56 Chevy Bomber Class, 1966

[Maineboy]

My best friend and I built this race car in the spring of 1966. It had been his street car, a 56 Chevy 150 with the old 235 and 3 on the tree. We drove around in it one Sat night then got up next morning and gutted it. We made one appearance at the track in it's original color, then got it painted the next week. This photo was taken on a Sunday morning in late May 1966, just before towing the few miles to the track. My buddy and I were both 17 when we built it, I turned 18 just a couple weeks before this pic.
56chevy1 by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr


I got the model of the 56 Chevy Del Rey a couple months back. Had a very rainy day so had a chance to clean off my bench and box up the 57 Ford project for the moment. Got out the body and floor pan and started looking and thinking. Then got out my saw and knife and started cutting. Used my Zona saw some and used a sheetrock utility knife. I find I can hold that knife in my hand and control it better than an Exacto knife. Got the right front fender cut to match the full sized car and got the chrome removed as far back as the trailing edge of the door. Got that fender cut out and made it a whole lot neater than it was on the original one we built.
[DSCF0003 (5) by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr


Took one of the interior side panel and looked at that a bit trying to figure how much work it would be to remove the armrests, window cranks and interior upholstery from that. Looked like a lot of boring work.
DSCF0002 (4) by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr


Then I had an inspiration. Those panels are flat on the other side, and both side panels are straight with the same cutouts to line up with the dash and the rear of the interior section. So I had the idea to switch them from side to side so they would be inside out with the flat side of each panel facing the interior. Then saw there was a  lip cast on the bottom of each that allowed them to index on the edge of the floor pan. 5 mins worth of work with my sprue cutters took those little flanges off and voila! Now I have to take just a bit of body filler and fill in those 3 holes and I have smooth inner body panels, as easy as pie. Already got some body filler in the holes, will likely need a skim coat.
DSCF0001 (7) by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr


Got the motor nearly assembled enough for basic paint. Thinking of working on the floor pan shortly. Will update with photos as I go along although be patient as this is my busy part of the year and only get rainy days like this one to work on it.

MB

[David Bogard]

Nice job on that front fender cut. And yes, turning the interior door panels around backwards saves a lot of time. There's going to be a lot of good bar work on this one!

[Maineboy]

The "piping up" (local term for it at that time) was quite crude by modern standards, or any era standards. This car was never rolled so that never was tested. Looking at the photos last night I see that pesky vent window has to go. Much easier than taking out the real one, those things were a pain to remove and repair. Pondering on the firewall in the rear between body and trunk where fuel tank was. Rear seat cushions are molded into the interior pan. Will require some surgery for sure. It is fun to get going on it. I am just figuring out mostly one thing at a time and will see where it all goes.

Hankering to get this one done relatively quickly as I have a modified I want badly to get going on when I can. Got wheels and tires and body. Gathering up small parts as I can. Promises to be extremely challenging for me. I kinda like that.

MB

[Dirtman]

Maineboy, you just about wrote my story. Myself and another guy (older than you two),  decided to go racing in 1966. He had a '56 Chevy, 265, 3on a tree, soooo, 19 days later we were on the track. Never won a race with that car, but had a boat load of fun. Was able to go on racing for a few years after that. Looking forward to seeing this on done!

Rett

[Maineboy]

We had a vast learning curve I can tell you. We didn't know enough to lock the rear end in the beginning. The engine would cut out in the turns. We thought it was flooding. Asked several well known racers how to fix it and they all just smiled and said you would have to figure it out. When going into a corner, and leaning the centrifugal force would make gas run into the right side of the float bowl and starve the left bank cylinders. Solution was to cut off the floats on the right side of the 4 bbl carb. Ran like a clock after that. All we had was street gears in the rear, 4:11's were the best we had. Think not having low enough axle gears hurt us. But like you say we had an awful lot of fun without spending a lot of $$$. We did spend a lot of sweat equity but have no regrets. Marriage and children ended my career. Have always loved it since though.

MB

[Maineboy]

Diritman, you said the magic word.......FUN. Yes indeed it was fun for me too. And everybody I know who was in it then, in my area anyway, were doing it because they enjoyed it and had fun with it. Cars could be obtained for the next thing to free. We borrowed $40 from my friends mother to buy 4 shocks, our biggest investment outside of the motor. Families came to the races, many helped on the car. Mom, dad, kids, dogs the whole thing. It was indeed a family affair. It was great entertainment for our time. Ralph Nason, who owned Unity Raceway for a couple of decades said the same thing, it was a family affair and all went to the races. He said today there are too many other things to do. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of tracks are gone, no longer able to fill the stands. Back then, as you know, it did not cost much to race at all. Those days are gone. Not sure we are better off for it.

MB

[Dirtman]

Well said. When the big money, professionally built parts, etc., came in. I got out. Couldn't afford to race anymore. I won a lot of races, made a lot of friends, had a hell of a  lot of fun. Some are friends to this day.

Rett

[Maineboy]

Progress as of July 12.

Got both wheel wells on right side cut out, got chassis assembled and first paint on that today. Also been working on the motor. I first bought the AMT 55 Chev Belair 2dr/post kit. Was planning on making some sort of modified from that. Recently decided to replicate our old 1:1 56 Chevy bomber as pictured. So bought the 56 Chevy Delray kit by Revell so I had the body. Was putting the running gear together late yesterday and started basic work on the motor. The 56 motor, 265 cu in sbc is not totally accurate as we had a 55 motor in the real car to start with. The 55 sbc was the first year of that engine and it had NO OIL filter. A mistake that was rectified in 56. So I raided the 55 kit to see what that motor looked like and found a startling difference in quality between the 2 kits. The Revell 56 has nice detailed parts on the engine, the AMT 55 kit motor looks like it was made out of modeling clay by some kid by comparison. The AMT kit has awful flash on most all parts. On small parts that is a pain to get to remove it on places like fan belts and pulleys. I grew up on those old AMT 3 in 1 kits in the early 1960's and loved all I built. Somehow they have lost something now. I am sure those kits are made with third world labor, such as it is, quality maybe not all that important, but those kits are NOT sold to us at third world prices. Take a look at the engine parts comparisons below.

Revell 56 kit motor at top, AMT 55 motor below. Difference is startling. Didn't count the bolts on that Revell oil pan but I am sure that the 4 on the AMT kit is not even close.
DSCF0001 ( by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

56 Revell kit motor on the right, AMT motor at left. The detail on the Revell motor is great on timing cover and motor mounts just like the factory made them. The AMT motor is just simply crude by comparison. Parts fit on the AMT motor is not much either.
DSCF0002 (5) by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

Revell 56 motor on the bottom, AMT at the top. The Revell motor looks like a small block Chevy motor in many details, and I have looked at a few of them in the flesh also. The crudeness of the AMT kit is just something else.
DSCF0003 (6) by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

Am I being too picky here?  It seems that if Revell can find the die makers to make reasonably accurate parts, why can't AMT do the same?  It helps a bit if you have some good parts to start with. Just like in the full size cars.

MB

[David Bogard]

it may have something to do with how old the molds are or how many times they've been used. Al I know is that the visual comparison you have shown is startling. I usually try to put low detail motors in "hood down" cars and then put the better looking ones in Modifieds or other cars where more (or all) of the motor can be seen.

[TonyK]

Cool project and who would know better how to build a model of the real car than you!

[TarheelRick]

Really like where this one is going. Keep us updated, please.

[Maineboy]

Been a long while since I last worked on this project. Summers are like that when you are doing some farming. We just got the last couple of fields of hay chopped and in the silage pit just 3 wks or so ago. So now with darkness at 4 in our part of Maine, I finally get time to work on this project again.

Pass side wheel cutouts enlarged and chrome removed. Still needs sanding
bomber3 by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

Just set the not quite complete motor in the frame this evening.
bomber1 by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

Another photo from the front
bomber2 by Nathan Pitts, on Flickr

I did the frame with a rattle can of Rustoleum "hammered" satin black. You can see litle dimples in it on the top control arm. The paint has got some gloss in it for "satin". I am planning on dry brushing the entire frame with 2 different Testor's craft colors to make it appear sort of rusted as a ten yr old car in Maine would look. Nothing on this original car was shiny other than that coat of blue we put on just a few days before the original pic.

This is the first model of a 265 V8 that I have seen that has the correct exhaust manifolds on it. Most all SBC engine models have the rams horn but those didn't come out til 57.  The valve covers we painted flat aluminum back in 1965 as we did not have money to get the cast aluminum "Corvette" covers that summer. I bought a set of them when I went off to auto mechanics school that fall. They were on our motors always after that. I still got those covers, the only reminder, other than a few pics, of that very fun and exciting part of my life. On 55 through 57 engines the top 2 valve cover screws were closer to the center so they looked staggered. The ones on this engine are not quite correct as they are not staggered.  But then again this has an auto trans on it and the original one had a 3 spd manual. 

The valve covers on this engine were painted with Tamyia flat aluminum with a brush. I put a lot of wash on the whole thing and let it set for a minute and used a Q tip to remove some of it till I liked the effect. I think that worked pretty good on this motor. The carb is a bit crude but the air cleaner will hide that.  Good to get back at it again. Does anybody else's bench look as cluttered as mine or am I am one of a kind in that dept?

MB

[Dirtman]

Got a good start! Looking good so far.

Rett

[john2]

   Oooh !  Darkness at 500 in Mississippi is bad enough. 

[Bob P.]

Looking really good so far, keep us posted on progress.

Bob