so for those of you who got involved in my "why are these sprint car wings not taking primer" post, thanks for the advice on how to fix it. this is the car that had said wings. Acme 1/18 sprint car of Danny Sams III. You may not have heard of him, he's a young (23) sprint car driver from Florida that has had moderate success on a regional level in the Midwest (his team bases out of Elkhart, IN during the racing season). he turned that success into a full time ride in the High Limit series this year, with limited success. during the recent 4 race stretch that was held at Eldora, he failed to make the feature the first two nights (High Limit), got bit by the track (like many other drivers) on Friday (Outlaws) and destroyed his car, and didn't show back up for the final night on Saturday (also Outlaws).
i got interested in this fella's career last year with his regional success and began to follow his career. talked to him a few times in the pits and he's an incredibly polite young man, you can tell he was raised right. i decided that i wanted to build a replica of his car. i ended up reaching out to 2 decal makers and never heard back from the first one once i bought what i bought from him, he simply refused to answer about custom decals. ended up using STS Scale Model Decals, the decals were fairly decent quality. i missed a few things on the proof and ended up having my mom's boyfriend print some stuff for me. which was a total PitA process for what it was worth. and the STS decals kept getting delayed, originally quoted 6-8 weeks for a proof and it ended up being 11 weeks... but that's another story.
anyway, i went with his car from 2024. the new one had a bit more complicated appearance (see pic below). the 2024 car had a few variations, the wings were grey, they were white, etc. i went with the white wings because it seems that the colors pop a little more (God i hate that phrase :o ). body is semi-gloss black and the wings are semi-gloss white, which i thought was going to be pretty simple until i had the paint issues on the wings. cut the wheel covers from styrene sheet and added a rock screen. that's about it for deviation from the kit.
alright, enough crying from me, here's the finished product. my goal is to get this into Danny's hands before the racing season runs out this year, i told him what i was planning when i saw him race this past May.
speaking of which, this is me and him (he's the guy on the right ;) )
(https://i.imgur.com/syzKpLz.jpeg)
here is the finished car
(https://i.imgur.com/cuX4Rlz.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/x7CHilx.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/p0v0sfR.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/HCyqHiB.jpeg)
(https://i.imgur.com/NRjJK5m.jpeg)
and here is the current car
(https://i.imgur.com/rtPeC7A.jpeg)
That is one fine looking replica of Sam's sprint car. I hear his name from time to time on Dirt Tracker Daily. Great work
Pretty cool. I like the version you built better than what it looks like now, has a "meaner" look to it. There's always a special satisfaction when you build something for a driver and they sincerely appreciate it.
Looks nice. Great job.
Quote from: Volzfan59 on July 22, 2025, 09:37:09 AMThat is one fine looking replica of Sam's sprint car. I hear his name from time to time on Dirt Tracker Daily. Great work
He's not setting the sprint car world on fire with results, but hey... you gotta start somewhere and expect growing pains.
Cool looking car. You did a good job on it. You built the one you wanted not what they gave you.