44 replies to this topic

[dc-65x]

I really liked my good friend Rodney's Dynamic Slimline Ferrari F1's he showed in his thread (link below):

 

Dynamic Ferrari F1

 

I knew I'd been saving a couple of those bodies I collected years ago. Here is the first box I opened, a nice

NOS Handling Body Kit:

 

 

But was I surprised when I opened up the second box:

 

 

Apparently at LEAST 10 years ago I decided the Slimline body was too slim and stuffed a big round bottle of 

adhesive into it to spread it out.  

 

And spread it out it did compared to a stock body:

 

 

 

OK I've got a Slimline and a "Wideline" body so I start looking through my Model

Racing Journal DVD and see this April 1968 race report:

 

Gross Leads Cobra Parade, Sidewinders Arrive East

 

(click on the pictures to enlarge for easy reading)

 

 

 

 

I remembered there was also a Car Model Magazine article that covered the race.

It's hard to forget a magazine article with such a cool title:

 

Sandy's Sidewinder Sizzles

 

 

 

 

Sandy's motor is looking so familiar to me......... hmmmmm   

[Martin]

 I like open wheel angle-winders


 
 

[dc-65x]

For this build Martin I'll be taking design ideas not only from Sandy's car but from all the cars shown in the April and May 1968 publications. 
 
But I'm definitely following Sandy's lead on his motor. I built a shortened 68 Mabuchi can motor for a project that I stalled out on. It only needs some end bell modifications to work great for this build.
 
The shortened motor is the most important part of this build so I'm going to repost its construction here:
 
 

I needed to shorten the motor up like Sandy’s car. I cut about 1/8" off a 1968 Mabuchi can:
 


 
After much cutting, banging and grinding the stock ball bearing came out:

 


 
I used a grinder to remove as much of the bearing housing as possible without it falling off and used JB Weld to hold an end bell bearing in place:

 

 
 


 
My idea is to use the space in the can's empty bearing housing
to move the armature back further into the can.

 
 

Here's the shortened can compared to a stock one:
 

 
This can is even a tad bit shorter than the Mura Short Magnum can that came out much later on the right:
 

 

 

I'm actually glad now I didn't finish the project this motor was for because it is absolutely perfect for this build.

 

More to come.........

[dc-65x]

Here's the armature I'll be using. Sandy said he also used a Thorp:
 

 
It's an early NOS arm with thick laminations, fiber endplates and soldered comm wires. The "S" in the 26S designation might stand for single wind but my other single wound Thorp arms don't have the S. It could mean "short stack" as the lamination stack is a bit shorter than my other arms:
 

 
Mura was making short stack silver wire arms for the '68 Mabuchi during this time frame. The overall length of this Thorp is 1.130" so it's a touch shorter than the average of 1.160" for most of my vintage arms:
 

 
Time to cut down some ARCO magnets and shim............

[dc-65x]

I cut down the length of some Champion ARCO magnets to 9/16" long.
I came up with a crazy setup that ended up working as slick as a fancy slide mounted diamond saw.
 
It's just the magnet in a small vise that's sitting in the blue lid of a plastic storage box.
The rotary tool head is locked in another small vise.
A hunk of brass as a spacer between the two for the rotary tool head to slide along as it cuts.
 
This worked so accurately that I could cut half way through from each side of the magnet avoiding chipping out at the end of one long cut.
 
I know that is a lot of babbling but I'm just so amazed at how simple tools and setups can cut magnets down beautifully:
 

 
Here's the result:
 

 
I also shortened the one-piece shim (on the left) and added a little notch for a screwdriver blade to aid in removal from the can:
 

 
Onward to the endbell............

[Pablo]

 

[dc-65x]

Hey Pablo. Messing around with these motors is lots of fun. The last step with this one is the end bell.
 

The end bell I'm using is a meltable "unmeltable" (as Mura called it) first generation dark grey piece. The screw holes are tapped 2-56 and the brush hoods are soldered to the hex brush holders. Mura spring post protectors, brush springs and shunted brushes complete the parts list:
 

 

 
Here's the motor (set up with a junk arm to use as a jig motor) compared to a stock 68 Mabuchi. It has definitely been "shrunk" in size:
 

 

 

That's were I left of with this motor.

 

For this new build I notched the end bell to run the outside frame rail under it. This will narrow up the frame by 1/8". Looking at the fuzzy pictures I think Sandy might have done this but?????????

 

 

Here's the finished shorty 16D ready for a home:

 

 

 

Time to fire up the Ungar soldering iron for the chassis.  

[dc-65x]

To get the chassis going I needed a motor bracket. I found an early May '68 Associated ad below that includes an angle winder motor bracket:

 

 

This Associated bracket could be the one so I'm going with it:

 

 

I’ve been studying the picture of Sandy’s car and see he’s mounted the motor bracket on the outside of the frame rail:

 

 

The motor bracket on the outside of the main rail can narrow up the frame by a good 1/8”. For me to do this I cut that groove in my end bell I showed earlier for the frame rail to pass through.

 

With the shortened motor I only needed the motor angle 12 degree bend in the end bell main rail. The main rail on the can side is straight. The drop arm hinge tube was also added to help keep the rails parallel:

 

 

The modified motor bracket and brace were next:

 

 

The motor just squeezes in between the straight can side main rail. At this point the chassis is 1 3/8" wide:

 

 

I added the cross brace in front of the motor:

 

 

The chassis is ready for the rest of the frame rails and a good dose of piano wire.

 

 

[Mr. M]

Man, you live well, anodized Weldon gears for jig wheels!

[dc-65x]

  They do make cool jig wheels. Over 20 years ago I bought a box of assorted Weldon gears at a Good Guys swap meet.

[dc-65x]

This is the dawn of time for the 1/24 angle winder pro car. In the pictures and construction how to articles I see all the different ideas of how to basically tie together an inline front half of the frame to the angle winder back half. There are also many different kind of bracing to beef up that back end of the frame.

 

While I was pondering how to proceed with this chassis........

 

 

.......and it was right there in front of me in John Cukras sports car chassis picture right next to Sandy's car.

 

I really enjoy the luxury of being able to choose the ideas I like best from all the great Pro builders

that were shown in the period publications. They were the innovators, I'm just following their lead.

 

Circled in yellow is the 3-rail style I'm going with:

 

 

The 2 inner rails go in first and are bent to join together and attach to the frames cross brace:

 

 

Finally the piano wire middle rails and the spaces between all the rails are filled in with short

brass rods that tie everything together into one solid lump:

 

[Samiam]

"Putting the band back together"

  Nice work Rick.

[Mr. M]

Sam, Where ya been?

[Samiam]

Sam, Where ya been?

I'm still trying to qualify to have an opinion here on Slotblog

Oooops, just violated "Build Thread Etiquette" 

 

Sorry Rick

[dc-65x]

Brace yourselves guys.........here's the bracing on the rear axle. I tried to do L-braces similar to what was being done

on these earliest of angle winders:

 

 

 

Now it's ready for those "floating body mounts":

 

 

I followed Sandy's lead. I used 1/8" brass axle spacers

and aligned them in my Rick's jig with 1/8" aluminum tube:

 

 

The 1/16" pianos wire attached to the pin tubes are as long as possible to

support the sides of my stretched out body:

 

 

There is lots of loosey goosey movement with this setup

and the overall width of the chassis is 2.525":

 

 

Time to finish off this chassis with a drop arm.

[Pablo]

       

[dc-65x]

Thanks for following along with my build Pablo.

 

For the drop arm I'm going with the late inline style from a Model Car Journal chassis how-to article:

 

 

The drop arm plate is 1/16" X 3/4" vintage Cobra:

 

 

The Rick's jig helps keep the 1/32" brass strips aligned and in place for soldering:

 

 

The piano wire "loops" were kind of fiddly to install:

 

 

My personal favorite style of drop arm down stop. The jig aligns and holds it in place for soldering:

 

 

All buffed up and ready to go:

 

 

At this point I expected the chassis to be finished but I'm not happy with the way

it "feels" when I flex it. Some modifications are coming..........

[Mark Onofri]

I've had one sitting on my bench for months now. I've spent hours of thought on how to keep the molded in transaxel intact. I just noticed that mine is different. Now I'm not sure who made it. Your Monogram F-1 build was very helpful with a front & rear suspension detail. PS:I have the decals if you need them.

[Mark Onofri]

I'd make it a static model before I cut that out

Attached Images

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[Jay Guard]

At this point I expected the chassis to be finished but I'm not happy with the way

it "feels" when I flex it. Some modifications are coming..........

Hey Rick: I noticed in the caption under the chassis picture on page two of the MCJ it mentions that "all the frame work in the rear is piano wire".  Much of yours is brass, could this be why yours doesn't feel right?  Just a thought.

[dc-65x]

I believe you have a Dubro Ferrari there Mark.

 

Jay, I'm sure you are right. I thought I'd have to be putting all kinds of kinks and bends into the one piece main rails. Since I love brass chassis and brass is so easy to work with, I started my main rails in brass. 

 

It turned out that the main rails ended up having few bends and in retrospect, I should have scrapped the brass main rails and made them over in piano wire.

 

 

       

 

Circled is the obvious "weak link" in the chassis:

 

 

When I flexed the chassis I could see that lone brass rod starting to buckle. The opposite side rail didn't budge with it's attached motor bracket acting as a gusset.

 

OK, that's the problem, now let's fix it.

 

I added a piano wire half rail (in the red circle) that butted up to the body mount rail and looks like, 
"Hey, I meant to do that". But there was still excessive flexing ahead of the half rail (at the red arrow):

 

 

I added a piano wire L-brace (red arrows) to reinforce the rest of that brass main rail and now when

I flex the chassis it feels like, well, a chassis:

 

 

Here's what it looks like from the bottom:

 

 

I'll "put the buff" to the chassis and show some pictures........

[Phil Smith]

Rick, if my eyes aren't playing tricks on me, there's some weird stuff going on on the can side of the motorbox. It looks like the rail on that side is bent into a very tight loop, and tapered back into itself. A very odd design choice.

 

[dc-65x]

Hi Phil,

 

Now that you mention it that is sure what it looks like. But it's hard to be sure with these grainy newsprint photos.

 

When I studied these cars for this project I started thinking about how angle winders were an all new technology at the time.

These cars were the first of their type built only weeks after the first 1/24 Pro angle winders appeared.

 

This was a whole new ball game and nobody knew what worked and what didn't until they tried it.

 

It is really hard for me to do but I try to build in the spirit of the time and keep my 50+ years of 20/20 hindsight in check.

[Larry Horner]

The mods are so subtle that it really does look like that was the plan all along. Nice recovery!

[old & gray]

Hi Phil,

 

Now that you mention it that is sure what it looks like. But it's hard to be sure with these grainy newsprint photos.

 

When I studied these cars for this project I started thinking about how angle winders were an all new technology at the time.

These cars were the first of their type built only weeks after the first 1/24 Pro angle winders appeared.

 

This was a whole new ball game and nobody knew what worked and what didn't until they tried it.

 

It is really hard for me to do but I try to build in the spirit of the time and keep my 50+ years of 20/20 hindsight in check.

 

It was certainly cut, try, and try again with those early cars. Two things stand out in my memory:

 

1) The car didn't rollover on their roofs as frequently as the inlines had. 

 

2) Some of early cars would wheel hop going around corners like Peter Rabbit.