Daytona was actually the 4th race in a 49-race season in 1968. Richard was off to a slower than normal start, having only one race win, at Montgomery Speedway, comin' into the 500.
The little Satellite showed up at Daytona, sporting what looked like a vinyl roof! This led to a TON of speculation: did the rough surface help aerodynamics? Was the roof so chopped up and modified that the Pettys needed to disguise it with flat paint?? (Was it a Trojan Horse to draw attention away from something else???) Anyhoo, it got thru technical inspection, apparently meeting the template rules - whatever THAT meant back then - and Richard got ready to race. At the start, he dropped back to 5th, and was running around there when the roof began to peel back!
Many thought it was the vinyl roof peeling, but no - during the practice and qualifying, it appears that the rollcage wore thru the roof at the top edge of the windshield, and air was getting in and buckling the metal! (A site contributor, Don Lalla, who was there at the race, claimed you could hear a whistling sound from the car during practice, whose source was not pinned down prior to the race by the team.)
At the first yellow, around lap 25, Richard pitted, and frantically tried, with his crew, to tape the mess down. That is why you see shots of this car with the windshield held in by duct tape... Red Green must be proud... and that was how he finished the race, never getting back the two laps he lost in the pits, and finishing eighth, two laps down. The "vinyl look" was gone from then on...
The model here represents Richard's Plymouth as it appeared in that race, and was built using the AMT 1968 Satellite, with NASCAR bits from the excellent Lindberg '64 Petty Plymouth, and some bits from an early Monogram NASCAR T-bird (Folger's, I believe). The body was left stock, except I had to build and install the B-pillars to match the actual car. Front headlights were filled with epoxy and painted silver, and I just left the rear tail lights off! Most of the hard work was related to making a racing interior, and getting the proper nose-down/tail-up rake on the chassis.
For the interior, I scrapped the seats, and made a smooth rear parcel shelf. The 'cage out of the '64 Plymouth was used in the 1968 tub. To get smooth sides on the interior tub, I just reversed them, installing the right side panel on the left side and vice-versa, so the "upholstered" side was hidden against the body. The interior was painted Grabber Blue, which is actually the same colour as Petty Blue (see below...). The rollcage was painted black to match pictures. (An excellent source for this project is the Blue Glen production "Chrysler Racing Stable of the Late 1960's".)
The instrument cluster from the Folger's T-bird was cut from its dash, and installed over the stock dash in the '68, and the T-bird's seat, with scratch-built seatbelts, was installed.
It cannot be overemphasized how much downward rake the builders of that era built into their superspeedway cars! They knew about downforce, but rear spoilers were a year or so away, so they artificially "wedged" the body by droppin' the nose in the weeds, and trying to get the trunk deck as high as possible. Dunno how effective it was, but they musta been a treat to drive!!
To simulate this rake, I relocated the front spindles higher up on the post, so the wheels snugged up into the wheelwells. The back was the most fun - I got to make my own shackles! I am particularly proud of my approach here: spacers were cut from square PLASTRUCT tubing, glued between the rear spring mounts and the springs, positioned so that you could see thru them from the rear. I then made perforated "shackles" that I glued to each side, so they protrude below the springs, as I saw in various shots. Looks quite convincing, yet is very strong!
Engine, exhausts manifolds and pipes came from the '64 Lindberg Petty kit. The pipes are particularly impressive!! Wheels are the excellent Holman-Moody jobbies from The Modelhaus; not totally accurate, but purty darn close...
The body was modified by drilling holes for hoodpins and a gas filler cap in the left rear fender. The gascap was scratchbuilt. (I have no idea why it's red, but that's what all the shots from Daytona show!) The body was primed and then shot with Ford 1970 Grabber Blue touchup lacquer - and herein lies a story... Ford marketers had planned on selling 1970 Torinos in a colour they would call "Petty Blue", since RP was drivin' their product in 1969, and, as far as they knew, would be still doing so in 1970.... then Richard got a look at the 1970 Superbird... and Ford scrambled to rename the colour package, that was already committed to... thus Grabber Blue = Petty Blue....
Once the body was painted, I added the decals. Most of the numbers and the "UNITY RACEWAY" script was run off on my ALPS printer, from a set of graphics I prepared. The numbers were scanned from an old JNJ sheet, and I used "Balloon Xtra Bold" script for the "unity" lettering. The "HOOKER" decals for the C-pillars were made by myself in Adobe PhotoShop - my first original image!!! "Plymouth by Petty" came from an old Johan sheet - I need to scan one of those in! - and the period contingency decals came from Yesterday's excellent sheet. "426 C.I." on the hood was also scanned in. I now almost have a generic Petty sheet ready, just need that "Plymouth by Petty" added and I'll never have to scrounge for 43's agin!!
In passing, I cannot praise Detail Master's hood pin sets enough! They provide excellent photo-etched scuff plates, pins, and even include sewing pins and wire! There's enuff for about 5 cars in each package, too!!
Special attention was needed to simulate the "vinyl" roof. On the real car this was just flat black, not actually vinyl. What I did was to two-tone the roof with high-gloss black, then apply all the decals to roof, hood, sides, etc... I then carefully applied several LIGHT coats of Tamiya TS13 clear from the rattle-can, heated in tap water.
The blue was then carefully masked, and I shot the roof with a couple coats of Testor's Dull-Cote flat clear. The blue was then polished with Turtle Wax polishing compound, being careful not to get any on the flat black roof. The reason for not using low-gloss black in the first place is that the decal would "silver" over such a rough finish. This is similar to the technique I use routinely on tire decals.
Last step was applying the BareMetal foil, as they still ran chrome back then... Keep fergettin' how much I dislike applying BareMetal, but it's worth it! (There are three little thingies on the blue-black breakline in all the shots I've seen of this car. Can't tell what they are... maybe trim clips? Decided not to try and duplicate them... although BareMetal squares would likely be close enough....) And once it was all together, I had a unique model from "The Dark Side"! (The shots below show the extreme rake that these cars had.)
For Petty, 1968 continued to be a ho-hum year: he only won 16 of the 49 races, finishing third, behind Pearson and Isaac. By season's end, he saw the writing on the wall; Plymouth was being outclassed by Ford, and he would need to do something different in 1969... Heads up, Polar Lights!
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