86 replies to this topic

[Jairus]

Yup, that car has obsessed me for a couple years now.
It all started a little over five years ago when Ron Bernstain (RiggenHO.com) asked me to build a replica of his favorite car. That car would be the entry and winner of the second Car Model Magazine Road Race held at Tom Thumb Raceway early in 1967 built and raced by a young John Cukras. For those of us not at the raceway that day (heck, I was only 7 years old!), we all saw it... drooled over it and imagined building our own directly from the pages of Aug. '67 Car Model magazine. The editors must have known this because they featured it a couple months later with a center spread and then the chassis popped up again the next year in a Morrissey article about chassis building long after the angle-winder and floppy pans had become the norm in pro-racing. (Things happened fast back then)

Well, I built Ron a replica to the best of my meager abilities back and felt that itch scratched till Victor Ferguson sent me an email just two years ago that he was working on a correct mold of the super rare Ferrari P3 body John and Bryan Warmack used in that race.

You see... that body mold carved by the able Jack Garcia never saw production!
Jack carved it for Riggen and it was to become the beginning of the new "handling body series" of sports cars but... never saw the light of day other than a handful of test shots.
How many were produced or where the mold went is unknown at the time of this writing.
But... the Bryan Warmack restored original car currently residing in the SoCal Slot Car Museum and my previous replica sport incorrect Pactra bodies painted up as closely to the original as possible.

The replica mold by Victor languished for a time despite my protestations, all the while slowly collecting the necessary bits and pieces. Then one day in a race report I see a picture of Victor showing what is reported to be one of the pre-production test shots from back in the day. Victor is showing that body to the master John "The Jet" Cukras who confirms it is indeed yet another uncut body molded from the long gone Jack Garcia carving.
Wow!





Cool huh?



So... I increase my collecting of bits even more quickly expecting a new mold and a future new Lexan body to play with very soon.
But... my hopes jumped to my throat when Victor sends me a short note last month saying that he made the mold... and would I like the original body now that he is done with it?


what?

[Jairus]

After I picked up my jaw up off the floor, I managed to type a semi-logical response in the affirmative!
A week later it arrived...
Thank you Victor, you are the greatest!!!



The body is not beautiful as I expected a pre-production piece to appear. There are even some machine marks in the body where Jack had intended to install screens and one side sports wheel opening lines while the other side is smooth as a babies bottom.



But that is of no concern to a replica builder like me. I intend to make this car as close to the original as possible. The addition of missing actual Ferrari P3 details would spoil the project in my humble opinion

So... here are the bits I collected so far.



The front tires are EJ's and not the correct K&B unfortunately. All my K&B searching has turned up nothing that even looks close to what "The Jet" used so for now I'll stay with what I have. The korrect Weldun gear is courtesy of my good friend Paul Wolcott. Thanks Pablo!


The Mura/Tabor motor is nearly impossible to find so this run of the mill Mura Rewind will have to do.

I picked this up in a build up where I only wanted the U-Go chassis. It was only later that I realized what the motor was.
Figured I could pop in a Havlicek arm if it didn't spin but... spin it does and quite nicely! So decided to not take it apart and instead simply will replace the brushes and springs with something period and accurate.

In a quick phone call to John I asked what "Tabor" did to the motor to make it a Mura/Tabor and he said not much so... (sorry Tom).

On-ward as Rick is fond of saying....

[Don Weaver]

Jairus,

Really looking forward to seeing this build take place!

Don Weaver

[don.siegel]

Great project Jairus.

You know, I've been trying to find the appropriate K&B front tires for awhile too, since they're often listed in the R&C charts, but haven't found anything that would fit the bill either. If you ever figure this out, let us know!

Also, how did you realize this was a Tabor - is the name on there somewhere, or any other marks?

Don

[Jairus]

Don,

Not sure what Tabor did to the motor in John's car and in the pics there are no markings. John Cukras himself told me that Tom Tabor only checked the motor over to make sure it was in good order. And "Tabor" is listed in the credits.
My motor is just a simple Mura rewind by the way.
At any rate... here are the mags needed for research:

August '67 for the Race Report by Gene Husting.
December '67 for the nice Tom Daniel phantom drawing above.
(Also has the race report for the 4th Car Model Road Race where Sandy Gross took pole position.)
September '68 for an article on "Morrissey on Frames", which shows great top and bottom frame pics.

[Bill from NH]

Jairus, don't forget there's the Phillip Niyazi chassis article & info on scratchbuilt.com too.

[Gator Bob]

Jairus,
Put up a picture or a part # for the K&B fronts needed, I might be able to help out.
Wouldn't the original 'Race car have independent fronts?
It might take some fiddling to get those brushes in that Mura.
Right hand driver?

Please post a picture of the original car that is being duplicated.
Looking forward to the build up posts. Cool!

[Jairus]

Bob, this is the only picture in print of the Cukras car. In fact... the only pictures I know of!
Independent fronts did not become popular until '68 and even then... not universally adopted.

[Don Weaver]

Jairus,

The drawing looks like 8-hole fronts. Is this what makes the Riggen fronts special?

Don Weaver

[tonyp]

Bob, no independent fronts. They were not wildly used at all by the pros. Steube had one magazine car with them and lee hines used them a lot, but the pros for the most part used solid axles with 1/8 to 1/4" side slop.

[endbelldrive]

One small detail...the rear bushings were the in between size that came with Monogram cars of the day. Also Bryan Warmack and Mike Morrissey ran this body in that race.

Philippe had some photos of Bryan Warmack's restoration of the original car...but they've disappeared...temporarily?

[Jairus]

You have any of those bushings Bob? I have a set but they are more wore out than if I ran straight brass tubing.

[endbelldrive]

My sets are pretty worn out so I've been sleeving those small 1/8"ID bushings for the Parma International 32 chassis as a temporary solution. I think the old Revell bushings are same size as the Monograms. Joe Lupo might be a good source for those.

[Jairus]

Naw... I have the Revell bearings, the ones with the flats, and they are larger dia. Thanks anyway.

[Hworth08]

I've ebayed three or four pairs of the K&B fronts without getting the correct ones yet. A pretty fair chance the correct ones were 1/32nd scale.

[Jairus]

Yup, that was my calculation too Don. Just received two sets of 1/32 tires from a latest ebay score... but they turned out to be too wide. No worries, I can used them on other projects.

[Mark H]

'Jairus', on 07 Oct 2012 - 9:45 PM, said:

Bob, this is the only picture in print of the Cukras car. In fact... the only pictures I know of!
Independent fronts did not become popular until '68 and even then... not universally adopted.

does that body have a two tone paint job? looks like theres a different color on the bottom. good luck with the build Jairus i know it will come out sano

[Howmet TX]

That is soooo great, Jairus. Victor is my hero!

[don.siegel]

Jairus,

I've got bearings of all sizes too - if you can give me the dimensions I'll see if I have a new pair.

Don

[Lone Wolf]

In a word, inspirational.

As soon I saw K&B on the fronts my mind started swirling. Looked through some NOS K&B but nothing seemed right. Thought about the 1/32 thing too and looked at some of those. Even checked old Auto World catalogs. They list a K&B Good Year tire at 7/8" but only have an Auto World stock #. I looked at my Car Model article but even in person it is unclear.

Dug through the pile and came up with these. Sorry for the poor pic but you get the idea.



These are marked Good Year and measure .875 on the rim or 7/8". They look like the right ones. You can see very fine serrations around the outer edge. If you look at Tom's super detailed drawing it seems to have them. Also, the tread area is flat.Tom is my favorite Thingy guy by the way. I doubt these will ever come off the rims in one piece and one has a chunk missing. These rims are crappy as well. If you want I will look through a couple thousand loose tires to try to find some useable ones but you will have to ask nice

Now for the bushings. I have Monogram bushings but no NOS. The loose one on the left is not Monogram but is a much higher quality. Don't know the maker but is probably the one used. Sorry, I only have one of those.

A measurement is included of the Mono bearing for Don.



Remember, I'm no expert. Just trying to help a Brother out.

[Jairus]

I am pretty sure the bearings are suppose to fit standard K&S brass tubing. Which would put 3/8" Oilites into a 7/32" tube. So... seemed to remember something like that I removed from a Champion Flexi chassis a while back so I could install a 3/32" axle and Volia!
I found them!

Bill, I had completely forgotten about that Phillip Niyazi chassis build up! Where did he get the idea that John used two sets of bushings? From the looks of the original chassis... I think there are only one set with the tubing used to build up and center the outer 7/32" in a jig.

[tonyp]

Joe, those are the fronts.

[TSR]

Gentlemen,
No worry about trying to figure out what the car truly looked like because... it has survived the passing of time.
It is currently on display at the LASCM and you can find its story and pictures in the LASCM.com blog. Here is an extract:



Amazingly for a car that had serious racing use, it survived! Found in the stockpile of the late Ron Granlee, the actual car that won the 5th Car Model Series race in late 1966. The mysterious coupe body has long disappeared so we are now fitting the closest thing we could find, the Testor Ferrari P4 Spyder replica, but set as a coupe. Interestingly, we restored a similar car for John Cukras just a few years back, but it was not the actual race car. This one was found to be in the ownership of the late Ron Granlee, owner of the famous “Speed & Sport” raceway in Lynwood, California. It is now in the Marconi Museum for Kids in Tustin, CA.
Here are the pics I took of the real thing. Unfortunately, the mysterious coupe body carved by Jack Garcia has long disappeared so we are now fitting the closest thing we could find, the Testor Ferrari P4 Spyder replica, but set as a coupe.



Former Riggen team captain Bryan Warmack inspecting the old team car in his shop. Notice renewed fire in eyes.





Note; Tom Daniel’s drawing fails to show details that are present on the real car: 1/ 4 jam nuts behind wheels. 2/ 1/16″ rear axle spacers, 3/16″ front axle spacers.
Also I tried to fit 5/8″ rears with no spacers or nuts, and it comes too wide at 3-1/16′, so I can absolutely say that this car had the 1/2″ rears at all times.



Note that the Mura motor modified by Frank Taber is now fitted with a CW arm, so the Weldun crown gear changed side. Otherwise the car is exactly as it left the stage after John won the Car Model thing.







The body will be painted to match the original but we have plans for actually making a new pattern for the vanished coupe, which John told me was carved by Jack Garcia. Apparently it was never marketed because I have never seen one even in bad shape in the past 35 years…
Completing the Cukras 1967 Car Model Race Winner


This car is the one used by famous racer John Cukras to win the big Car Model magazine race in Los Angeles in 1967. I had begun the restoration of this car a long time ago, but never completed it in hope that I would find the correct body for it. Unfortunately, it looks more and more that this will never happen* as not a single example of the special model carved by Jack Garcia and used by several pro racer in 1966 appears to have survived. So I used the closest thing to that, a Pactra Ferrari P4 Spyder molding made into a coupe. The basic body was trimmed and mounted, then sent to Jairus Watson for a delicate coat of dark red and a couple of details. I scanned and created the decals on Photoshop and applied them to the relevant spaces, found and painted a correct interior, fashioned the front spoiler and finsihed the car. It took forever to get all the decals made but I think the car looks pretty good considering.

* Since this was written, the LASCM crew found an example of the correct body and it is currently being cleaned and prepared for the original chassis. At this time, it is hard to ascertain on who actually produced the original body because there are at least two different stories published in the day: one would credit Jack Garcia (then working for Dynamic) for it, the other is that Shark (Ron Von Klein) would have made it. Either way and since we did find an example on sale on eBay quite recently, it looks to us that there was SOME production, since the car we bought with that body had no connection with any "pro racing".

Now back to the car as originally completed a few years back:





The original chassis, complete with motor, was donated a long time ago by the late Ron Granlee. I also previously restored a similar car for John Cukras himself.



The paper sticker on the front spoiler had to be recreated from scratch.



So were the small oval stickers over the engine cover.



The chassis had already been restored and needed no attention.

As far as the front tires, looks to me that John did not use the then ubiquitous K&B fronts, because the wheels were too large in diameter to fit them. What appears to have been used are the stock Riggen large O-ring tires, simply ground to a smaller diameter.

[Gator Bob]

'tonyp', on 07 Oct 2012 - 10:30 PM, said:

Bob, no independent fronts. They were not wildly used at all by the pros. Steube had one magazine car with them and lee hines used them a lot, but the pros for the most part used solid axles with 1/8 to 1/4" side slop.

Interesting, I remember having the slop on my first Champion jail-door but the independent front technology was already around at that time.
It is so effective why was it past over by the Pros?

[Jairus]

Thank you for posting Philippe. Hope things are going better for you and your family.
Thanks too for the information on the front tires. I suspected as much from the photos which show a bit more glare off the side wall than a cast rubber tire would.