The build shop has been working overtime trying to get the fleet ready for “Secret Oktober” and, in addition to the new “GT” wheels added to some cars that I showed in the previous post, some other types of wheels are being added to those few cars that have been running on stock Auto World wheels and tires…
“Centurion,” the yellow #30 Ferrari, got a set of these very delicate Vincent “Alpina” 2-piece wheels in red. For those who don’t know, these 2-piece Vincent wheels are very difficult to install without damaging, and they cannot be reused; they need to go on clipped and filed down Auto World axles, as even my shortened stainless axles from RRR are too long for them. I did use RRR tires, however; another set of the valuable low profiles, their super sticky silicone needed for this extremely fast car to stay stuck to the track!
New wheels aren’t the only news. The pre-race maintenance and rebuilds included a couple of other changes; for one, I decided the use the 2nd of these odd new orange colored chassis I bought a while ago on a car that just seemed to cry out for it; King Kong, the yellow Mustang GT350 with orange stripes and wearing matching orange roundels. Originally riding on a plain black chassis, she now gets this complementary orange one, but her gray finish Torque Thrusts and silicone low-pro’s x-ferred to the new chassis unchanged. Whether she has to same get up & go as she did before remains to be seen when Cody “Clutch” Connors takes to the track in the upcoming “Secret Oktober” sports car racing event.
And in addition, as I ramp up the Sports Car racing fleet to a hoped for peak of 96 cars, here’s a formerly retired body that’s been taken out of retirement!
Back from the nether-regions of “the body box,” the pearl white Johnny Lightning Cobra roadster is back in the game! This was profiled as a “replacement” with a backstory of having been repainted green during a restoration, and that story stands, so – similar to what happened with the blue Cheetah – from the perspective of The Lore, this has to be a different white Cobra with blue stripes…believable, since that classic “Briggs Cunningham combination” was and is commonly seen on Cobras, even though I’ve always said I’d far prefer regular gloss white to the pearlescent shade. Now wearing racing #49 and riding on a set of rare “TA” wheels from RRR with full sized tires, she’s been renamed “AVALANCHE” and will be campaigned by Lazarus “LOCKJAW” Legrand.
The son of French Canadian immigrants born and raised on the Western Slope of Colorado, Legrand is a former professional skier who retired from the physically demanding sport to turn his attention to going fast on asphalt instead of snow, and he’s clearly an adrenaline junkie, because just look at the casual pose he throws behind the wheel of one of the hairiest, scariest sports car ever made! Dig, Lazarus, Dig! as Nick Cave so aptly sung with The Bad Seeds on their 14th studio album! Some things are just too good to stop!
Let’s GROUP ‘EM!
Well heck, this is easy! I’ll just go sequentially by racing number to start with, mainly because I have so many new cars that I really need to do a full fleet time trial and I’m just too anxious to get to racing to do that, so I’m going to be lazy! What that means is that the results from Heat 1 will become the time trials, giving me a change to re-do it right prior to the next sports car tourny next year, which seems like a perfect illustration of the old saw “it all comes out in the laundry.” For now, though, the groups are shaping up like this! Note that Group B is incomplete; though it currently has 17 cars, if I can get an 18th I’ll run it as-is! I’m wokin’ on it, believe me!
