6 replies to this topic

[Slot Car Rod]

Around 1973, Robert and I were etching printed circuit boards for our electronics projects.  We were also both running slot cars back then.  While working with the printed circuit board material, we decided that maybe this material could be used to make slot car chassis.  One of the cars I made back then is this four-wheel drive Bobby Allison Chevy stock car.  The car is 36D powered.  I replaced the dried out German sponge tires with urethanes.  Amazingly, the car is fast and handles really well.  The car flies out of the turns and does not tilt in the turns.  Robert made drag race chassis with the printed circuit boards.  I still have one of his chassis to restore.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bill Breck]

At first glance I saw the dual rear crown gears and thought that was pretty cool (didn't notice the crown gear on the front axle), then you took the body off and saw that it was actually 4 wheel drive. Super cool!   

[Larry Horner]

Lovely car Rodney and your design for making it AWD is very clean ... nicely done!

[Bill from NH]

Neat car & circuit board chassis Rod! About 20 yrs. ago, a local racer etched a series of 1/24 Eurosport chassis. They were plenty fast but difficult to drive consistently. They went through 3 or 4 iterations before returning to spring steel. A few years ago, Jim, the track owner in San Antonio, make some 4.5" circuit board, FK motor, chassis for his rentals.

[Jay Guard]

I made a couple of circuit board based cars back in 1968.  One with a drop arm (pictured) and the other without a drop-arm, which unbeknownst to me at the time was way ahead of its time.  Of course with the bumpy tracks of the day the non-drop arm version didn't work out too well and I think I just trashed it.  As you can see on the bottom view the big problem for me was regulating the heat so that the fiber glass substrate and the copper didn't delaminate, still not too bad for a 14 year old kid.

 

OK, sorry for the thread drift, now back to our regularly scheduled program...

 

 

[mowyang]

Love the 4WD chassis, Rodney. Have you ever tried running a different gear ratio on the front vs the rear, or tried running different diameter tires on the front vs the rear? Just curious to know what the effect would be.

 

Mark O.

[Slot Car Rod]

Mark, I have played with different tire compounds on 4WD cars.  Some 4WD cars work better with grippier rear tires. 

Some RC 4WD drift cars run front and rear tires at different speeds to induce oversteer drifts.