Woodstock woody mauled

Getting into the remaining kit of my selections from winning the MOY at Zbucksters with a junked out 55 Chev convert.
This brings my gratitude to Buck, Model Express, and the members who voted, to the forefront again, I really appreciated the goodies. Thank you all!
Buck posting pics that he took at a local drive-in event, showed the neatest old flatbed truck !! That is my inspiration for this project. I am not recreating that truck, just heading in that direction!
My first thoughts are that I want wire wheels with big meat on the rears. My entire salvage collection of tires turned up nothing that would accept the diameter of the kit's wire rims.
Reluctantly, I turned to the couple sets of DONKS I had. (I throw practically nothing away}
I will have to settle for rubberband tires on the rear, because I found a set of the DONKS that I could bash.
So here goes !!



I cut out the centers of the DONKS, and shaved off the heavy ridge on the outside. I still had to shave down the wires a tad, so I cobbled up a way to mount them in my Black and Decker.



What to do for fronts? I had exactly 1 pair of wire outers that were smaller diameter than the kit wheels. For a narrow tire to fit that diameter, the only thing I had were some leftover old home (5K) resin cast Pirelli's. The wire fronts were really wide! I shaved the backside right to the base of the spokes. Took some figuring, but I needed a hub,and backing plates of some sort. I cut a couple of 5/32" hubs from 3/16" tubing, and a long search thru my stash of backing plates and beauty rings got me some things I could use. The Pirelli's are solid resin. I had to build the wheel to be inserted thru the front, and come up with a rear rim flange. Sanding down that rear flange was a little tricky also. Pretty flimsy !



Here is the sequence in the center - Pirelli, wire front, hub, spacer, and rear rim flange



After sanding that spacer to size, it was, lace up some rear spokes!



And here are the wheels. I haven't thought about any other aspect of this build yet. :drunken:

Small update.
I have lenghtened the frame 1/2" to be close to the 37's wheelbase.
Wheels painted, and the front backing plates modified to hook up with the outer 1/2 wire front wheels.

Not a lot of progress.
Messin with engine stuff. Made a bracket fot the center fan pulley (hate to have stuff just hanging on a belt), and decieded to go with a flathead 3 carb manifold.
Couldn't find an exhaust in my junk that'd go with this get-up, and had an attack of the lazys and didn't want to figure out a scratched set of manifolds.
Came up with this abortion. May not be proper, but they at least have 4 ports and will fit :roll:

I needed to address the cowl issue - Instead of scratching a new flat cowl, I reversed the cut off kit cowl. Sacrifice a little foot room for head (Ardun) room. I think it will be cool, I never was one to shy away from trying something, and some times it works. :idea:



And now I'll be using the floor as a template for building the cab.



And this was fun !!!