Cheetah: Complete (#4 for 2019)

Four builds completed already! it's worth pointing out that three were started prior to the New Year, one as far back as 2013, and that two really only involved a few final touches in 2019. Nonetheless the pace has been torrid.



The Cheetah was painted in the fall of 2018, then sat in the WIP pile until last week when a bout of the flu meant I had a lot of bench time. 



The kit is a typical small-volume resin kit. Historic Racing Miniature's resin is always absolutely superb; you'd think it was styrene. And most everything fits very well once you puzzle it all out.



The instructions, a three-page typed affair, are vague and require a lot of deciphering, but the way that HRM puts bits in numbered baggies, with a list of the contents of each baggie on the 4th page of the instructions, means you can easily identify stuff, some of which is very small indeed.



Some minor bits were missing, as far as I could tell; and the kit came with a resin anti-roll bar as well as one made of three brass rods and two resin connectors. I used the brass bits and put the spare in the parts bin.



This has always been one of those gotta-have-it cars, and in the absence of a real one, this one will do just fine.



This is probably the best shot of it, highlighting the haunches and the extended hood.



If anything it looks as if the rear axle sits too far back. I'm not sure how that happened, given the nice positive location of the axle to the floor pan, and of the floor pan to the body; but it would also explain why the hood hinges didn't quite line up with the chassis bracket meant to take them. 



There were several intake systems used at the time. Car #64 had a standard Rochester injection system. Other options common at the time were a pair of carbs (included in the kit); a Rochester system with two intakes poking through the hood instead of the single side intake as here; and a set of 4 side-draft Webers as used in the Corvette Gran Sport.



What's next? Hard to tell; the WIP stash is down to only 7 kits, so maybe I'll work on clearing out some of that stash before tackling something new. Alternatively there are a lot of period road racers just waiting to keep the Cheetah company. Maybe a Cobra? Stay tuned!