1/25 MPC Wild Willie Borsch's 23 T AA/FA

Gallery Article by Terry Sumner on Dec 7 2011

Wild Willie Borsch AA/FA

This is a 1/25th scale model of Wild Willie Borsch's 23 T AA/FA.  AA Fuel Altered was the wildest class of drag racing you could find back in the late 60's and early 70's. The cars were made from early cars like the 1923 Ford. The bodies were mounted on custom built frames and used the biggest engines they could fined back then, which were mainly the 393 Chryslers. They burned Nitromethane fuel and made a whole lot of horsepower. The reason they were so exciting to watch was a number of reasons. One of course was the earth shaking noise of a big bad blown engine running Nitro. And another was the fact that these cars had short wheelbases, which almost always made for a wild hairy ride down the quarter-mile!  And Wild Willie Borsch was the King of these rides! He would routinely drive this car with one hand on the wheel and the other holding onto the side of the door. And more often than not, the little altered would be sideways upon launch!

 

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The kit used to model WW's car was the old MPC kit. All the chrome in the kit was stripped off with bleach and the underlying clearcoat was stripped with EasyOff oven cleaner. All the chrome parts were then sprayed with an enamel gloss black and then SNJ aluminum powder was rubbed in to get a polished aluminum look. 

Modifications included new front coilover shocks turned on the Unimat lathe. The coil springs were made from winding some malleable wire around a mandrel on the lathe. The engine was wired and plumbed and installed in the frame. The body was painted candy apple red and the kit decals were applied after the finish was rubbed out with the LMG polishing kit. The tires were sanded to give the "used" appearance. Thread was used for the parachute cabling.

A wild car for a wild man....Wild Willie Borsch...R.I.P.

Terry Sumner

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Photos and text © by Terry Sumner