1415-01; Porsche 911 GT1
I haven’t been doing anything with the slot cars since May 1 and the GRRR races at Fast Eddie’s. Other events and circumstances led to this unfortunate-but-fortunate state of affairs...
Not slot car stuff:
I gave my two-week notice / resignation at the hospital on April 16. A long story, suffice it to say you could stick a fork in me, I was done. And that was done for good. No other rad tech job possibilities for someone of my elder age, I opted to just retire...
At that point I decided to finally do the things here at my condo, commonly known as The Last Resort (an old joke, ask any of my friends from the deca-desperado days of the 70’s who are still above ground...), that I’ve been wanting to do since the wife died some thirteen years ago. My reasoning was if I was going to be spending more time at The Last Resort it should be the place I want to spend that time in... Each room was a major project, and the “back room”, where CMF Headquarters are located, would accumulate all of the yet-to-be-filed crap from the other rooms on top of the already strewn-everywhere slot car crap.
Some examples: The dining room is not only usable for dining once again, but is also now the “kite room” (my outdoor/beach hobby), the kites having been buried in the back room for years. Also in a cabinet in the back room were all my old record albums that are now also back out front with the big-mother 11-channel AV system (to which I added a new turntable I didn’t need, but I did want...). Speaking of sound systems, the living room big-mother is now HDMI cable connected to the 7-channel bedroom AV system, and the new stereo AV system in the back room; sounds awesome in here.
Anyway, the last room to clear out, reorganize, and set up the way I wanted was the back room, which finally got done a little over a week ago. Some pics of the CMF3 Skunkworks to prove I wasn’t kidding:
Back to slot car stuff:
At that point I plopped myself down at the drafting board in the living room and designed up some chassis to build. As a matter of existential priority I decided to build a Just For Fun car first...
When I got the Lola T70 body for the 1414 chassis I also ordered a bunch of other NeAn bodies. One of those was a Porsche 911 GT1 body. Always a good looking car, I thought it would look nice along with the Porsche 906 / Carrera 6 and the Porsche 917K.
The chassis design would be another mish-mash, loosely based on the 1004-R and the 1212, some bits of the 1406, and combined with 1237-Series characteristics. For no apparent logical reason I made this another anglewinder that can run either clockwise or counterclockwise FK-type motors, even though it is doubtful I’ll be availing it of this possibility, as I just like the chassis symmetry.
The 1415-01 Porsche 911 GT1:
Basically a converging 4X main rail frame; there are no articulated buttress rails as on the 1237-Series chassis on this 1415 chassis. Front axle rails were included as a counter to the additional chassis stiffness; because of the short GL both spanning FAx uprights attach to the rails behind the front axle center line; the torsion bar location was also moved rearward to accommodate this. No dynamic pans (slider, floater, or rattler) were used on this chassis, even though my thought was they may be beneficial to the handling, as all pan design incarnations I considered just took away from the converging main rail aesthetic I wanted.
Number-stuff: RAx-GPC / WB / GL is 4.750” / 4.094” / 0.656”. Probably could have gone a 32nd either way on the WB, but 4-3/32” looked right on the body. Similar on the chassis width at 3.1875”. And again as a matter of just looks right, rear tires are JK 8785’s trued to 0.875” diameter and the fronts are 0.35” w x 0.8125” d JK stock car retro fronts; front and rear tracks slightly greater than the chassis width at 3.2175”. Ponies are a retro-leftover JK HR. RTR mass came out to 93.1 grams.
As unimaginative as ever, the paint shop went with another CMF3 tri-color chevron, gold / green / black. I gave short thought to adding the rear wing to the GT1, but I just like the body lines as they are. And instead of cutting out the entirety of the wheel wells I opted for smaller, more stylized cut-outs.
That’s it. Cheap thrills...
Rick / CMF3
