51 replies to this topic

[a914guy]

Sure.... Those *^X#!! contracts always get in the way.

No problem though. I'm a frequent contributor to the Texas state lottery and when I hit I'll be out to help finish LASCM and see the great collections.

Heck, most of the fun for me is the hunt and build. I spent more time building race cars than I ever did driving them.

[TSR]

Same here but they are "retro racing" cars for the SCRRA racing series, or production 1/32 scale cars from the TSR line to go terrorize 1/32 scale home racing tracks...

As far as the museum, I HAVE to be an absolute purist, so as to preserve the finest examples of items from the Classic Era, so everything must be absolutely correct and original or it does not make it in the collection. So it is down to the correct nuts, bolts, even braided contacts, or it will not pass through the door...

I hope that you understand the purpose, we have plenty of other toys to play with, this collection is for present and future generation to enjoy, so no compromise can be accepted.

[Tilrug]

To get your car back on the track I would sell you one for $20 shipped domestic. Joe

Hello Joe,

Do you another one set for my Revell chassis?

Amadeus

[Tilrug]

Unless he puts on another NOS body.

Hello, Does someone have this Lola body for sale? I have 1 chassis and willing to complete with the Lola body. Amadeus

[Jairus]

Already sold Amadeus very sorry.

[a914guy]

Hi Rich,
A little history for these. They came in late 1966, a bit too late to be competitive. The idea behind the chassis was to make sure that the heavy motor was fitted in its exact center of mass. Not a bad idea but the problem here is that the motor was simply too big for the car to be anything but uncompetitive with cars using the lower, smaller FT16D motors.

Revell issued the cars in two forms: kits and RTR.

The kits were presented in truly splendid packaging that won Revell an award in the industry. Here is a Ford GT Coupe kit:







The RTR models used a smaller box of the same basic design. Here is the last model produced, a Lola T70:



The cars all had the same chassis but there were wheel and motor variations. The first came with wheels that were machined aluminum with five spokes die-cut from the inner face. These were quickly replaced by die-cast aluminum wheels in two patterns: Halibrand or Shelby Cobra. These wheels were very attractive.
The first motors were painted in silver with the standard Mabuchi "brown-wire" armature, subsequent motors used a nickel plated can and red-wire armatures.

The kits and RTR models were discontinued at the end of 1967.

Here is the list of what was issued:
Ford GT40 Coupe kit
Ford GT40 Roadster kit
Lotus 30 kit
Lola T70 kit
Genie-Ford kit
Chaparral 2 kit

Ford GT40 Roadster RTR
Ford GT40 Coupe RTR
Lotus 30 RTR
Genie-Ford RTR
Chaparral II RTR
Lola T70 RTR

With more than a little luck, good timing and the help of this exchange it looks like one of the rebuilds will end up being a replica of this lovely light blue Lola 70. And thanks again to the Artist for digging into his treasure chest and offering the original Revell Lola 70 body!

Philippe - Do you have any reference for what this color was called? Secondly, what kind of additional decals came with the RTR or the kit sets? Pictures of that would help me know how far I can go.

Thanks again!

[a914guy]

Here is car one. A GT40 Roadster that has seen better days. The body sure is tired but the rest of the car is pretty good. The chassis is very straight and shows little signs of heavy use. All four of the the wheels look nice. Bushings and gears all seem to be fine. The nylon retainer for the drop arm is gone but I knew that when I got the car. The motor runs but not well and that's fixable. Everything is a little dirty but all in all, it's in good shape. A perfect candidate for some attention



The info. Philippe has provided seem to place this as a later series production car. Motor has the bright nickel plated can and the arm. has red wire. All these pieces look original but I'm not completely sure about the front guide and front tires.



I believe these are the Shelby Cobra alloys which are pictured on the blue #18 Lola from the LASCM collection. With some help from a few friends, that's the car we'll model this build after.

[Lone Wolf]

Revell Parts kits. OK, Whatever I had to sell is now gone. Thanks for your purchases guys.

[a914guy]

The offset chassis passes a close inspecting and got cleaned up along with the wheels.



Next on the list today is the motor. I believe this is Revell's "Red Streak" (FT-36D). I think the right thing to do is keep it original cosmetically, freshen it up and maybe do a little tuning.




This will be a vintage build and an occasional driver. Any motor tuning suggestions?

[TSR]

Yes; leave it alone, it will providde plenty of speed and enough endurance to run it until you die of old age...

The guide you showed is the correct one. So are the front tires. Finding the correct rear tires will be near impossible, but there are suitable reproductions by Ortmann that will do the job.

I have no idea which color is on that blue Lola or where Revell got their paint, and there were no decals on the RTR models, just the stickers that were on the cars. In the case of the Lola, very few: 4 number roundels and 2 "Enco" (Later "Exxon") stickers.

[Gary Bluestone]

Is this one of the bodies that was used with the asymetrical frame , and if so, how was it decorated in the RTR, which wheels?

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[skeeterbuck]

Last, the decals on the car are Russkit, from their Porsche 906.

I think they maybe Pactra decals. With the 2 larger/2 smaller roundels.

Also, IMHO the Revell wheels with the Ulrich wheels are the nicest vintage production wheels made.

Also IIRC, Revell also sold replacement bodies separably that were already painted and had the sticker numbers applied. The one on my Revell Ford GT40 is painted silver with the number "95" stickers and it's mounted on the earlier Revell brass wire frame.

[TSR]

I think they maybe Pactra decals. With the 2 larger/2 smaller roundels.

Either the Pactra copies or two sets of Russkit, since both were sold separately in little booklets.. but good observation.

Also IIRC, Revell also sold replacement bodies separably that were already painted and had the sticker numbers applied.

Correct, but these are much harder to find today. They had a sticker across their cockpit that is very difficult to remove...

[Gary Bluestone]

Is this one of the bodies that was used with the asymetrical frame , and if so, how was it decorated in the RTR, which wheels?

Looks like my question got lost in the shuffel.
Any one know if this body is the same as the RTR or kit ?

[Pete L.]

Folks,

Great thread, I'm also planning a resto...please keep the pics and info coming !

Thanks,
Pete L.

[a914guy]

I plan to keep this thread alive as I work on the cars so stay tuned, more to come.

The plan so far is to make a twin to the light blue #18 Lola 70 Revell RTR that Philippe posted pictures of earlier. I'll add a driver to add some personality but it will be very stock.

Car two will be a surprise. I've wanted to do a car like this and now's a great opportunity.

John H. is going through the motors and Jairus is helping with paint and that's a pretty strong team to make it even better

I've got a couple more pieces needed to have a full setup for the pair of cars so it will take a week or so before I have much to add.

BTW, thanks to all of you who have helped me out so far. I really do love the reach this site has.... It's incredible!

[don.siegel]

I don't think anybody's mentioned it here, but the first Revell cars were actually with a brass rod, "scratch style" chassis, also sidewinder.

I had a Genie-Ford in the box with this chassis, but not sure which other models were released with the brass chassis.

Nice thread guys!

Don

[a914guy]

Philippe was right, most of these Revell survivors have broken or missing pickup springs (nylon drop arm retainers) and I'll bet the ones that have survived are extremely brittle.

The resurrection of these the two cars I have will need new springs. This thread produced NOS spare parts kits from Revell (thanks Joe) which have the spring among a number of other very useful parts. If they still are flexible enough to make the sharp bend I'll use them but I thought I'd take a shot at a replacement as well.

The solution approach I have been thinking about was to produce a similar spring. There are other very functional solutions and I'll bet many of these cars have seen most of them used.

I started with a common white 8" tywrap, cut out a couple sections, drilled it twice and screwed in two small small machine screws.



The screws I used here are a 2mm width (which is a little small) and 8mm in length (a little too long). A 2.5mm screw about 5mm long will be ideal. I only had a few really short 2.5s so I used the 2mm for today's trial.

The 8" tywrap was cut to 35mm (1 3/8") pieces. For the sake of comparison, the OE piece of original Revell nylon is 1 3/8" in length, is .182 wide vs the slightly smaller tywrap at .177. The thickness of the original is .031 vs the tywrap at .050 so they are quite similar.



Fitted to the drop arm the repurposed piece of tywrap has good tension, looks pretty good and the drop arm moves freely. It will fit much better with the 2.5mm screws.

[a914guy]

Survivor number two is a complete Lola T70. The once radiant blue #18 Revell roadster is ready for a face lift. The body shows aging but it's all original and not cracked. The body mounting clips are unmolested and the attachment holes in the body shell have survived.



Time to come apart......




The chassis and core pieces are really pretty nice and should be good to build on.



I don't think the rear Firestone's are going to make it.....

[slotbaker]

Good idea with the 'tywrap' and screws.
I think the screws need to be a real snug fit in the drop arm and chassis, otherwise there could be too much side to side movement at the guide.
Just a thought.

[a914guy]

The 2.5mm screws are much better.





The drop arm has no lateral slop and the 2.5X6mm screws fit tight yet still allow the pickup arm's spring to work. If I can find a 2.5mm allen cap head screw in 5 or 6mm length in nylon I'll be happy.

[a914guy]

The 2.5X6mm metric screws arrived to day and the fit is "perfecto".



The 6mm bolt length passing through the slightly thicker tywrap is a little longer than original but it doesn't interfere with anything on the back side of the frame. It's a very good fit and the 2.5mm bolt fits the drop arm and frame holes nicely with no slop. This looks like a good fix done with simple tools and it's relatively cheap to do.



The screws I used came from Alliance (www.alliance-express.com). The part number is SCSM2.56A. I bought a 100 for .13 a piece so I'm set for life.

- The original piece length is 35mm.
- The studs are aprox. 29mm center to center.

I market the tywrap material at 35mm, cut them, marked the 29mm points and used a soldering iron with a point to get the drill point melted into the tywrap. I drilled the holes in a small drill press and sized them so the nylon screw was a tight fit as it screwed into the tywrap. The last step was to trim the ends with a finger nail clipper.

[Mark H]

nice work so far Rich. have you thought about sanding down all the little ridges on the tywrap? and whats with the pan on the lola?

[a914guy]

Thanks Mark and yes, I actually did try to smooth out the tywrap. It does sand but so far I haven't found the right combination of sand paper and process to do a good job of it. My original goal was to go after a functional fix that was a similar solution and I think I'm there with what you see here. I'm not sure smoothing out the tywrap adds much more value to the finished product but I'll keep tinkering with it.

The pan on the Lola has been cleaned and put back into shape. It will get an overall rebuild with bearing treatment on the F&R axles, a NOS motor, redone cosmetics by Jairus, new rubber, leads, braids...... In my mind that's a pretty good mix for a new lease on life for a well used Revell slot car.

Three of this style of Revell slot car are in various stages of rebuild right now and I hope to have them all done in the next 30 to 60 days. I still need a rear set of wheels for one of the cars and have not decided exactly what I will do for new rubber solutions. A dilemma that I find to be very therapeutic

[Mike Wahrlich]

nice thread... thank you...

and thanks for the information about the front wheels!! is there also a picture about the correct rear tires?
Because I have a lot of new but opend kits... and i need to know which tire belongs to the revell, K+B and Monogram 1/24 cars!