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Eddie Hill Blowover


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Back around 2000 I made this simple diorama of the Eddie Hill top fuel blowover from the Winternationals in 1989. It wasn't too much work to pull off, just a simple base made up to look like the racing surface with concrete wall in the background. I even added some fine ballast up against the base of the wall to represent the excess rubber that would be blown off to the side.

The car was done from a Revell kit, built pretty much out of the box with an added hood scoop from a pro stock kit to replicate the one that Eddie was experimenting with at the time. I heated the body panels to warp them and stretch them out as if they were about to blow off the car (which they did). The decals were pieced together from different sources to represent the car as it ran. I also used a driver figure from a Monogram sprint car kit and changed it around so that it would fit in the top fuel cockpit. Nothing extra, no engine wiring or plumbing or anything like that.

I was happy with the way it turned out but after a period of time I lost interest in the dio. and pulled the car from the base so that I could use the base for other displays. Since that time the car itself has simply been sitting on the shelf collecting dust. Well, I finally renewed my interest in this as it didn't make sense to have a model sitting on the shelf that was designed to be displayed as if it were flipping over.

So this past week I pulled the base back out, found the picture display that I had originally made for the dio., cleaned up the model, fixed a few parts that had fallen off and freshened it up with some new decals for the tires and drilling out the exhaust for some simple added detail. Here it is now the way that it should be displayed like when I first built it so many years ago.

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I was actually at the Winternationals that year.

I talked to Eddie Hill after the blowover and he was a really cool guy, not cool enough to give me the blower hat off the car, but still a cool guy.

For a while Don Garlits had his wrecked blowover car on display at his museum outside Ocala, FL with a running lop of the video from the wrec, awesome.

Big Daddy is cool too, deaf as a post poor guy.

I've gotten to meet him several times and twice at his museum.

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For a while Don Garlits had his wrecked blowover car on display at his museum outside Ocala, FL with a running lop of the video from the wrec, awesome.

Big Daddy is cool too, deaf as a post poor guy.

I've gotten to meet him several times and twice at his museum.

Garlits blew over 2 times. The first one was the most popular, and the one people know best. It was at the 86 Summer Nationals in Englishtown. That car was not badly damaged, and repaired to run at the next race, and won the championship that year. That was Swamp Rat 30. This car is at the Smithsonian.

The crashed car at the Museum, was Swamp Rat 31. This car only made 6 passes. It came out at the 87 Northstar Nationals, made 5 runs there, losing in first round. He then went to a Match Race in Spokane Washington, and on the first pass it went over backwards in the lights, and wrecked the car beyond repair, and Big Daddy ended up with broken ribs, and a back injury.

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