rails under KITT's nose

[garen]

I have wondered about this for a long time. Allot of times there are two rails seen under the nose of KITT. Sometimes they stick a good couple of inches past the front end. What are these for? Were they used during stuntwork?

thanks,
garen

[cloudkitt]

I know what you're talking about and have wondered that myself...

[Army_F_Body]

I believe those are somekind of subframe connectors.

Those are essentailly 2 rails that are welded to the underside of the car, running from the front to about the rear diff. They stregthen the car greatly as F-bodies have no internal frame.

I plan on having a set added to my car this summer, if not sooner . I hear they really improve your ride.

[knightimmortal]

They were also the mounts for pulling the car along behind another vehicle for some shots.

KI

[JL]

IIRC, those rails were actually used to hook KITT to the camera truck when they wanted to do shots of David in the car as it rode along, rather than doing rear-projection or bluescreen work. The rails might also have been used to attach a special bumper that you see in front of KITT when they push Byrock's bulldozer into the acid pit at the end of "Junk Yard Dog," but don't quote me on that one.

[themarvelous3]

i always wonderd about those...i thought they looked cool though.

off topic, but i read that david insisted on doing almost all of the driving in the show to "get more into it" this must have saved some money on camera shots as well...instead of having the stunt man pull up and skid out, then change camera angles so that it could be michael getting out of the car, he could pull up, skid out and jump out of the car all in one swooping camera shot...i wish i was david...

[knightimmortal]

That's how it started out, but they started to scale back on David's stunt driving after (it has been rumored) that he came close to wrecking one of the cars.

KI

[themarvelous3]

haha. oops

i heard they had only a few cars to begin with, so they actually made cars OVER cars...so when a car got damaged, they peeled off the top layer and "another" car was under it

[Dome]

in another KR Forum I've read, that, those Rails are to stabilisise the front nose, because the weight of the nose was too heigh.

in a later season they changed the front nose with a "less-Weight-nose" and removed those rails

[knightimmortal]

Except those rails are apparent throughout the series, so I guess that one doesn't hold up all that well, huh?

Not to mention, if you are going to stabilize a nose, then why add more weight to it, specifically on the underside, where the pull of gravity would be higher?

KI

[Cougar]

KARR had those rails too. For some of the scenes where KITT is turbo boosting I think they put cameras on the then rails there also.