When I saw the “Pit Kit” I immediately had lots of memories flooding back. There was a note in the box from my younger brother, the note said “I thought these were in a little better shape”, they were definitely “played with”, but were sooo cool. There was also a picture of one of the cars with my 3 original cars and one of my older brother’s cars and trophy (if he knew that someone took this picture and touched his car and trophy, he would be upset). Here is that picture:
I opened the pit kit and here is what it contained:
A little history… My brother is 6 years younger than me, from what I remember (34 year old memories are somewhat hazy) he joined scouts in 1978 the same year as my parents split up. So it was my job to help him with his Pinewood Derby car. In 1978 I would have been 14 or 15 years old, I had a Dremel scroll saw with sander and flexible shaft tool.
My brother says the “Spirit of Kenosha” car was the first car we built, I think it was “The Wrecker”. If we take a look at the bottom of each of them “The Wrecker” has glue in axle struts (which started in 1977) and the “Spirit of Kenosha” car has the (now standard) slots in the block (this car I did not remember at all, until I saw it again):
The Wrecker as I remember required a lot of wood filler to get this looking like it does (thus all of the cracks in the finish). It has many plastic model parts (and decals) on it. When I look at it I have questions.
where did the extra wheels come from (mounted to each side)?
I spoke with my brother about this and neither of has a clue where we would have sourced the extra wheels (we didn’t have a lot of extra money at the time).
how did we get the recessed wheel holes into the sides?
My brother says we used a spade bit, this may make some sense as my mother was going out with a locksmith at the time and I know he had many spade bits.
how did we narrow the wheels for the sides?
I was informed that I sanded them off using the disk sander on the Dremel jig saw
The pit kit is an old first aid kit? Painted and decaled up to look like something you would bring your car to the race in. The trouble with it is “The Wrecker” cannot even fit into the box it is too tall and too wide (the back structure was broken to fit into the box). This stuff apparently does not cross the mind of a 9 or 15 year old.
This year I decided to restore “The Wrecker”. After much thought about the restoration and how it might detract from the intent of the original car, I decided to build a replica of the car. To do this I needed to create new decals the same size as the old decals. Along with making all of the model parts on The Wrecker.
I always remembered The Wrecker as a Model T truck. Turns out the grille is a Stutz Bearcat grille. As a kid I had a model of a Stutz Bearcat that the grill piece and the headlights must have come from. The taillights are from an early 70s Pinto model. The beacon is from a Tonka truck (I was going to purchase a beat up truck from eBay to remove it from, but then I decided I could build one myself). The “Honda” decals on the tow body are sort of a strange addition (but they fit). Not sure where the idea came from to recess the spare wheels into the sides, but it looks cool.
The new car is a built up (to save weight) it started out with a 1/4" slab with the wheels mounted to it. The rear wheels are canted 2 degrees using a Pro Body tool. The front wheels are drilled straight with one wheel raised. Then I took another block and drilled the sides to recess the spare wheels:
The sides were then trimmed off the block, and the hood was formed. The rest of the body parts were cut out and assembled:
Then the body parts were glued together:
The front weighting (with weight removed from the back) feature was continued in the new car, along with holes for tungsten:
At this point all of the towing accessories and the interior pieces were formed, and everything was sanded:
It was time to fill, prime and paint:
Then applications of the decals:
Here are the old and new interior components side by side. They are pretty close to original:
Turns out after adding 1 5/8oz. of weight to the rear the car, when finished was overweight, if I was ever to race this wrecker I would need to remove the interior:
Here is the original and the new cars together, should have painted off white instead if bright white on the rear. The car is setup as a railrider, using the 77 to 1999 wheels (the original has the CMI wheels on it) and the larger diameter axles.
This concludes the story of what I received in the mail…
