Click here for catalog!
SHORT TRACK MODELS by Rod McLeod

Jerry Makara's 1964 #3 Bai-Lynn Chevy LMS

decals by BULLRING GRAPHIX!


Notes from Rod:

"Jerry Makara was a driver from Michigan that made a name for himself in Canada where he found a lot of success in the early 1970s at tracks like Cayuga and Delaware winning several track championships. Later he drove for the Draime engine team with Thrush colours in ASA and won several big races, including a memorable modified win at Trenton with his fenderless Late Model Camaro.

This particular car is from early in the 1970s when his career was just taking off. The car was owned by the late Jimmy Howell and his parents owned the Bai-Lynn party store that was the sponsor. The car was also driven on occasion by Joe Ruttman. Thanks to Steve Wundelich for filling in some of the history on it for me. Steve's dad worked on the car. Also thanks to Jim Hehl for helping out with photo references.

I was attracted to the car because of seeing Makara race around Southern Ontario when I was a kid but also due to the unique lettering style that was hand-painted on the real car as was the norm in those days. The other interesting thing was the number style that would later show up on one of the earliest Earnhardt-Childress Wrangler Monte Carlos in 1984. I also liked the red with black stripes paint scheme, reminiscent of the popular SS stripes on the 1970 Chevelle street car.

The body for this one is a resin piece from Fred's Resin Workshop. It was very well cast and easy to work with. Fred will likely have a stock car version of this eventually in his line-up but this one was pretty easy to convert to a Late Model. I chopped off the lower parts of the front fenders and radiused the wheelwells with a sharp x-acto.

I cut open the hood so that the peek-through-the-fenders headers could have a visible engine to attach to. The chassis is combination of a Camaro front clip and an AMT Cup rear section. Not that accurate for this car but I needed to extend the wheelbase and this seemed a quick way to do it. The cage is a combination of AMT cup sidebars and brass uprights. The rub bars on the side and rear are from strips of Evergreen.

The other modification that added to the look of the car was to carefully cut apart the front grille and bumper and then trim the grille from its surround so that it could be mounted like the real car. It ended up back inside the fenders a little too far on this one but it is a lot closer than the stock piece.

The wheels are also from Fred and these match the homemade wide-fives of the era very well. The tires are scuffed ones from the AMT cup kit with tire decals from Slixx and on the inside front a gold stripe Firestone from Fred Cady.

Since taking the pictures I realized that the stripes on the cowl were missing but there was coinicidentally the correct sized leftover from the sheet and that stripe has since been added."

These decals are now available from BULLRING GRAPHIX - Click Here!"

Home Page To Models Index Page To Top of Page