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My hometown of Oskaloosa Iowa had an amazing 1/2 mile dirt track, with Eldon Iowa, about 40 miles to the southeast, also having a very good 1/2 mile dirt oval. Both ran stock cars; Oskaloosa on Wednesday nights, and Eldon on Saturday nights. What I'm picturing here is a representative of what could be found on those tracks back in the 1970s.

Was going through all my old model parts after 7plus years of being in storage and found this coronet body, but no chassis or anything else to it so I decided to build a local vintage stock car.

April 14 Winners. Next race is the Segment 2 barbecue and awards. Come try a car, watch the races, and enjoy some hot dogs with Ruth's Mustard. Call 603-826-4242 for details.

I don't remember if I ever had a build thread on the board for this one... but this year's Christmas Amnesty Build is completed! So here we go Under Glass.... Here's where we started. Back when I got into models some 30 years ago, Scale Auto gave you a free classified ad when you subscribed. I used mine for a want ad "Valiants, Valiants Anywhere?" and I bought some kits and built ups. And some stuff just showed up! This one was in a package donated to me by a guy in Colorado who sent two such broken bodies. It sat in my Valiant junk box for years just like you see it. Most notable is that some kid's mother wrote his name on his toy so he wouldn't lose it. I remember mothers doing that when I was a kid! About 12 years ago (according to my Fotki album date!), I started this project. The Valiant body was trashed with play wear. The wheel wells were broken and it had little dents in the plastic all over it. Never mind the roof mishap. Somehow, somebody saved it anyway. The AMT Modified Stockers came out and I thought it would be neat to have a Valiant stocker. The original idea was to take the Falcon Stocker and just transplant it all into the Valiant shell. Simple enough? You know I never get off that easy. Once I had found the Falcon chassis didn't fit, and it was missing so much detail it didn't pass muster. I grabbed a chassis from a junker AMT '71 Duster and figured out how to shorten it. You just slice 5 scale inches out right in front of the rear spring mount, and it pins right together. It's right where there is no detail on the chassis so if you cut clean there is literally no putty work! The Valiant progressed. I cut out the hood and glued in the engine room from the Duster kit. There are small changes that occurred from 1963 to 1971 but nothing that would bother me with this model. And I was so pleased with my progress that I sacrificed a fairly clean 1964 Valiant body for a new roof. The other Valiant is in progress to be a convertible so it won't be wasted. I found that the interior from the Fireball 500 would fit the bill. After all it was the stock piece from this kit modified into the 2 seater. Yes, I know stock cars don't have two seats, but I decided to build more of an exhibition car that I'd want to own today. And just like the Stock Car Racing Experience cars you can ride in and drive at Pocono Raceway, this one is gonna have a passenger seat! The roll cage and wheels are the only thing that actually made it from the Falcon Stocker onto my model. I ruined THREE of the roll cages to get my final result. This was cut into MANY parts and all joined together with bits of straight pin. So for you guys who think we build by magic, nope! We just didn't give up. I'll also mention that the chassis under it is the second one too. There were mistakes made with the first one from a junker, and the second one came from an unbuilt donor car. Now we know how to do this for future builds. And just for illustrative purposes, here's the construction of the roll cage. As frustrating as it was! Working with pins is fairly easy, I use a cheap pair of wire cutters. As this car came into shape, I didn't want to use any of my precious 1963-65 Valiant / Barracuda bumpers since Modelhaus is gone. And they are light little bumpers on the real cars anyway. So I modified a set of '57 Chevy bumpers to fit the Valiant. They are cut in three pieces each to narrow them down and leave in the center detail. I left some of the welds visible. The front over rider is a bit bent up too. They are mounted on straight pins. Here we are ready for our two toning. There is plenty of Duplicolor primer gray under the Duplicolor white. Note the Tamiya tape is used for the critical edges, but the rest of the roof was then covered with cheaper 3M painters blue tape. And here's our first shot of the two tone with Duplicolor Flame Red. There was some minor clean up needed, which I did with light sand paper. I was pleased with the results. The paint job isn't supposed to be perfect. It's a cheap garage paint job on a local car. And that brings us to today! The Court Jester is a restaurant local to my home in New Jersey. There were a couple of them, and now there are just two in Aberdeen and Freehold, New Jersey. I always liked their mascot, he peeks out from different places in their menu, so I always wanted to use the theme on a model. So here it is. I made the decals on my inkjet printer. The "30"s are from the NNL East decal sheet. Note that the paint scheme was planned out to use decals on the white sections. The trunk decal was done on white decal paper as an experiment to see how well they covered. And the NNL East decals were professionally produced, so they don't have the short comings of ink jet decals. The "Thanks Mom!" on the back is a tribute to Martin Terry's mother for making sure he didn't lose this Valiant, and for saving it! Engine is the 340 from that same '71 Duster kit with just basic wiring. Air cleaner fit under the hood, I wasn't looking forward to cutting that ancient hood! The screen is cheap plastic window screen. I had a pack and wouldn't use it on my house, but it's perfect for model cars! Sharp eyes will note that our driver is none other than Martin Terry, the original owner of this model! Chuck Rehberger and I have this running joke about Martin and what would happen if he saw the finished model someday. As mentioned, chassis is a shortened version of the AMT '71 Duster unit. I made the exhaust from different exhaust system pieces found in my parts box. The gas tank was removed and replaced with Evergreen corrugated siding. This is my Christmas Amnesty Build for 2018, finished up last night. It really feels good to get this 12 year project into the display case! And I'll bet Chuck is pleased! And the Jester gives it a big Thumbs Up!

I posted this before awhile back but since then I've added Hoosier tires & different wheels & took some outdoor pics. I built it as a dirt purestock racer. Most of the decals are homemade. They are logos & brands from where I work.

These girls are ready for a wild night of playing in the dirt. I built this one many years ago when this version of the 66 Nova kit first came out, and was one of my first attempts at building a dirt track stock car.