NASCAR Models by Rod McLeod!!

FireBall Roberts' 1940 FISH Carburator Ford Modified

decals by 3 Amigos!

Story by Rod:
"Way back in the 1930s, John Robert Fish invented a carburetor that got significantly better gas mileage and made more horsepower than what was coming out of Detroit. But he couldn’t get anywhere with car makers and was forced to try and market the carburetor himself by mail order. He had lots of financial and production problems and this resulted in a delays in shipping orders. The post office stepped in and investigated him for postal fraud. He was eventually cleared and production got seriously underway in the mid-fifties. The Fish Carburetor name became well known to race fans because the Daytona Beach company sponsored a series of high profile race cars that ran in the early NASCAR beach races, primarily in the modified division. Drivers of the cars included NASCAR stars and future stars such as Fireball Roberts, Joe Weatherly, Speedy Thompson and Herb Thomas.

When our model club selected the Revell 1940 Ford as the subject of the annual club project, I decided to try building a model of the M-1 modified driven in 1955 by Fireball Roberts.

Reference material was slim on this car although there was a diecast produced a few years ago by Eastwood. Armed with the diecast pics, a couple of black and white shots of the car and a good graphic of the Fish logo I drew the graphics for the car in Corel Draw. The car has a three tone paint scheme and to save a little masking/painting I made the white side panels and hood panels as decals. I took a little liberty with the small roof numbers and added white outlines as this was used on a couple of the other Fish modifieds. Did I mention the lack of reference material?

With the graphics off to 3-Amigos to be printed, I turned my attentions to the kit itself. The Revell kit is an excellent replica of the 1940 Ford and goes together quite well. To be completely accurate the car probably should have had the engine replaced with a Cadillac and likely a two or three carb setup. I chose instead to go with a more curbside approach and left the engine stock.

The body was a different story. First all of the chrome was sanded off the sides of the body and the hood. I scraped it down with the edge of an x-acto blade and then sanded with emery sticks and sandpaper until I got it smooth. The fenders were radiused based on pictures of the real car both front and rear. Headlight covers were made from some Evergreen sheet. There was no grille in the race car so I cut out the plastic that sits behind it on the standard model. A dust screen was made from some mesh and small round Evergreen bent into shape with careful heating. Front and rear bumpers were also made from Evergreen tubing.

The running boards on some of the M modifieds were swiss cheese drilled and I thought that this was a neat feature to include in the M-1 although it is not clear it ever ran this way. It took a lot of sanding to get rid of the molded in rubber treads on the running boards but eventually I got these smooth. Then I drilled a line of holes and added a couple of supports underneath that are visible through two of the holes.

The last body modification was to cut holes at the back of the front fenders for the headers to exit through. This step took a lot of fitting as I’d not built my own headers before leastwise a set that needed to exit in the fenders. I basically bent a tube at a time and taped them together until I had both sides done and then I glued them together.

On the inside a simple four bar roll cage was made out of evergreen tubing. I bent a front and rear hoop and then tied these together with two straight pieces. At first I made a racing bench seat like those found on early Grand National cars but then I found that these cars mainly ran with old aircraft style bucket seats. I found a suitable candidate in the parts box and mounted that up instead. I glued the dash directly to the inside of the body as I did not use the inner door panels. Since this was a modified it did run pretty much stripped down in the interior. I added a tach to the dashboard from the parts box. The pictures I have also show the rear windows intact and I installed these as well as the front and rear glass. On at least one of the M modifieds the glass appears to have been replaced with plexiglass with rivets from the outside but this is not the case in the M-1 pics I’ve seen.

The wheels were a bit of a problem for me. The most accurate wheels I’d seen were offered by Early Racing Classics in resin but these are no longer in production. I used a set of Plastic Performance Products Wide 5 wheels. The rears are pretty close and the fronts are not really accurate but look racier than stock. I mounted a set of stock tires from the parts box that were a little wider than the kit tires. I think these were from the AMT 64 Galaxie kit.

I did put a wash of brown paint over the wheels to grime them up a little and the chassis got the full weathering treatment but haven’t gotten up the nerve yet to cover the body in that salty-white beach sand. Maybe after it sits on the shelf for awhile I will.

In the meantime, if you are interested in any of the Fish Carburetor M modifieds, the graphics for the M-1, M-3, M-4 and M-5 are all available now from 3-Amigos. "

Here is the preview of the M-series sheet Rod put together!

(Note from Mr NASCAR: Rod is a fellow Canuck, and one of the NASCARphiles in GROUP 25...)

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