1957 Battlebird

[quadzero]

I was looking for some reference material for some of my Nascar models when by accident I came across this beauty. I loved it right away and knew it would be my next project.


It's a racing 1957 Thunderbird made by Ford called the Battlebird to compete with the Corvettes that were regularly beating the 1956 Thunderbirds. I knew I had a body and some parts and I always wanted to do a conversion altho there was a kit out there of the Battlebird at one time. I dug through my parts box and sure enought I had a '57.


I would be building alot from scratch for this starting with the frame.
Michelangelo said (or was it Gio?) "Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it." and with that in mind I went and cut out a useable chassis.



I made some crossmembers from sprue and scrap plastic and started filling some holes and took some measurements for some brackets.
The front of the chassis is scratch and could not be salvaged from the one-piece kit chassis. Here I started on the upper control arm mounts.

Inset-lower control arm in rough form from some scrap plastic

Lots to go still, rear axle and leaf springs are from the scrap box and have yet to be modified.
Thanks for looking,
Les

[TZ2]

Nice project!
R&D UNIQUE (Mini Exotics) also makes a conversion kit of this car!

[Veyron]

Very cool car, I saw it in person at Amelia Island Concours.

[gionc]

Great job on the chassis Les. Incredible: it's a thrue barchetta!

[Risko]

That looks very promising again!
Can´t wait to see more!

[malscar]

Get out of here Les, do you normally go the hard route? Fantastic start.

[SeanyG]

Les,

I just love your projects, completely unique and extremely refreshing. Wherever you get your ideas from it is a sound place, fascinated in following this one progress.

[klutz_100]

Quadzero, come on dooooooown!!

WTG, Les! I'm looking forward to this


(what about the 4-engined monster? )

[sportracer02]

Wow, Les,

another restoring project.

I guess you make it look cool, I´ll follow this one ;-))

[quadzero]

Thank you everyone.
I wanted to go further on the chassis but realized that I needed wheels for the placement of the suspension parts. Well, I didn't have the wheels yet, specifically these Halibrand rims,


I decided to make my own when I looked though my parts box and had nothing even close. But I had 4 of these rims which had the 5 holes I needed. I ground them out and the bottom is flat althou it's hard to tell from the picture. The disc is the part I will make the raised relief part like the Halibrand units.


Even thou these kits parts had the 5 holes I needed to copy to my homemade rims, there was no way I could do it without the holes being lopsided and crooked. They were just too small. So I made a little gauge to help me with the spacings.


Here is a rim with the "spokes" ready to be added and the final product with some aluminum just for show. I still have to do some clean-up and decide on the final colour. In some of my ref pictures it looks more like silver paint. I will do the final colour when I have all 4 rims completed.


Klutz- I have done a bit of work and have some body parts painted on the Challenger but I would like to have more done before I post an update.

Thanks for looking gang,
Les

[tonioseven]

Dang, just plain old

[klutz_100]

Sweet!

Remember to make resin casts before you stick 'em on the car

[willimo]

Excellent! I'm always in awe of your skills. Your ability to scratch and modify things to look like they came out of a great kit is just astonishing. Can't wait to see this develop!

[924_CarreraGTS]

Very interesting subject! And your chassis work makes me want to tear apart my near-complete Firebird and try again! You're off to a great start. I'm sure I'll learn a lot and get some great ideas from this build.

Alex

[tigeraid]

Where you been, quad?

This is one of my favourite racecars from the 50s. This should be cool.