Cougar Slice'n dice...

[Cheater]

Hey Harry.
Ya' even got the spelling on the tire right! :violence-smack:
Okay.I'm done now :laughing-rolling:

Cheater

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Wow. That makes a huge difference in the look of the wheels. I didn't spend any time at all trying to see what was in that black hole. Makes a big difference when they are the right color!

[FootScoot]

[dreinecke]

There were three wheels run on these cars: steelies at Daytona, the styled wheels run in pre-season testing and at Sebring, and the American Racing 5-spokes run at places like Kent and are currently on the restored car.

I think the color of the wheel is actually correct for the currently on the restored car:


Either way, I'm glad to see those that want to mod the cars hard at work. It sounds like these run well on plastic but will take the normal massaging tricks to be perfect on wood.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

So, the car is currently restored to a color that is not the one made famous by the racing career, and it has wheels on it that meet the same description? Is that right? The book hasn't arrived yet and I'm still kinda guessing in the dark. This has taken me by surprise, and its difficult to understand why someone would restore a car to a color it never was. I had the Ford styled steel wheels (chrome and black with red), on my '65 Mustang, and they didn't look like anything what was ever on a race car. The stock red and silver that was on the Bud Moore car was set aside by the restorers in favor of this much brighter, almost Corvette red? Then Scaley comes along and makes it closer to red-pink-orange?

David, the red on your Cougar is pretty dang close to correct to my eyes. I was actually anticipating having more trouble getting the green and gold Moffat car right than Dan Gurney's. By the way, have you heard from Tim? He was hoping to me back at it again by the beginning of September.

[dreinecke]

Rob,

The red used will be a topic of conversation for some time. It appears to be a shade or two lighter in color than almost all pictures of vintage photographs of the original cars. Of course, it is entirely possible that the vintage photos were not developed well, but I do think they may have gotten the color correct. I've seen several variants of Cardinal Red in person and they range from the approximate color of the Scalextric car to the darker appearing version some of the vintage photographs depict. Therefore, I think it looks pretty close.

As for the wheels, again, in the eye of the beholder. Like the stickers that moved around race to race due to whatever part of the car was damaged, everything else did too. By the end of the season, the Cougars were running without bumpers and had screens in place for instance. I do believe that the American Racing 5 Spokes were both in gray and a darker almost black color depending on the race.

My continual argument with some of the restored historical cars is that in some ways they are better than they were when racing and have been OVER modified or restored. Is their color correct? Who really knows. The '63 Falcon is one such example. The current car is much more flared and modified than the original ever was. The original NEVER sat lowered like this thing does now in my opinion.

I think the bottom line is that Scalextric did a great job on an iconic car. The stance and taller tires used on the front are a bit of a mystery, but as others have shown are all easily fixed, and if one desires to leave it completely alone, it will run and look just fine on most tracks.

As for my Cougar - I purposefully went dark due to some of the vintage pics I had. I also completely guess at most colors. If it is close enough and available in a Duplicolor can, that is what I go with. I'm pretty sure the Moffat car is a way different color than mine, but it looked good enough to me.

As for Tim, I've not heard from him but will contact him this week and hope he's still able to produce.

[Jesla]

A couple more pics....

[HomeRacingWorld]

Seeing the different approaches and results today has been fun for me. I always like seeing how folks tackle a project, but we rarely get to do them this close in time frame.

Here is my heap.



Could go a little lower in front, but it runs very good and looks better to my eye.

I'm happy they released it. Perfect? No. Fun? Yep :)

[Jesla]

That's cool Boss.......but I wonder if yellow is the proper tire lettering color?
A color youtube video I saw recently, they looked yellow.....*dunno*

Wish I had enough light to get shots like that.

[HomeRacingWorld]

Thanks sir. You may be right on the color :)

As for light, grab you a cheap drop light at Wally World. About 6 bucks and works great.

[Derby City Speedway]

The colors I posted in Robs other thread were taken Saturday night. I placed the Cougar on the hood of a club members Cardinal red mustang and took the picture. So it is under the same lighting conditions. I then just cropped the 2 color patches from the original shot.

[dreinecke]

Mark, thanks for posting that. However...that is a much darker shade than my grandfather's Cardinal red '67 Cougar. I chalk it up to lousy quality control in the 1960's...

Now if you want to talk Chevy colors...I've got some stories!

[MoparGreg]

[HomeRacingWorld]

You are working on the Challenger though right??

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Once again, we're all on the same page. Funny how often that happens. And I saw the same thing in that restored Falcon when I got started on the RMS Falcon. I don't know why rich guys who can afford to restore unique and historic cars can summon the gall and arrogance to change the cars, but it does happen with alarming frequency. Pebble Beach and Monterrey should ban them.

I don't think for a second that hundreds of photos of the racing car could have been developed in error or aged improperly in the same or very nearly the same way. The restorers got it wrong, and Scaley did the best they could to copy theirs, rather than the race car, for some unknown reason. I notice they never seem to get the color so wrong on cars that are of British origin, though. Maybe they couldn't afford the airfare to come see the restored car, and have some crazy policy about using archived, accurate photos. Whatever- the car runs as good as the Mustang and Camaro, and that absolutely turns me on. I'm thinking about getting another white kit to do the black and red livery. Tim has that decal set, too.

Tomorrow, I think I'll have a look at those wheels that came with this under a magnifier, and see what I can do about them. My stock of Pioneer wheelsets are getting very low, and if I can use the ones that came with this car, I would do it in a minute. Oh, and by the way, that would relieve the rocking I found when I first swapped them out. I discovered the Pioneer bushings are a larger diameter, and the rear of the chassis moves out of place when they are snapped in. If I can use the stock wheels, fine, but if the Pioneers are going to stay, I'll need to ream the bushing saddles a little. No big deal. Challenger next!

Oh, and I looked up the Cardinal Red from '66 to '69, and the variance is very small.