Greetings from MN

[Chris R]

Greetings All,
My name is Chris and I am 32 years old from Alexandria, MN. I wish I would have known about this site a long time ago... I have been obsessed with coachbuilding and one-off racers of the late 40's and 50's since I was a kid.

Over the past few years I've been able to save up and buy materials to start my project. Last winter (Dec 2011) I finally began building my own wood buck on a mid engine ladder frame chassis reminiscent of the 1949 Glockler VW Specials that were predecessors to the Porsche 550 Spyder. It utilizes VW Trans, Engine and Front Beam.

I have no formal training in metalworking or fabrication and learned as I went along. The project was done on an extremely tight budget and I had to utilize the minimal tools and objects I had at hand in our dairy barn in Minnesota.

Just glancing through the site I see tools in other threads that I didn't know existed and would like to learn about. I'm very excited to learn from everyone here and share some of my future projects.

Here are some pictures of the car I designed and built. It is inspired by a handful of cars that were built in Germany following WWII. They were built out of the war rubble and aircraft scraps, typically on VW War vehicle chassis... I've always been fascinated with these little aircraft racers.

[Peter Tommasini]

HI Chris
That is a nice job well done.....
PS where did you learn to do the buck?
Peter

[Onemorehammer]

Chris, looks like you paid close attention somewhere along the way, very nice work, Dan

[Dyce]

Cool car Chris!! I'll bet it's a blast flying down the road passed the nighebors!!!! Thanks for sharing.

[HEATNBEAT]

Hi Chris and welcome !
Nice job on the buck and car

[barry larson]

Chris What a great job.Very nice looking car.I would gess we were over to the road race corse....You need to come down to the metal meet next spring and get with some of the guys hear in Mn....We be from Anoka.............Retired guy Stay in touch. Barry Larson.....

[Nardini]

Chris, congratulations and my extraordinary respect.
You are damned close to the original one,
the Glöckler-Porsche Nr. 1.

And here is the evidence:

[Chris R]

Thanks for the words guys. Peter T, I figured out how to do the buck based on pictures from 2 old "Trend Books" from the late 50's. A metal shaper named Jack Sutton built bucks in similar fashion.

I look at the car 2 dimensionally and see it in a grid. This helps identify all the lines, highs, lows, curves, etc. Then I figured out which pieces to start with as main stringers and then the shorter/smaller pieces filled in after... It's a bit difficult to explain... I have a video on youtube here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LynsRY9tiBA

Chris

[Nardini]

Chris,
don't get me wrong please. I just noticed while I was watching your video on You-Tube that your pronounciation of Glöckler is partly wrong. The reason might be that the german language have different posibilities with some vocals : - a -, -o-, and - u -. They could be written > ä ; ö and ü, ( correctly written as an - ae -, oe and - ue- if you don't have a chance to put quotation marks above the -ä-, -ö- and -ü- at the end ).
The name of the man from Frankfurt was Walter Gl-Ö-ckler ( not like you say Gl -"O"-ckler ) ( just an example: you may know the famous german fabrik MÄRKLIN. If you will be correct, don't wright down Marklin, Maerklin would be right way.
I didn't found an english word for it but an exellent example is the first syllable of the french word "œuvre" = oeuvre > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVsXNLg87mo
If you will spent some time on the theme "Glöckers cars" on YouTube you will find this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gU7M9eN_8Ss ( language is nederlands ) and a video on the 550: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNRJneoTtPc ( at 0.45 sec. the ever grinding guy says Glöckler in the right way as our euroupean neighbour does it too ! ). In my opinion, if you had spent such a long time with a tremendous result you should use the right pronounciation.
all the best

[Peter Tommasini]

Originally Posted by Chris R

Thanks for the words guys. Peter T, I figured out how to do the buck based on pictures from 2 old "Trend Books" from the late 50's. A metal shaper named Jack Sutton built bucks in similar fashion.

I look at the car 2 dimensionally and see it in a grid. This helps identify all the lines, highs, lows, curves, etc. Then I figured out which pieces to start with as main stringers and then the shorter/smaller pieces filled in after... It's a bit difficult to explain... I have a video on youtube here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LynsRY9tiBA

Chris

You have done a nice job on the buck...
and the body as well....
Peter