The 1955 Kurtis Kraft John Zink Special. Indianapolos 500 winner. by Mark Gussin

The bodyshell for this car came from Chris Etzel who makes superb 1:24th scale kits but this bodyshell is 1:32nd. The car is the John Zink Special that won the race in 1955. I had great difficulty in getting good reference material but fortunately Carousel have recently produced a die-cast of one in a larger scale so using that as reference helped. The car was painted pink (!) but the exact colour reference is still a mystery. The official Indy picture shows a ghastly redish colour, the Carousel car pictures I have seen vary in colour too. I decided to use a colour close to the Carousel colour. It's too late now as I'm not doing it again!

I decided to do this the old fashioned way so the chassis is a Dynamic unit and the motor a Pittmann. Wheels are standard aluminium the only modern compromise was the guide which is a trailing type so it cannot be seen from above the car. A simple post was installed and plastic shelf at the back to support the rear of the bodyshell.

The manifold was supplied with the bodyshell, I drilled the end inserted a bit of brass rod and added a bit of aluminium tube for the exhaust pipe. I also made some resin wheel inserts. The driver had no left arm or steeling wheel which must have made the Indy 500 a bit more of a challenge. I corrected this and added a head.

The first attempt at painting used completely the wrong pink. So I started again!

This picture shows the car a good few speps forward. The wheels have been painted and detailed. The bodyshell painted the correct colour, decals applied and the driver painted.

Above are the decals which I made myself and printed on the Alps printer. Because it is aluminium the exhaust pipe can be polished up to look almost like chrome. It was then fixed in place using fuse wire.

I added the windshield made of acrylic sheet and a few details. The car was completed.