Godzilla

Oh no, they say he's got to go
Go go Godzilla
Yeah-a-ah
Oh no, there goes Tokyo
Go go Godzilla
Yeah-a-ah. . . .

- D. "Buck Dharma" Roeser

Back in the days. . .when a Detroit-built motor actually meant something. . . there came to be an engine so hot, so powerful, and so monstrous that every soul who knew anything about automobiles wanted one. Guys with two girlfriends would drop both to look under the hood of a buddy's car that had one of these powerplants. Without any modification of any kind there wasn't another stock mill that could top it. The legendary motor I'm referring to is the Dodge 426 hemi. Just those last four letters were enough to send any Corvette owner into cardiac arrest. MOPAR ruled the late 1960s and early 1970s, and this engine is the major reason why. The 426 hemi was the Godzilla of motors.

In the same year that Beatlemania started in the U.S.A. (1964) Dodge Motor Corporation designed and produced an engine for the racing circuit. This motor was so successful they quickly produced a "street" version for their regular production automobiles. The differences were slight - a lower compression ratio (10.25:1), cast iron (vs. aluminum) heads, intake and exhaust manifold changes, and valve timing changes. This stock version kicked out an incredible 425 hp at 5000 rpm!! The only bad thing about it was that you couldn't buy one - supply never came close to demand.

Those were quite the days, indeed. While I, myself, never owned one of these "big dogs", (the closest I came was the 383 in my '68 Charger) I would have given up a kidney just to own one of these critters. What's more is that I know I wasn't alone in thinking that way. Well, some detractors might say that they ate gas (well, um, yes they did - they had 2 carbs); but, hey, petrol was all of $0.25/9 back then, so WHO CARED? Ahh, but when the initial gas crunch hit in the early '70s, the hemi (and a lot of other hot engines) became extinct. Economics can suck sometimes.

:)

As you can see, by glancing at my "interests" section, I have a hobby of building kits. My main interest there is in WW2 ground forces, (tanks and such) but occasionally I'll venture outside of that realm. Not too long ago I was up at the local WallMart and spotted a 1/6 scale kit of the 426 hemi. $20. I bit. It was a good decision, too.

I'll call this kit very easy. It's half die-cast metal and half plastic, with a few rubber/vinyl parts. Every part is pre-painted or molded in the correct color. All the parts are also sprue-removed so there's no "clean-up". The only tools I needed were a fairly small phillips-head screwdriver, a hobby knife, superglue, and regular plastic glue. What's more, I could have done without the hobby knife if I would have superglued the chrome parts together. The instructions were very clear, and I had no problems with any parts of the build. My only recommendation, if any of you out there are interested, is that you pre-chase the threads on the plastic parts before you actually screw them together. That'll cost a little extra time, but it'll also make any "critical" fitting parts non-problematic.

If the kit is built correctly, one can turn the crankshaft gear at the back and it will also spin the starter gear and the vibration damper/water pump/alternator/power steering pump at the front. Neat design (mine works fine). This is a pretty good beginner kit, given a bit of supervision. For an intermediate or more experienced builder, it's a piece of cake.

This kit took me a total of about 5 hours to build, over 3 days' time - mostly because I wanted to give the glue time to dry before proceeding. The only flaw in the kit itself was that the rubber/vinyl part for the spark plug wiring on the left side was a bit too short to build according to the instructions. I solved that problem by swapping the #1 and #2 cylinder wires on the distributor cap. This would be a major problem on the real thing, but on a kit most people couldn't tell. The end product still looked pretty good to me. See what you think:

Not too bad, eh? Maybe I should have "dirtied" it up a bit? Nahhh. :)