Still mining the activities of the frozen weekend 2 weeks ago when the temperatures plumbed the depths, there was one more project I worked on in that period that I haven’t yet profiled. I did discuss how I added 2 cars to the Super Stock fleet and 2 to the Road Crew from digging around in my bins of unused parts, but once all that was done I still had some time to kill so I went through my chassis parts box as well. From there I cobbled together enough parts to make a running open-rivet chassis. It wasn’t a great runner-the motor is weak and the electrodes are pretty messed up, but with a lot of cleaning, some delicate electrode bending, and the use of a set of tapered Auto World brushes and a pair of powerful blue/white Auto World field magnets, I was able to get it run just well enough without overheating.
I decided to pair this with another body I bought over half a year ago and never used, a bright lemon-yellow Model Motoring ’41 Willys reproduction. As you know I already have many of these cars spread out across my various fleets, but it’s a classic body that I really like, and while I do have a special “gasser” version in the Road Crew already in ochre yellow, I thought I’d go ahead and add this one as well since, well, it’s a different shade of yellow!
Knowing this was not going to be a hot performer, I decided to go the route of making it look like a 1950’s style fairground racer. I did toy with the idea of cutting the body up to augment that took by slicing off the fenders and making some netting to resemble chicken wire to cover the windows, but I didn’t have the heart to destroy it like that even if it is a reproduction. So, I kept it in tact and used another parts discovery from that weekend, an unused set of red 5-lug wheels I bought from MEV, which must have been well over a year ago and which I’d forgotten I had.
It all came together pretty decently. I probably wouldn’t have built this if I hadn’t been looking for something to do, but I’m happy with it; with a set of Jel Claws 2031’s on the back and those modern field mags she actually runs pretty good, and the Road Race Replicas decals I used came out pretty nice overall; the mooneyes decal on the top is home-made and I’ve been disappointed with those but with a yellow design on a yellow car it came out OK. All goes to show how productive “down time” can be when you make it so!
Always one of my favorite body style and love that you made it into a “fairground racer”. Even though not a prime racer it was totally worth making it into something special like you did! Great job!