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I thought I would share the process again and get some suggestions and ideas along the way.

I did some research and in some ways this car is going to be easier and in some ways harder.

The decals for the 43 car are readily available online so I guess the main decal to worry about is the street decal. I am looking at some other race cars for inspiration as well.

There are 3 hoods to look at. A Road Runner with 2 wedges on the sides, an air grabber with a small rectangle in the middle and a bit of a bulge in it, and a flat hood used on the Satellite.

The plan is to avoid as many mistake as possible that were made on the Cyclone. For starters when I built the Cyclone I had no idea about what chassis might be available and loosely based it on hot glue and scavenged Carrera Doge Charger chassis. Later when Pioneer helped out with some chassis it was too late to alter the mold. The mounting posts were an afterthought and not at all a good solution.

This car is getting integrated posts that will allow a direct and secure connection to the Pioneer chassis.






This is a test print of the body to make sure the wheelbase and track are correct. I printed it up side down and chopped off the roof to save time and filament.
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The same Carrera chassis will still fit with a bit of post tweaking. But who knows how soon we will be on ebay struggling to find one at a decent price?

Here is the CAD work done so far. The one spot that has me really worried is the area of vents in front of the windshield on the hoods. That is really tricky.



I ignored that on the Cyclone model because it was only introduced in 1971. 1970 hoods did not have vents there.

More later..................

Thanks for the new thread and sharing news about this project.

I like the plan to design it for the Pioneer Charger chassis for competitive reasons with the Cyclone. Then again, how confident can we be that those chassis will continue to be available in the future? I don't know if 3D printed version is available or not.

Looking forward to following the build process and being among the first to add a GTX to my muscle car class.

There's so many cars that share that body that it may be a popular body, indeed. I have a couple in mind already.

Good to see a start to this all ready proxieken and good to see it being made compatible with the Pioneer chassis from the outset. This is another thread that I'll be keeping a very close eye on. And one of these will look good in black with 22 on it.

Got my interest going on this one also. If I may suggest, thanks to VTECFour, could you add enough beef to the mounting posts to add a 1/8" hole for a threaded insert? As far as the chassis goes, no worries here for I'll just model one up to fit or use on that is similar to the pioneer chassis. I didn't want to copy the Pioneer so I made some changes to it like adding a framework and thinning out the base.

I also left the door off for the digital board. That way I make the wheelbase to what ever car the I'm placing it under.

I owned a 71 Satellite (HotRodded) and would love to have this body if you are putting them up for sale. Petty ran the Satellite hood and that is a car I would like to have in my stable. My car was this color accept the black was on the back half of the roof instead of the front half painted gloss black, hubcaps instead of the rally wheels. This looks like it might be a vinyl roof. But it did have a four barrel carb, Edelbrock manifold, B&M valve body and torque converter and floor shift, Headman headers and 340 heads on a 318, Crane Cam, SS type steel wheels and 60 series wide ovals. Later added side pipes to it. Dad refused to pay the insurance for a RoadRunnner. I bought this car a 18. 16 or so years later came home one day and ask my Grandmother where is my Satellite? Oh I sold it to two young guys who were passing by. It wasn't running at the time. :o At that time I was driving a 85 5th Avenue.

Those Satellites look a lot like the 74 Charger a friend of mine had. It had the 360 with the pistol grip shifted four speed.

I just want to publicly thank Ken again for everything he has made and will make, and whatever he does I will buy more just like I did the many Cyclones I bought, but I want to put a pitch in for keeping them also compatible with Carrera stockers. There seems to have been millions of them made, circulating and available in the twenty or so years they have been made, and Carrera is still making new ones for sale at cheap prices in 2019. It would sure keep these cars compatible competitively with the many other ones we have accumulated to race against them (and make it easier on the digital guys). I also know that rolling chassis of Carrera stockers can be obtained cheaply, because I have bought a lot of them. I get the impression that the new Carrera owners might be better in terms of service and distribution (could they be worse than before?), and this might be a time to have a chat with Carrera of America to get a parts supply going for these, in addition.

Regardless, I will support Ken's endeavor as the hottest thing going in our sport now, in my view.

ccobra - if there would be a way to get one of those chassis designed to match the Pioneer Charger chassis (wheelbase, track, and body mount positions) I'm interested. I'm fine using the Pioneer chassis, but willing to experiment too. I like independent front wheels and the open space where the DPR chip door would be looks flat and ready to accept some lead weight without modification.

I also understand the desire for compatibility with Carrera stock cars. Perhaps this can be accomplished with a body mount adapter that compensates for the offset in body/chassis mounting points.

I also really like the idea of body mounts that accept press in metal inserts. Cox cars had this way back when and they worked great.

That's my 2 cents worth for the day.

When reading through your Cyclone thread, I saw you were thinking of doing this project next. I am glad to see you started on this and it will be fun to see the process of making this car.
I don't know if this would help you or not, but the air grabber hood really is the same hood as the Satellite hood. The air grabber bubble fits in between the two ridges of the hood. I not sure if that making just the air grabber bubble to fit the Satellite hood or a totally different air grabber hood is easiest way to go.
For me the which ever chassis you make work with it will be fine. I do prefer the Carrera chassis as well and can make it work, all my Revell/Monogram cars I have fitted to Carrera chassis.

Here's a pic of my '71 Road Runner
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Those car pictures are extremely useful. It looks like the trim around the side marker lights is not chrome. I thought it was and was going to exaggerate it on the model to make it easier to pick out and paint. The window trim is oversized to make it easier to see and paint.

Likewise the blue satellite car has the chrome trim running below the door and the orange Road Runner does not have it.

There may be other small differences.

I like the half vinyl roof. Classis for that period and still looks good.

Ken,

Sounds like you are making some good decisions on the chassis dilemma; as long as a klutz like me can somehow rig up a Carerra chassis somehow with some spacers or adapters, I will be a happy clam, but I am sure I would buy these anyway (I might not hot glue them in place, but I might Velcro them!), but the wheelbase and track width compatibility is the biggest deal for me.

I hope you can now spend more time on the Roadrunners, then Torinos and Chargers - that's all I ask! (Oh, I forgot - late 70s Montes, 79 T-Bird, 79 Magnum, 72 Matador, 75 Matador, 76 Cougar, 76 Torino, 81 Regal, early 80s Pontiac, early 80s Olds, 83 Chevy, 1980 TBird, late 80s Buick, late 80s Olds, etc. - just in your spare time!). Don't get me started on a 70-73 Pontiac Trans Am!