This weekend most of the country appears to be the vice-grip of a frigid spell; it’s supposed to be 8 to 10 degrees below zero in your humble blogger’s front yard this weekend, so it sounds like a good time to be in the basement tinkering!
Of course every time is a good time to be in the basement tinkering, so last night I thought I’d delve into the “body box” and see what I could find in there that might be useful and fun. Durned if I didn’t come up with not one but two new cars for “The Super Stock Fleet,” the cars I race with my friend Shanon which are 100% stone-stock Auto World Ultra G’s!
The white Charger is a duplicate of one in The Road Crew, an older Johnny Lightning body that I’m very fond of. Looking to get some use out of a miserably slow translucent red chassis I retired years ago, I pulled it out and tuned the bejeezus of out it with a brand new brushes and a set of OS3 Black Dragon field magnets. Then I went through the “pull offs” box and fished out a set of red-tinted wheels just like it originally had, and I topped it off with my last remaining set of those beautiful vintage-style Firestone gold-line tires.
It’s still slow, but its better, and it has terrific grip with an exceptionally strong traction magnet, so this will be a great car for Shanon’s much smaller, tighter track he set up in his kitchen, which is a challenging run with a lot of turns; a slow, grippy car is ideal for a course like that! And even if it is slow, it sure looks great!
Not so with the blue ’69 GTO ‘vert; I decided I didn’t like this one after buying it years ago (would anyone really road race a convertible?) but it’s in almost virginal condition and it’s a beautiful color, so I threw this one on a chassis that originally came with one of the new AW GT 40’s, hence the gold painted wheels. With a set of red-line tires it looks really slick, and its fast as…heck!
Of course both cars had to get thoroughly track tested, so I got more enjoyment out of that before retiring to the upstairs living room to watch a flick and have a glass of red wine with dinner while the temperatures plummeted outside. Not a bad way to spend a weekend night!
As if that weren’t enough, I played “musical cases” again; the 12-car Trans Am fleet has gone back to the case I originally bought for it and, having recently obtained some new “egg crate” trays from ePay, I added one to this early 80’s Matchbox 24 case for the Super Stocks, since adding these two brings that fleet up to 14 cars. Now I’m all ready to carry them over to Shanon’s haus and challenge his own fleet of 16 cars. And counting! Hey, maybe there’s something else in the body box I could build? Maybe I’ll go dig around in there again tonight and find out!
Two more beauties and I love how you make these all work, both mechanically and from a design perspective. You have a fine eye for both! That is awesome about Shannon’s growing fleet. I like the train and Elvis stamps on that one box!