Celebrating the Month Of May! - Mark Donohue's Sunoco DX #66 Eagle

[Layla's Keeper]

Gentleman, we're in holy time. Carburetion Day, Gasoline Alley, the release of balloons and Jim Nabors singing about the banks of the Wabash.....

Yes, it's the Month of May, Indy time, the Greatest Spectacle in Motor Racing.

To pay tribute to the Indianapolis 500 (which, regardless of politics, remains to me to be the single most significant thing you can do in a race car) I decided to build a replica of the mount of one of its greatest victors - the late Mark Donohue.

Instead of building his 1972 winning car, a McLaren, I decided to build his beautiful 1973 Gurney Eagle, which combined the might of the Turbo Offenhauser with the 70's top open wheel chassis. I also wanted to build a 1973 car because 1973 has a lot of significance to me as a Sandusky Speedway fan.

The 1973 Indy 500 winner, Gordon Johncock, was a supermodified champion at Sandusky Speedway, and his brother - Nolan - died in a crash at Sandusky. As such, Gordon is one of Sandusky's great heros (midwestern short tracks have a long history of favoring their Indy drivers as their greats, and being an Indy winner just adds to that).

On top of that, 1973 was the year we lost Swede Savage at the 500, Gordie's STP teammate and Trans-Am star.

I'm starting with the long out-of-production Bobby Unser Olsonite Eagle kit by AMT and will be adding a decal sheet by Indycals to recreate Donohue's car. Otherwise, pretty much box stock. Hopefully, before 33 cars take the green on Memorial Day weekend, I'll have turned this......



into this....



First off will be building the ultimate four cylinder - the Turbo Offenhauser!

[Merkava]

Alright! This should be especially nice, for all the reasons you listed, plus the simple fact that we all get to see another one of your amazing builds.

[RallyRaider]

Good luck with this LK. The blue and yellow Sunoco livery looks good on anything!

[Sigmaman]

Thats a beautiful car.Looking forward to seeing your model.

[Layla's Keeper]

Well, some progress (however minor) is always worth mentioning, so here's the test fitting of the monocoque as well as the assembled engine block & head painted Model Master non-buffing aluminum metalizer.



For fun, here's a size comparison between the Eagle and Dad's BRE Datsun 240Z (Revell kit, also 1:25th scale). Keep in mind that save for the tail wing the Eagle doesn't get any longer!



Of course, the wicked thing is that while the 240Z weighed a little over a ton and had a 300bhp straight six, the Eagle is about half that weight and has this beauty for power - the ultimate four cylinder, a Turbo Offenhauser!



That picture of the engine that dominated Indianapolis from the 1930's (as it was a Meyer deriviative) up until the turn of the 80's really fired my love of the Offy as a kid. And this picture, along with its caption (how was I to know that, at the time in 1990 when I was six years old and first reading, that 220mph+ qualifying speeds were now routine?) gave me my inspiration for wanting to build, above all other Indy cars, Mark Donohue's Sunoco DX Eagle.



Both of those pictures, plus many more and lots of human perspective on the Indy 500 came from a book of my Father's that I've loved since I was a kid, Jack Albinson's "The Oily Grail: A Story of the Indy 500".