"Super Spurt": Rob Riley build

Well, today's installment of "Rob Riley Builds" is a bit different. I'll again let him tell you about this model:

"Here's a model that I built about a year ago or so. This is from a series of  models by Dave Deal called "Deals Wheels". They are cartoonish style models which are a lot of fun to build. This one is called the "Super Spurt" and it's a 71 Chevelle funny car.

It's one of the harder Deals Wheels models to get a hold of.  Deals Wheels models were first issued in the 70's, with the parts molded in metallic colored plastics, which were very brittle. A lot of these models just broke apart over time because of the very brittle plastic. Some of them were re-issued in the 80's made of regular colored plastic, and they were called "Funsters". A couple of the deals wheels models were re-issued again in early 2010, but not the entire set.

This "Super Spurt" that I built is an original issue from the 70's that was molded in metallic green plastic. I got this from my good friend Jason Richardson, in a trade, and it was in very rough shape. (See the first picture). The roof was actually melted because when someone glued the window unit it, they used a ton of glue on it.

I had to cut the windows out of the body and then fix the melted roof. A lot of the parts were covered in glue, and the chrome was worn off of the blower, scoop and valve covers. The original headers were missing, along with one of the original rims, and the wheelie bars. I was able to salvage 90% of the parts that I had, but I had to make a few parts to put it back together.

I had to sand down the chassis tubes because every one of them were caked with glue at the joints. Once I got the chassis smoothed out and re-built, I sprayed it with Inca gold lacquer, and a coat of clear.

The engine block was a mess and had a ton of glue on it, but I was able to cut and sand most of the glue off. I painted the engine block gloss black, and painted the front cover, oil pan and transmisson silver. I built the zoomie headers out of silver solder, and drilled holes in the heads to connect them to the engine. I built the magneto out of a couple of pieces that I found in my parts box. I sent the blower, valve covers and scoop to my friend Chuck Darnell, and he sprayed them with alclad (which is a laquer paint that is actually chrome). I made the red butterflies in the scoop out of some red plastic sheet. I added plug wires to the engine, but I didn't add fuel lines because I was afraid that they would make the engine look too cluttered because of it's size.

For the body, I got it all smoothed out with the help of some bondo and a lot of sanding. I sprayed it with a coat of gray primer, followed by a coat of silver paint. I masked off the bumpers because they were molded to the front and rear panels of the body. I sprayed the bodyand the front and rear panels with metallic green lacquer and a couple of coats of clear lacquer and removed the tape from the bumpers.

I painted the grill flat black and detailed it with silver along with the headlights. The tail lights got painted red and the turn signals got painted amber.

Since the original windows were junk, I had to make new windows for it. When I tried to polish the scratches out of the original windows, they just disintegrated in my hands.  I made a new set of  windows out of clear plastic sheet that is slightly tinted yellow.

The rear axle, ladder bars and  front shocks got painted silver and the front axle is black. The front tires came from my tire stash and so did all 4 rims. The slicks are original to the kit, but I narrowed the back sides of them to tuck them under the body. originally the inner edges of the slicks were just like the outer edges. This edge, made the slicks stick out past the wheel wells, which I did not care for.

If you look close at the moon tank in the front, it has the word "moan" molded into it. The differential cover has "detroit locker room" molded into it which adds a little humor.

There was another Deals wheels funny car model that was made and it was a 60's Mustang called the "Ferd Phony Car". It was only made in the 70's as part of the original series and it has not been re-issued since then. The 2 funny cars are the 2 of the hardest models of the deals wheel series to find.