29 replies to this topic

[S.O. Watt]

Most bodies today are Lexan!! You didn't have that back in the 60's!!  The temperature melting point is a little closer to the flash point I believe!! You're gonna have to be CAREFUL!! On my hardbody plastic cars--it's easy to heat the plastic with a "heat gun"--then shape it with whatever I need for a form!!   But expanding lexan is a bit more of a challenge!!

  Actually we did have polycarbonate back in the '60s, about '68 IIRC (or '67 for some team racers?). And that is why I mentioned Butarate 'cuz that is what we had to flare. The later molds were made wider and the Lexan bodies were typically pulled off these,  the rules were tightened up to make the cars look better (I assume on this point).

 

  If you take a look at the actual race cars back then, they kept sporting wider and wider flares every race, so why shouldn't the slot cars emulate that fact? Some people weren't very good at flaring so maybe the rules were amended to level the playing field?  About the time the Lola T70 replaced the Lotus30/40 as the "best" racer body, flaring wasn't really needed anymore as the width of the then current "hot ticket" slot bodies and the rules then matched. The Dynamic "Handling Bodies" were the ones I remember to be the game changers.

[SlotStox#53]

Love the McLaren Tex !! Looks really cool with those flared fenders! Paintjob is cool aswell

 

Flares look really neat

[slotcarone]

It was mainly the Lotus 40 bodies we were flaring. Like Tom said the Lola ended the need for it. I used to heat the body up over a candle and burn my fingers flaring the wheel wells. We also made a bulge in the front where the guide flag post was to get the body lower. Still have one of the old bodies around somewhere. I guess it was legal since we all passed tech.

[Steve Okeefe]

MSwiss.,

 

Back in the day fender flares were expressly allowed and regulated by both CM and Arco rules.  You can check the 1967 and 1968 sets here.

 

S.O. Watt.,

 

Polycarbonate (aka Lexan) has been around since 1953 when G.E. first developed it (they patented it in 1955), however it was pretty exotic stuff for those days so it wasn't widely available.  MPC made some bodies with it in 1966 but failed to realize its potential.  Dynamic began using Lexan in a big way in 1969.  All this is explained here.

 

Tex,

 

Thanks for the photo!  Works much better than trying to explain it with just words.      There are a few folks here who have (after discovering how narrow the vintage bodies are) suddenly become much more interested in how fender flaring is done and what it looks like. 

[Pete L.]

Fellas,

 

 Check out the C.A.R.S. Club Doing's thread for a short tutorial on how we did a 1/32 Lotus at the October meeting...

 

(Click here to go to the thread)