John Cukras 4 Rail F1
A replica December 1967 chassis by Steve Okeefe
From the first time a saw this chassis, I have found its architecture absolutley fascinating. It has a very "clean" and straightforward design, with outer main rails that have a none-too-obvious taper from back to front instead of being simply parallel as on other, similar chassis of the day.
But there is one other feature that took me awhile to figure out; how is it that the two inner main rails, which run parallel to the outside the 3/4" wide drop arm, also fit inside the motor bracket at the same time? Any way you measure it, the two straight and parallel inner main rails are simply too far apart to fit inside the motor bracket. And yet they do!
Here's an article covering the 6th Car Model Road Race from a December, 1967 issue of Model Car Journal, with a photo of the original chassis on the third page:
The answer to the riddle of how the inner rails can fit inside the motor bracket is that those rails, unlike the outer rails, are not straight; they are curved! The outer rails are straight, and taper from back to front, but the inner rails are straight and parallel along the drop arm, and then curve inwards around the motor. On the original chassis it is very subtle, but if you look closely, you will see it.
