate “Cromodora” type. This is a style I have thus far used on only one other car, and if the replacement of the red chassis with black indeed diminishes the beauty of “El Diablo,” the change in wheel style makes up for it, IMHO.

Another Ferrari undergoing an overhaul is the multi-million dollar 1962 250 GTO “Aegean” of another Italian, Gino “Glacier” Guiliani. After blowing the engine during an extremely competitive run at the previous year’s “Secret Oktober” sports car challenge, the tired Columbo V12 has been rejuvenated by adding a light brown “barn find” motor and gear plate on top of the original black Uktra G chassis; this left out the need to remove wheels, axles, and the rear gear, keeping the car at least somewhat original while adding a bit of color to the blue and gold car as seen from above.

In keeping with the Italian car theme, here’s another upgrade, performed on the DeTomaso Mangusta originally profiled here. Originally purchased over 2 years ago as an Aurora “Speedline” Cigar Box model, I attempted to mount this on a chassis before I knew how to use styrene tubing to fabricate screw posts and had no luck getting an Ultra G to fit beneath it. Later, when I did have success, I did a sort of “half-ass” build on it just to see if I could do it, using one of the poor performing translucent colored chassis, this time a blue one. Fast forward to today, and I have recently obtained a new release of the translucent color chassis, this being the 2^nd green one I’ve acquired, which I believe are made for the “Looney Tunes” series of cars. Clearly AW has cured whatever ailed the production of the previous round of color chassis, because these green ones have thus far been very satisfactory in terms of performance! Wanting to add this awesome body “officially” to the sports car fleet now that the 64-car cap has been lifted, I assigned it a racing number and fitted it with the remaining set of Vincent Cromodora wheels I had in stock. Although I generally do not like the chromed finish on these “Speedline” models since they are obviously plastic, this “rose” colored version really enticed me, and with the addition of the wheels and tires, the green chassis, and a couple of well-placed decals, this “budget build” now looks like a million bucks, and has now become an official member of the Sports Car racing crew, wearing racing number 53.

A couple of other cars have gotten replacement motors, including the #25 Ford J-Car in the sports car fleet and the orange Mustang Mach 1 in the muscle car fleet. On top of that, numerous cars are getting replacement tires-always a wear item-and a few are getting new field magnets where I think it will help. Of course these kinds upgrades are an ongoing process and many are done on an “as-needed” basis so there may be more changes in the future, which is to be expected as the next season ramps up, so stay tuned for more action, race fans!