85 replies to this topic

[dc-65x]

Great pictures Bob, thank you again.

 

I was very apprehensive about trying to cut an 1/8" off the length of Blue Dot magnets with a diamond saw.....but that's what Rick Davis did.

 

Not having any diamond saws laying around I searched eBay and found these:

 

 

I had no idea if these would work but at least they were cheap. I had visions of the wheel blowing apart and fragments embedding in my forehead. I found a pair of Blue Dots with corner chips since I thought I'd be ruining them anyway. The magnet was clamped in a small vise and the rotary tool hand-piece clamped in another vise to help keep the cut off wheel aligned.

 

 

To my absolute delight it cut through the magnet like a hot knife through butter:       

 

 

The "blue dots" were repainted for the heck of it:

 

 

I ground a little relief in one magnet for axle clearance with another eBay diamond tool:

 

 

.005" steel shim stock was cut out for magnet shims:

 

 

With the shims made.........

 

 

............the freshly zapped and cut down magnets and shims are epoxied into the can. When the epoxy cures I can hone and true the magnets......

 

[Pablo]

        Genius. 

[Bob Appelle]

I can picture Rick doing this on a bench in the backroom of his Dad's Bike shop with a Unimat, Dremel and a few pair of pliers and a weller soldering gun. I would say he was 23 or 24 years old at the time. I couldn't do it with a lathe, mill, and any other tool that might help the build. LOL Rick Thigpen I commend you on your building skills, I can't wait to see the finished car. Bob

[dc-65x]

The endbell for this 1971 motor needs to be the early style. They were a modified by Mura B-motor endbell narrowed to fit the C-can. Here is an stock early C-can endbell on the left, my modified early endbell in the middle and the later C-can specific "big bearing" endbell on the right:

 

 

My modified version in the middle has the frame cutout that would later become standard and a small cut on top for the early wire style buss bar:

 

 

Modified endbell:

 

 

Here are all the parts (less the buss bars) that go into the endbell. All the screws are modified stainless steel 2-56 machine screws. The brass strips go in the top and bottom of the endbell and are necessary to square it up the low profile B-endbell in the taller C-can.  The fiber armature washers are used to insulate the spring posts.

 

 

The "low profile" insulated spring post on the left and a stock one on the right:

 

 

A modified, deburred and polished brush hood is on the left. The slot is opened up to fit the brush springs with insulation. The spring retaining "hook" is also reshaped to fit the insulated spring:

 

 

The assembled endbell. No buss bars just yet:

 

 

OK, the motor is far enough along that I can use it to build the chassis............

[SpeedyNH]

nice job!  a lot of people don't realize just how much work goes into building a motor.  especially a modified one!  

[dc-65x]

As I said in my post #1:
 

This is going to be an "inspired by" build (not a true clone)........... 

 
I'm doing what I did back in the day. I would have opened up my new issue of Car Model magazine, saw Rick Davis' cool car and set about build a version of my own. Mine is going to be a bit different based on my personal building style, skill level and the components I have available. The available components part of this is especially troublesome today, 49 years later.
 
I spent a lot of time trying to fit together a center section and get everything squeezed into such a small package. One of the required parameters for the car is the maximum rear track width and the wheels and tires to be used. I scaled the original photos as best I could and came up with a .600" overall wheel width with a .550" tire. Here are the "super corrodo" wheels I scrounged up:
 

 
I'm using Riggen orange donuts and Faas 3/32" reducers on the vintage wheels. I'm also going to try a pair of modern French urethane tires on a pair of our narrowed up reproduction Associated wheels:
 

 
Here are the rough ground down rear tires..........
 

 

..........and the Cobra motor mount bracket, modified screws and a piano wire spacer/stiffener:

 

 

The center section was a challenge for me and I struggled with it for two days. I literally tore it completely apart two times trying to get everything to fit within the required parameters...........  

[dc-65x]

What I really like about the Davis chassis design is the absence of traditional half rails. Since late 1969 most Pro style anglewinder chassis used a half rail attached to the rear axle tube with a main rail connected to each side. These main rails then went forward to the front axle:

 

 

What Davis did was narrow the center section by eliminating the traditional half rail and having it run all the way up to the front axle. Very cool:

 

 

After 3 complete rethinks and rebuilds I finally got to this point:

 

 

Trying to fit the motor, gears and tires into this wee space was interesting to say the least:

 

 

In typical 20 20 hindsight perhaps I should have clearanced less of the axle tube and fitted the rear upright inside it as shown by the red dot:

 

 

Anyway, the center section I've got now seems to fit everything and follows Rick Davis' no half rail design:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whew!   

 

 

 

 

 

[elvis44102]

having built two cars for this race mine and bloodworths the first thing that stood out for me in the picture was the cox gear..i thought we had switched to faas gears by then but now im not sure...i know i did not shorten my cans for this and i just hated grinding magnets lol...

 

i notice there is little room in this with the cox gear being wider...it seems he was giving away the thickness of the upright brace as well...

 

i did not go the other way (13D) as that was to much unfamiliar ground..this track was 1/32 but the two long straights were maybe 30 ft or more making the motor more relevant than maybe a 13D could have handled...there were many many very tight turns and esses at about five feet off the ground making just good visiblity an issue as well

you have wonderful workmanship and as i just mentioned to Jan i can remember obsessively staying awake all night bending a 90 degree angle to within a thousandth and he said "TEN/thousandth" lol

[NSwanberg]

Having built several 1/24 cars of a similar nature to race with Rick in Tom's basement (77-78) I can see some of the compromises he had to make to pull this build off. Correct me if I am wong but it looks like Rick's build does not have the motor mounting bracket right up against the main rail. That was someting he had to do to get the motor to clear given the 1/32 dimensions. The sharper angle pulls the endbell away from the right rear tire.

[dc-65x]

Thank you both for chiming in with your insights as racers who were "there". Rick had his motor bracket at a different angle than the frame rail. It looks like the steeper angle of the frame rail helped it clear the thicker Cox gear. Then the motor bracket was positioned to best align the motor..........I think.  

 

Aesthetically, I chose to keep the frame rail and motor bracket at the same angle. That's probably why I had so much trouble getting everything to work.    I also had to add a wire spacer between the motor bracket and the frame rail and run the narrower Fass gear to clear that frame rail. Luckily, everything seems to work now and I REALLY like those 64P Faas gears. 

[NSwanberg]

Upon further review, I have it just the opposite. The angle is sharper to move the motor back. It is still difficult to make the motor side rail at the right angle to both run along the motor and solder to the axle tube. That is the on piece of wire I always had to have two bends in.

 

You did a nice job of it.

[dc-65x]

Thanks Nelson. Now that I have a center section I want to move on to the drop arm. It's a built up piece with a .047" plate, a soldered on guide tongue and 2 bumper bars. But I need the guide flag to know where to locate the tongue on the plate.

 

Simple just get a JET flag and you're set..........no...........this is a wee pro car and nothing goes unmodified.    So it was off to the band saw to cut a chunk off the front:

 

 

Radius the heck out of the back:

 

 

Now figure out a way to put braid in the thing. I read and reread the Car Model article about the braid modification. I don't know if this is what Rick did but it really works slick.

 

Here's the step by step braid mod:

 

 

 

 

This is the finished braid. It forms its own lead wire clip:

 

 

I think this is slick. The guide and lead wire attachment clip are all reduced in size and size matters in this build:

 

 

On to the drop arm..........

[Pablo]

       

 

As if you weren't already the best, 1/24 is going to be a stroll in the clouds after this   

[SpeedyNH]

nice. it does make it more difficult if you ever want to change braids, tho. 

[dc-65x]

1/24 definitely seems easier Pablo. I have a Mura Short Magnum motor I want to build a home for so another 1/32 is in my future.........for better or worse.  

 

Steve, this was my first thought for fitting braid into a shortened JET flag. Cut the end off the earlier style braid and shorten up a Parma guide clip:

 

 

But I kept going back to try and figure out what Steve Deiters described in his CM article. Hopefully what I've done in my previous post is at least "in the spirit" of what Rick Davis did.

 

The drop arm components. I don't have a brass Champion guide tongue described in the article. I used a Cobra piece and modified it to look like the Davis piece:

 

 

For the drop arm plate this Phase III drop arm was,,,,,,,,,,,,,extensively modified:  

 

 

The ready to install drop arm with the bumpers and down stop:

 

[Steve Deiters]

The shortened guide. 

 

When you think about it you are packing a lot of stuff into a very short wheelbase. A guide 1/8" longer could impact the handling in a significant manner not to mention overall under the body "packaging"....like the guide sticking out the front of the body if it wasn't trimmed.

 

Another thought is that when this race happened we weren't that many years removed from club racers in the Detroit area using guide pins with very fuzzy braids that was basically braid unbraided. So a small compact guide system seemed like a logical evolution. Leave it to Rick D. to be on the leading edge as this whole car demonstrates.

[dc-65x]

Hi Steve,
 

Leave it to Rick D. to be on the leading edge as this whole car demonstrates.

I agree, I think that's why I like his car so much. The more I get into building mine the more unique little things I see that he's done.

[dc-65x]

The drop arm hinge tubes roughed in place:

 

 

And all cleaned up:

 

 

Hinge tubes for the plumber rails:

 

 

The pans are next up......

 

 

[dc-65x]

I modified a pair of 1/24 Parma pans for my car:

 

 

I have a pair of 1/32 Parma pans. I didn't think there was enough material on the front to fit a hinge tube. One is shown on top for comparison:

 

 

The plumber rails fit into its hinge tube:

 

 

 

The plumber rails with pan hinges:

 

 

Time to tie the plumber rails together on the center section.........

[dc-65x]

The plumber rails are on:

 

 

Attached at the front:

 

 

And the rear:

 

 

 

The pan install is next:

 

[Pablo]

The bar keeps getting higher all the time WOW that is a jewel of a race car chassis         

[dc-65x]

The pans and body mounts soldered in place. Leaving things extra long lets me pull any excess solder off the pan and down the long pin tube:

 

 

Here's the chassis all cleaned up. The front pan hinge:

 

 

The pan down stops:

 

 

And the whole enchilada:

 

 

Pablo, I used my faux Mississippi water (distilled water) to tumble the chassis. It sure shiny!  

 

 

 

 

 

The chassis is nice and square, sits flat and all the hinges work smoothly..............Whew!  

[Steve Deiters]

A work of art if I ever saw one.

 

I had forgotten/didn't know that Parma made 1/32 scale bat pans back in the day.  I now wonder whatever happened to the tooling for that part and if there would be a demand for such parts from a retro point of view. 

[SpeedyNH]

that sure is a gorgeous enchilada!  well done. 

[Jaeger Team]

"Stendhal syndrome, Stendhal's syndrome or Florence syndrome is a psychosomatic condition involving rapid heartbeat, fainting, confusion and even hallucinations, allegedly occurring when individuals become exposed to objects or phenomena of great beauty."