As the title says critique welcome. This is a project underway of the late model low exhaust Lotus 33. It's my 3rd attempt, a simple, clean car that nobody has ever modeled successfully, so even where the brave fear to tread go I. It was once a long time ago a monogram , but now....?
Will do, as soon as the sun rises I'll take some picture of the Lotus and Lola chassis to show "Beardog's latest mods". I've found out that if you've got a cut-off wheel you can do lots of things to these chassis.
Mr Tiger, yeah its a tad too long, but only by 1mm or so, it's easier to take off than add on. The back overhang is too great as well, Lotus 25/33 are so hard to do right it takes weeks and weeks of tweaking. I've also found out that Tamiya's Lotus 25 is pretty close, if you go to some "blueprint" sites you can find their 3-views.
I carved a 1/24th one a while ago- what I was never satisfied with was the shape of the engine cover. I found it very hard to guess the precise contours from photos. It seems asymetrical, and also tended to vary a lot from race to race.
Your work is of course way above my ambitions though! Keep it coming!
The car looks very good! The shape of the Lotus 25/33 is a tough one to get. The model you have done looks quite representative of the 1966 car Clark drove at The British GP at Brands Hatch in 1966. This car was 33-R14 according to the book "Lotus 25 & 33" by John Tipler. If you are able to, take a look at this book, I found it invaluable when I was working on my Lotus 25/33.
The only initial suggestion I have (as per howmet tx) is to review the shape of the engine cover at the rear of the car. Yours looks too good! The real Lotus engine covers were never well done and seemed to be cobbled together making the radius curve at the back of the car covering the engine asymetrical.
I hope this helps, keep up the great work and let me know if I can be of any assistance to you.
Thanks John I'll have to double check the asymetry, is there a chance you could be more specific, I'm not 100% sure what you mean though.
Mr Slots, Yup that's a Beardog chassis, the car used as its base a 60's Monogram Lotus 33 kit, they also made a Ferrar1 158, you can find them on the site that shall not be mentioned that starts with an E. They can be quite expensive though, the one I used was a really badly made and handled slot car body from the same kit. You can get rough ones a little cheaper. The tyres are the correct width for a 65-66 car, they ran 10" rims, which works out 5/16' width, the tyres coulds do with radiusing the corners though...that'll come later.
Hi Guys
not sure about assymetrical but the 33 engine covers had distinct bulges each side over where the exhausts exited above the rear legs of the monocoque .These were not present on the 25s which were almost invariable the high exhaust set up
Without the exhausts being there god alone knows what these power bulges covered. although there is apossibility I suppose that the 4 valve heads on the cov climax engines were slightly wider than the 2 valve heads
Russell, as requested here are some revealing shots of the Lotus and Lola Chassis', The lotus has new front a-arms cut from this steel and bent appropriately (Spring steel as on the original top plate snaps every time I try it), note the lightened can, this motor has a mild BSRT armature in and it still screams. The Lola has dummy shocks and springs and the tubular a-arms is just piana wire. As you can see you can modify these chassis very easily, and with 2 sizes mos 60's cars can be accomodated, took me a lifetime to pusuade Andy to do it as well.
Apparently most of the low exhaust engined cars had the 4 cam engines, although in an emergency the reverted back to a 2 cam (still with low exhaust). The object was to make the cowl as tight as possible around the engine because in the 25 the loose fitting cowl allowed hot air to rise, decreasing power (hot air into the intakes) and overheating the engine.
So the lumps are there because the 4 cam has two more lumps...sounds like camels dont it?
Hi Chris
Thats not quite right ,All the Cov climax FWMV engines were twin OHC the early ones had 2 valves per cylinder and spaghetti exhaust sytems that crossed over from one bank of cylinders to the other and ended with the superb twin machine guns poking out over the tail
The couple of special engines made for Lotus and Brabham during 1965 were fitted with 4 valve cylinder heads, but they wern,t quite as reliable as the 2 valvers and often failed during practice. somewere fitted with flat plane cranks which altered the firing order and simplified the exhausr systems such that the cross overs wern,t necesaary
These ,certainy when they were used by lotus had the twin low level megaphone exhausts
I think JC used it to win the British GP when it ran out of oil and had to be nursed for the last 20 laps but in the previous race the french gp heused a 2 valve engine and still ran away withy the race
It is also worth noting that the 33s engine cover was more cut away round the inlet trumpets than the 25
The high mounted exhausts were needed because the early engines had to have cross over exhausts, two pipes from each bank into a common collector. This was needed because of the firing intervals produced with a two plane crank. The exhaust tuning with separate pipes each side only works correctly with a single plane crank.
According to Doug Nye the single plane crank was originally developed for a successor to the Ferguson P99 4WD GP car, which was never built.
To my eye at least, it is, so far, the best drawn representation of the model I am trying to create, in that, it get pretty close to the photographs I have of the full size.
Mix it with this one, this is the Tamiya 3-view, the proportions are better, it is supposedly the only blueprint drawn from a real car, they say (who I don't know they are) that there's a real 25 somewhere in Japan.
The 33 is an evolution of the 25, the main difference is a slightly wider track, wider wheels and different engine cowl,....I think, everything else is very much the same. This is where we get into the enigmatic nature of the beast...it'll drive ya crazy.
It's about a 6 page article, I'll post it tomorrow, very interesting, an interview with Colin Chapman about 1966, got one on a Cooper, & BRM too. I think Jimmy is almost the right size maybe a tad small, but Jimmy was small, & Colin built the car around him.
Chris
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