Project Planning and the REAL world

[mr.c]

This was the car that ,to me ,was love at first sight. I was in college when this car started racing and I bought every magazine that had a Cheetah racing. I even built a clay model way back then. This is the car that I have always wanted to build. I still haven't given up. It would surely be a fun track car. I raced with a gentleman that had a real one in his stable of racecars,Skip Gunnell out of Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. He only brought it to the track once and had fuel injuection problems so it only did a few laps if any. Anybody buy one of the fiberglas knock-off bodies? I didn't know skip well enough to even ask about pulling a FSP off of his car.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

[HEATNBEAT]

Originally Posted by mr.c

This was the car that ,to me ,was love at first sight. I was in college when this car started racing and I bought every magazine that had a Cheetah racing. I even built a clay model way back then. This is the car that I have always wanted to build. I still haven't given up. It would surely be a fun track car. I raced with a gentleman that had a real one in his stable of racecars,Skip Gunnell out of Miami or Ft. Lauderdale. He only brought it to the track once and had fuel injuection problems so it only did a few laps if any. Anybody buy one of the fiberglas knock-off bodies? I didn't know skip well enough to even ask about pulling a FSP off of his car.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...26tbs%3Disch:1

My brother owns Corvette Corrections in So Cal. He restores Corvettes and other cars for a living. Most of his clients do road raceing I was in his shop one day and he had a cheetah in working on it .It was the first time I had heard of one. Very nice car

[The Old Tinbasher]

Well, what can I say. Truer spoken words I havent heard in a long time. Most people have a dream but do not realise what it takes to get there. I have a 28 Ford Sport Coupe (Canadian) that I've been restoring for years. I stopped counting hours at 4000 and that was 10 years ago. I finally have the last parts I've been hunting for and can finally finish up the restoration. I did this one my way, the complete car has been apart including the body, sandblasted, epoxy primed and all of the metal work has been done without filler. Nice car other than it had been rolled over.
Why? because when I was 10 years old I saw and Heard a "A" and said "One day I'll have one of those"

Now I do!!

John Poole

[Kerry Pinkerton]

Originally Posted by mr.c

This was the car that ,to me ,was love at first sight. I was in college when this car started racing and I bought every magazine that had a Cheetah racing....

Carey, with the new year limits at the street rod nats there were a lot of later model cars including this:

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I remember them also. BRUTES! Stan Lobitz has a buddy in his hometown that has one he's painting for someone. Pretty high horsepower to weight ratio!

It's fiberglas...I'm surprised they didn't do it in aluminum for weight reduction.

[mr.c]

Kerry: The first two Cheetahs were aluminum. They used one of those to make the molds for the fiberglas bodies. I just bought a old HotRod magazine that feature the Bill Thomas Cheetah. I had a poor photocopy of the article and now you can find thes old magazines on the internet. The article showed the wood buck that they used to make the alloy bodied cars.
I was snooping around on YouTube and found a video of Skip Gunnell's car with some in-car shots. It was more of a film shoot kind of video so he wasn't hammering on it. Skip used to vintage race when I was doing it. The street course stuff. What a blast. He drove a Lola T70 coupe and only brought the Cheetah out once or twice for track days at Moroso Motorsports Park. Most of the time it was being worked on. Fuel injection issues.
I haven't toally given up on building something similar but at 65 and so many other projects, it is not looking very promising. Mine would probably have twelve velocity stacks. I have spare Jag motors and I have six webers to fit to one. I would probably use all Jag stuff since I have so many of them and parts would be free. It certainly wouldn't be as light ,but it would be a fun ride.

[The Old Tinbasher]

Here are truly spoken words. After 35 years of tracking major restoration jobs it's nice to see I'm not out of my mind. I just finished a Nice Driver (1956 Jaguar 140 Roadster) and I had 1300 hrs. in the body and paint. I know the owner had twice that in the rest of the car. And it's just a nice driver. I find it very difficult for people to understand the hours it take to create these vehicles. I guess unless your there you can't understand.

John Poole

Picture #1 The owner starting the project and yes that is the front end of the car up against the wall. The rear section was against the other wall and a big gap in between!! JP

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[Joe Hartson]

Very nice restoration on the XK 120. All restorations are a labor of love. The owner will enjoy the car, driving it and showing it.