2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

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ah8tk
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2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

Post by ah8tk »

In early 2018, I decided to build a pinewood derby car based in a friend's 1962 AMC Metropolitan, street rod. The car had just won the 2018 Minnesota Street Rod Associations, Custom of the Year award.

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One of the car clubs I belong to, for the past 3 years, has had an annual pinewood derby race in February. I wasn’t sure the race was going to happen in 2018 as we didn’t have a place to hold the race at, and I needed volunteers to help run the race. My son and his buddy went off to college and would not be helping at the 2018 event. In December someone stepped up and offered his repair, alignment shop to hold the race in, and I found some volunteers to help.

So now we had a place to race, I started in planning for the Met build. Knowing this was going to be a very short wheelbase car, I figured it could possibly upset the performance potential.

One of the issues I was having with the design, is the wheels are mostly covered with the body. Almost all of the other cars we have built have had wheelwells that surrounded the wheel. On others we made covers from thin roofing metal to partially cover the wheel and on one we actually made a removable fender skirt that covered the axle. This car would have a body that totally covered the axle so it would be impossible to put together once it was assembled.

The fix actually came to me while I was driving to work one morning. I could make the chassis a "roller skate" or "skateboard" design and the body would cover it. The last hurdle would be where the body gets wider at the bottom and fitting the wheels while keeping within the 2 3/4" maximum width.

I needed to move the wheels in towards the track. This led to another drawing that showed the car sitting on the track, this car would be a railrider with the rear wheels canted and the steering wheel recessed another 1/16". The skate was made 1/16” narrower to help the wheels fit into the new wheel wells. There is still 1 13/16” between the wheels

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The outside of car is 2 13/16" wide at the bottom. The wood is so thin over the wheels that you could see light through when you held it up to the light, before paint.

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The car is built up from wood blocks to create the body shape. It is then sawed out to get the general form. From here there is carving and sanding to get the final shape.

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The wood is then primed, sanded and filled, multiple times, until the car is looking like the real car.

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From there the paint is applied. Decals are added and the car is cleared. The axles are polished and lubed and placed with the wheels onto the car. The car was weighed and some additional weight was added to bring the car up to 5 oz. It was now ready to race.

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As I was building this car to give to the owner of the Metropolitan. With this, I built two cars. Building two cars doesn’t necessarily take twice the amount of time as you can do each job twice in way less time as you learn the process, the second time is a lot quicker. I had marked the cars as 1 and 2.

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It turns out the owner also built a Metropolitan as his pinewood derby car for the race, so he had to run both of them in the club race. I have included a picture of them both, it may be difficult to distinguish which one I built.

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The Metropolitan placed 6 out of 25 cars in our stock PWD race. The other pinewood version of the Metropolitan placed 17th.

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Fast and beautiful, that’s how I like to build pinewood derby cars.
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whodathunkit
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Re: 2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

Post by whodathunkit »

Very nice job Andy!
It look’s like the real car as well.

Your builds just keep getting better and better
all the time!



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
Speedster
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Re: 2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

Post by Speedster »

I'd like to see that but I can't get the pictures. I think I'm not the most ignorant when it comes to computers but I suspect I'm one of the 1st two. Anything you can do?
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ah8tk
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Location: Minneapolis, MN - north

Re: 2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

Post by ah8tk »

There are no troubles with the pictures, they are hosted on Google. Not sure what the trouble is for you.
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whodathunkit
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Re: 2018 car 1962 AMC Metropolitan

Post by whodathunkit »

If i did not know any better Andy..
Id say speedster is blinded by the paint job you put on this car.. being a painter in all !

Tapatalk
has been having some trouble's as well .. sometimes i cant view a few of the topics on my phone.. due to server errors.
Was told there fix would be in the next update's

But i can see the pic's just fine on my end.. phone and computer.
What type of automobile can be spelled the same forwards & backwards?
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