Revell 1/24 scale #1 Sammy Swindell
Channellock Sprint Car
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Revell-Monogram 1/24 scale #11 Steve Kinser Quaker State Sprint Car Click on thumbnails for full image Introduction In the motor-sports world if a driver has been given nickname it is certain that they have earned it - somehow. Today if you mention the "Intimidator", any race fan knows you are referring to Dale Earnhardt Sr. He earned his nickname by 'intimidating' some of the best drivers in NASCAR into make race-losing mistakes simply by his appearance in their rear view mirrors. But how many people recognize the names "Slammin' Sammy" Swindell, Steve "The King" Kinser, Johnny "Hollywood" Herrara, or Jac "The Wild Child" Haudenschild? Colorful names for very colorful personalities, in a branch of motor-sports where being colorful is as much of a necessity as a great set of tires. All the drivers I mentioned have come from The Pennzoil World of Outlaws Sprint Car Racing Series or WoO! Coincidentally, as I am writing this review Steve "The King" Kinser has just been crowned the winner of the second annual Duel in the Dakotas. "Slammin' Sammy" Swindell was slammed out of the track and clear over the 6 foot tall track barrier fence when he touched wheels with a much slower car. Rather then calling these folks Outlaws, they probably should be called Ironmen. Why? A typical WoO season is 105 races long and goes from late February to early November. In July alone, these road warriors will compete in 17 races and that is the equivalent of 1/2 of the Winston Cup season in 31 days. Iron? Nah, Men of Steel is better!  "Slammin' Sammy" Swindel | A brief description of a WoO winged sprint car is in order. Modern sprint cars are simple and brutally powerful. They are shining examples of function and efficiency. Nothing is put on an Outlaw car unless it contributes to the performance of the car. Beauty is, perhaps, in the eye of the beholder, but these are not the sleek and graceful aerodynamically shaped packages like Formula One, Champs Cars, or the IRL machines. They do, however, have a power to weight ratio that rivals the Formula One machines and their performance shows it. They are the only cars I know of that can slide out of a corner, throwing a rooster-tail of dirt into the stands and then lift both front wheels off the ground accelerating down the front straight, and this is being done on wet DIRT, not asphalt! Outlaw sprint cars have one distinguishing feature - wings - big wings! The front wing is typically a 2-foot by 3-foot surface and is mounted as far forward as possible to plant the front tires. The rear wing is a huge 25 square feet downforce producing thing of aluminum with side plates that are at least 2 feet by 5 feet in size. Most Outlaws use hydraulic slider mechanisms to move the main wing forward or backward, as needed, to position the wing to give the most traction. The wings server another purpose, sponsor advertising! These things look like rolling billboards. When a sprint car is moving slowly on a pace lap it looks kind of clumsy and twisted as if it wasn't meant to be driven this way. The front wheels are shaking back and forth, the car is bouncing up and down in the ruts and the engine seems like it is ready to stall. But throw the green flag and these things transform into howling dervishes of pure power and acceleration! Things of beauty, at least to my eyes. The Kits  In this article I will review both the Revell-Monogram #11 Quaker State Steve Kinser Sprint Car, from 1997, and the brand new Revell-Monogram #1 Channellock Sammy Swindell Sprint Car. Since these kits are very similar, but not identical, I will use the Sammy Swindell car as the base kit and refer to the differences in the Steve Kinser car when needed. Both kits use the same flip-top style boxes and have beautiful photos of the real cars in action as well as several photos of the completed cars. I must comment that Revell's in-house modelers now turn out much nicer demo models than they did in the past!  Inside the box you'll find a bag with three trees of parts in white plastic and two parts of the chassis that are not on a tree. Outside of the bag you will find three trees of somewhat satin finish chrome, a vinyl tree with the tires, a decal sheet and finally an 8-page instruction booklet. A quick glance showed that none of the parts were broken, the items seemed to be of good quality, and everything seemed to be there. Unfortunately, movement of the package contents during shipping caused some of the chrome to be rubbed off of the upper wing panel and it doesn't appear to be something that can be easily covered up. Packing the chrome in it's own bag might have helped. Let's look at the box contents in detail When I open a kit for the first time I want to make sure everything is there and then I open the instructions to see if I can at least read them and also to get some sense of the difficulty of building the kit. Both kits have clear, easy to understand instructions but Revell has increased the physical size of the instructions for the Sammy Swindell car. As a result it is much easier for these tired ol' eyes to read the test in the newer instructions. Thank you Revell! For those of you who place importance on this, there are 21 pieces in the engine.  The tires are hollow vinyl moldings with fine detail and minimal parting line marks. When it comes time to prepare the tires, change the blade on your Exacto knife as you will need a very sharp edge to cleanly remove the inserts without damaging the tire. These tires have very nicely tread detail and when scuffed to remove the parting line should look great. The smaller of the two rear tires goes on the left side. The decal sheet includes tire decals for the Goodyear Eagles but since the tires have raised lettering molded in, an application of white acrylic paint might be in order.  | Speaking of decals, both sets are well done with the newer kit being distinctly better. The decals for the Swindell car have well printed with bright colors and virtually no excess decal film. The decals for the Kinser car are equally as well printed with bright colors, but have significantly more excess decal film. Apply these over a very smooth glossy paint and you should not encounter any silvering. |  | Next let's discuss the shiny bits in general before I get into the trees and individual items. In my opinion, and this is only my opinion, I think Revell should have, at the most, chromed only the wheels. Why? Well every item that has been chromed has parting lines, flash, and trees that will need to be removed and as a result chrome will be removed. Touching up these problems with paint is difficult at best. Also, several of the pieces will have decals applied to them and the finish is rough enough to hint that there might be silvering problems with the decals. Finally, there are several of the items that either have sink marks or ejector pin marks that need to be removed and this will ruin the chrome. It would have been better if the chrome were left off so we could prepare the surfaces for metalizer paints, SNJ, or Bare Metal Foil.  The first tree of chrome contains the upper and lower portions of the main wing, the top of the front wing, the fourair cleaners, and left side plate for the main wing. Nice rivet and panel detail but the top of the front wing has serious sink marks. The left wing side panel is supposed to be painted on the outside and bare aluminum on the inside. Ironically the side plate has the ejector pin marks on the inside, which must be removed so the chrome will have to come off both sides of the item. The top wing pieces have some minor distortions around panel holes and glue locations that will need to be filled and sanded. Be prepared for rivet detail to be lost.  This tree contains most of the suspension components, front axle, front bumper, tie rod, steering link, right side wing endplate, endplates for the front wing, fuel filler, and engine valve covers. The only difference on this tree, between the two cars, is that the Swindell car has a plated wheel guard and the Kinser car doesn't. The quality of the pieces is good but the plating is only fair. In some places the plating looks like a thick coat of paint. Care must be taken with these pieces as most of the components are easily broken.  This last tree of chrome parts contains the wheels, push bar, nerf bars (side bumpers), torsion bar arms, steering arm, foot shields and mudguard. Besides the different wheels, the only difference in the parts is the mudguard. Swindell uses six spoke star wheels and Kinser uses modular Weld wheels. Detail on all parts is excellent but flash removal, although minor, will present some difficulties with these fragile parts.  Now on to the white plastic parts. There are two large trees, one small tree and two separate chassis moldings. The small tree contains the hood, left and right frame braces with panels, and left and right rear chassis filler panels. All parts will require care with sanding as there is some small Dzus fastener detail on most of the parts. If you are good at scratch building you might want to scratch build a new set of frame braces and panels to allow your car to be displayed with the panels removed. Removing the panels and hood will allow your engine detailing to be seen up close.  This tree is loaded with interesting pieces. It has the left and right sides of the fuel tank, headers, rear axle, quick-change rear end, lower front wing, valve cover breathers, engine halves, cylinder heads, oil tank, oil lines and filter, wing brace, engine cover, magneto, tire retainers, jacobs ladder, seat mount, and inner wheels. Detail on all pieces is good and parting lines will be the only cleanup of any importance.  I call the last of the big trees 'body parts' and a quick look will tell you why. These kits have drivers and they're in pieces! On this tree you will find the seat, steering box, fuel injectors, intake manifold, plain wheel guard, radiator, radiator shield, water pump, steering wheel, headrest assembly, front wing support, firewall, dash shield, left and right arms, left and right legs, front torso, rear torso, front helmet (with eyes and forehead) and back of helmet. Detail on the parts looks good and as with the other parts, parting line removal appears to be the major cleanup. The radiator has four clear ejector pin marks in a location that prevents their removal. However, with the radiator mounted as suggested and the radiator shield in place, the marks will be difficult to see. The way the radiator shield is made will present you a challenge. On one side of the piece you have an 'X' shaped sink mark with molded in braces. Eliminating the sink marks will almost certainly cause damage to the braces. On the other side of the piece is a heavy 'X' shape panel brace, which caused the sink marks, and two ejector pin marks. All in all, it would be easier to build this minor part from scratch than to clean it up.  I apologize for the poor quality of this scan. It really does not show all the neat tube detail on these parts. What we have here is the main tubular chassis and roll cage. Take care with the clean up of these pieces as they appear to be pretty fragile. I would suggest that you do most of the tube sanding and parts fitting before you remove the brace pieces that are marked 'REMOVE'. Once you glue together the roll cage, frame, firewall, and headrest assembly you will have a fairly sturdy structure. Final Comments I'm looking forward to putting these kits together since they aren't overly complicated to build while at the same time they have good detail. It should be a bit of a challenge to get the paint right but what the heck, nothing worth doing is ever easy. If you would like to build a model of a sprint car other than these two, Slixx Decals has decal sets for eight other teams. Acknowledgements Special thanks to Chuck Fry for kindly allowing me to borrow some of his enthusiasm for the World of Outlaws. If you would like to learn more about these cars and the World of Outlaws series I have found a ton of information at these two sites:
www.best.com/~chucko/racing/sprint-cars.shtml
www.goracing.com/outlaws |             
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