I'm in the process of putting up pics of my display, but for now, I'll show you a custom I made a while ago... I had completely forgotten I had pictures of this thing.
The
Maverick Grabber was chosen as the model of choice for the custom contest that's held every get together of the Hot Wheels Mexico Club, so I immediately imagined it like a modern track car with some vintage flavour... a sketch came right in:
I wanted it to have the widest tires possible, so I grabbed a couple donor cars as well, a pair of last-year Super Modifieds for their enormous rear wheels and BBS-type wheels:
I also picked up a Bone Shaker for it's injectors:
So, after I grabbed those, I started looking in my junk to find a plausible interior donor. A stepped-over, crushed and broken
Commodore race car was finally chosen and opened, it's interior stripped and cut to fit the Maverick's frame... sorry for the small, poor quality pictures, I was at a friend's house (he helped me with the build, as this was my first-ever custom) and his camera was all I had at hand:
In this pictures you can also see that I swapped in the Supermodified's seat, which had it's belts detailed, the steering wheel came from a Meyers Manx buggy; you can also see the Bone Shaker injectors after I completely trimmed off the engine into plastic shrapnels with a friend's borrowed Dremel.
In these two pictures you can apreciate that we cut both axles in half and glued them to the frame with epoxy, because I wanted the tires to be way off the fenders, as fender flares were going to be the build's main focus. Yeah, it has rear tires in the front too. I wanted it wiiiide.
We also painted and put in the Holden's rollcage and our interior was ready:
In the pics above you can see that the hood already has a hole and is now flat black. I was going to have the injector trumpets exiting in the original Grabber hood tampo, but when we were cutting the hole the drill moved a bit and chewed on the border. A dab of Tamiya putty took care of that but the tampo had to go. The results are cool looking anyway:
I like the fact that the injectors are almost hood level and don't poke out too much:
Next up came the most daunting part of the build, the fender flares. I tried a LOT of materials and plastics to make them, but either they were too thin or too hard or would just blow away when trying to cut them... until I found the answer:
You see that blue cap? it's plastic turned out to have the exact thickness and "maleability". I bought several and started dremeling out, lots of trial and error, lots of microbubble gum consumed (that's what the bottles contain)... but finally, after about two hours of work into each fender flare, they were painted flat black and finally ready:
I have to say though, that in order to acommodate the enormous wheels, the wheelwells had to be trimmed, and we faced a problem: if we kept trimming the fender flares wouldnt have had a place to be sticked in... so sadly, the car doesnt roll. That is my only gripe, really...
The hardest part was solved, next up came the fabrication of the front lip in styrene, the addition of rear exhaust tips, general detailing and stuff:
I really like how the cage shows in the rear window:
One final detail fell in place serendipituously, the front mounted oil-cooler alá KPGC Skyline race car... my friend gave me a horrible HW named
Piledriver to try to make the fender flares off it's own fender flares. The deal didn't work out, but at it's frame sides sat four things that looked uncannily like oil coolers. A bulb flashed and soon I found myself trimming the metal with the Dremel to liberate one of them. After some hot-metal burnt fingers, the piece was ready.
Yes, the hoses (speaker cable) enter the grille where the turn lights used to be, they were perforated... the detail can be apreciated in this flash picture:
And that put the final touch in the thing. I didint win crap mainly because no one knew what to make of the car, it looked pretty damn odd sitting alongside all the drag-oriented builds, and well, it didn't roll ( a must) and yeah, it had no stupid rubber tires. And in these pictures the fender flares look a bit off because, transporting it to the meeting, one of them fell off and had to be put back in with different glue, which made the paint come out and stain the car; during the trip the rollcage also "fell down", it suffered quite a lot... but to heck, I am very happy with how it turned out, really.
Here is how it sleeps now, under a bubble not because I baby the damn thing, but because I dont want no stinking dust on the car. It's so fragile that cleaning it would surely unbolt a fender.
Here goes. It's missing some stuff like the rear ducktail and the rear diffuser, those weren't made because I ran out of time, but I am pretty satisfied with the results. I think I made too complicated a project for my first one, and indeed it was a freaking jigsaw, but in the end it was well worth the effort.
I'm now about to start working on a Sub-lime 1969 Dodge Charger. It will not be nearly half as complex as this one, but I hope it will turn out ok. I'll show you when done
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