Road Crew Expansion – “Fabulous Thunderbirds!”

AT LAST! Here’s a pair of cars I’ve been after for a looooooong time!!!

Who else remembers blues/rock outfit The Fabulous Thunderbirds? Formed in Austin, TX, the band had 2 memorable hits in 1986, “Tuff Enuff” and “Wrap It Up,” both taken from the album of the same name. What I didn’t realize until many years later was that Tuff Enuff was the band’s 5^thstudio album! They starting gigging way back in 1975, and although mainstream FM radio appears to never have heard from them again, the band kept rockin’ years after those mid-’80s hits,’ releasing several more albums all the way into the 2000’s, and is still going today-at least in some form-even though several of the founding members have passed away. Now that’s staying power! Seems appropriate when thinking of the Ford Thunderbird, which also stayed with us in some form all the way into the 2000’s before finally disappearing as the end of the age of the automobile fast approaches.

You know your humble blogger is a die-hard GM guy, but you also know I love Mustangs, so there’s place in my heart for Fords. Well, I’m pretty fond of T-Birds as well, or at least, some of them; almost every car fanatic knows that each generation of the T-Bird has an unofficial nickname, and in HO scale, Aurora gave us the 1963 model “Bullet-Bird,” which is my favorite gen of the model, and the ‘67 “Glamour-Bird,” which-while I’m not as fond of IRL-made a terrific model for the track.

Over the years I’ve acquired several copies of each, but as these things just continue to get more and more expensive, I’ve slowed on these acquisitions and paid quite a pretty penny for some of the ones I have. That includes this pair, which took a lot out of me. The red ‘67 came first; this model is surprisingly hard to find in this color and carries a high premium in good condition, so I got lucky on this one because I won it at auction; I probably got it because the seller had foolishly set the auction up to end at something like 2:30AM on a weekday. It still wasn’t cheap, but I got it for way less than I’ve seen it sell for in the past. The white ‘63, however, was no bargain; I’ve been after this one for well over a year but never seen a good one selling for a price I was willing to pay. I finally came to terms with the apparent fact that I wasn’t going to get one for under $100, and when I found this clean one on ePay recently, I offered exactly that sum. I was sure it was going to be rejected, but surprisingly the seller accepted my offer!

The white “Bullet-bird” was made with both blue and red interior. The one with the red interior seems to be quite a bit harder to find, but both seem equally expensive, and I actually wanted the one with the blue interior more since, I thought it provided more variety in comparison with my existing fleet (red, turquoise, yellow, olive green), many of which have red interior. When it arrived, the condition of the body was magnificent; the rear screw post is split but still holds, but the rest of the body is good and clean, with an in-tact original driver and windshield and excellent chrome.

The chassis, however, was another story: it looked good, but it turned out to need a lot of work to get it going. First thing I found was that although it ran, the rear gear was spinning loose on the shaft. I put the motor plate in my press to compress the shaft onto the gear a little more hoping that would fix it, and it did, briefly. I put it back on the track and got about 4 laps out of it before it bogged down, and when I picked it up I found it was over heating, so the next step was to replace the brushes, and I opted for a set of brand new ones.

Back on the track, it only ran for a lap before that rear gear starting spinning again, so it came apart again, and this time I changed the anvil on my press and used the ball-peen fixture to compress the gear on both sides. This ball-peen shape has the affect of “constricting” the hole in the center of the gear, and that worked, but then I had to change the hammer on the tool and compress it back onto the gear shaft. This is an operation that requires extreme care and attention: press too little and you get too much free-play and a rear gear that sits too high off the plate; press too much, and you get a the gears sandwiched together too tight on the plate and they won’t turn. And in fact I did just that, which required a very careful loosening again with a couple of slender tools to pull them apart again just enough to get them to turn free but not enough to pull them back apart! Not easy!

It took a while but I finally got it, and once I did, I ran it without the body for a while in “cruise mode” to make sure it didn’t overheat again and found it’s performance finally cured, so then there I was with two awesome Aurora originals!

Both cars could sure benefit from new rear tires-especially the red one which is skating around like crazy-but I’ve depleted my stock of Jel Claws 2030’s and need to get some more ordered from Innovative Hobbies (assuming they’re still being made, of course!) so for new they’ll skate around with the lack of traction these early T-Jets are infamous for. They’re run to run even like that, and they look terrific; two great additions to my collection, definitely “Tuff Enuff!”