Tim Kolankiewicz's Yellow Fang

A couple of months ago, the model car club I'm in (Magic City Car Modelers) announced a inner club challenge to build a dragster. I  kinda sluffed in off at first, `cause I've had too many projects going 
on then, and I build mainly custom type cars. Well for Fourth of July weekend, my girlfriend and I decided to go to Orlando, and we stopped at Don Garlet's museum on the way down. When I saw The Fang in the 
museum, it made me start thinking, hmmm, it would be neat to do that car, after all I've got a good start on the other Roth cars (still on the to-do list, kinda long story). Once I got home, I did a yahoo search for "Yellow Fang" and came across ratfink.org. To much of my surprise, this site was having a contest to build the very car I was looking for info on. An even bigger surprise was that the actual plans were on the site to aid us modelers in building as well as a fantastic parts list for supplies. So I guess it that this was enough of a sign to build this car. 

Here's how I did it.

First thing was to photoshop the plans together and scale them to 1/25th scale. I had a MPC Ramchargers Dragster reissue that was just sittin' around, so I glued the body together and it really was close in size and wheelbase. Next up was getting out my Drawer-O-Evergreen and grabbin' some .015 and .030 sheets and start transferring the patterns from the drawings to the sheet plastic taking things like perspective of the drawings into account. After a good Sunday afternoon, I had the front and cockpit "roughed in." The next couple 
of days were spent figuring out how to make the rear horizontal fins and then making them. Once this was done the start of the bondo, sand, prime, bondo, sand, prime, over and over, `till it was smooth.

During the bondo, sand, prime, I went to my buddy Tony Inman's house. He's got a collection of nearly 2000 vintage dragster and funny car kits. Since I don't really build `60's era dragsters, I was sure he would help me out on the detail parts I was needing. Once I had the parts, the rest was just cleaning up everything and painting, and assembling. 

The model represents when the car's debut at Lions Dragway as portrayed in "Hot Rods by Big Daddy Ed Roth". I chose this version `cause the model isn't finished yet as was the real car at the time. The kewl thing is that I designed this model as kinda a "Snaptite", none of the major assemblies are glued together. It would be real tough to have a "Final" in time for Bushmasters birthday as I figured I only had 32 days to build it. I plan to take it apart and have my "Final" version of the car ready to present for the MCCM club project 
by December. The Final version will be how it looked in the Dec. 65 Hot Rod mag with the Torque Thrusts, and screamin' yellow paint. I will have decals made for this and it's very likely that I'll have several extras, so if you want `em let me know!

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Here is a rundown of the parts used in the my Yellow Fang:

MPC Ramchargers Dragster: main chassis, clutchpack/torque tube, steering box, seat, rear wheels (Halibrands) and tires (M&H Racemasters), headers (highly modified)

Revell "Big John" Mazmanian Willy: engine block, heads, valve covers 
and breathers, rear axle (narrowed big time) 

Revell Tony Nancy Double Dragster: Front axle, torsion bars, tie rod, 
rear wheels (Torque Thrusts for later version)

Jo-Han `70 Olds 442 Funny Car: 4-port Halibrand Bugcatcher Scoop, and 
GMC 6-71 Blower, Flamethrower magneto

Aftermarket Items: Replica's and Miniatures photoetched wire wheels 
and seatbelt buckles. Detail Master assorted wire and wire looms, 
Machined Aluminum Specialties steering wheel.

Paints used: Alcad chrome, polished aluminum, burnt light and dark 
metal. Testors Metallizer aluminum, magnesium, stainless steel, gold, 
gloss and flat bla

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