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After having seen a lot of nice pictures of complete railcars and railchassis I remembered my first two slotcars. They were built in 1970 and the bodies were from Balsa. One was a Porsche 917/1o, the other one my own creation. Why not trying it once again after such a long time ?
I found the drawing of this outstanding AUDI Record Car and decided to build it. The first job was to redraw it. The clearance of the original car was much too low for a rail project. The difficulty was to find an acceptable compromise between necessity and appearance. Especially the pods at the wheels had to be placed higher but still good looking.
A block of hard Balsa, side view and top view glued on, and up and away with a dremel, some routers and sanders, plasticine in the ears... For those who take into account to try it, too, PLEASE BY ALL MEANS USE A VACUUM CLEANER DURING THE SHAPING PROCESS IF YOU USE A HIGH REVVING TOOL ! The dust is not only extremely fine and light ( and covers mom´s furniture beautifully...)but it consists of tiny fibres instead of particles. Very dangerous if breathed in. The final shaping was done manually with reducing grit. Then the torso was covered with three layers of clear coat, again sanding with reducing grit between each layer. Doesn´t the result look a bit like a chicken ready to be grilled ? ;-) The sidepods were shaped and treated separately because working on the body was much easier this way. White base color was sprayed on, sanded extremely fine and theGreen putty was the next step. And again - filling sanding, etc. etc. Last but not least the finished sidepods were glued in position. To see even fine spots in the wood I used Mr Surface for the final coat.
Ah yes, I forgot the wonderful work of hollowing the torso. Always keeping in mind not to press too much and see the router outside through te wall...
The bodyholders are also from Balsa. I glued them in position, test - fitted the body on the chassis then and when everythin fitted well I glued two tapped, round parts of brass which I had cut on my lathe, into the bodyholders. The window shield was cemented in position and masked and then the body turned into aluminum. The final work was puttin on the front grille, the Audi Logo and the exhausts at the sides. My intention was to finish the body in a way that should resemble a bit more to those original railcars instead of driving it to the today possible perfection.
The chassis bases on an actally produced vintage - like motor (I forgot who makes it but it is still available). The rear axle and motor mount is cut from a piece of square brass tubing, the pickups are very thin brass sheet. I´m a bit unhappy with the steering, I´m afraid the angle it can take might be too small.
The wheels were the last challenge. On one hand we have the really excellent spoked wheels from Ninco, on the other hand the model has different wheel dia.´s rear and front. So I cheated a little by cutting the same inner diameter into all four rims to fit the cut down Ninco spoked wheel inserts, but the outer dia. cut exactly after the drawing. It resulted in a somewhat bigger flange at the rear rims but - what´s perfect ...
Finally the model moved to a slotracer who is in with railracing "professionally".
I could not test its performance, I do not know whether it fitted the rail track or not. It was a "blind project". I had lots of fun doing it and must say it was really enjoying to work with Balsa.
Hopefully it made into a nice static decoration on the track at least...
Roland
After having seen a lot of nice pictures of complete railcars and railchassis I remembered my first two slotcars. They were built in 1970 and the bodies were from Balsa. One was a Porsche 917/1o, the other one my own creation. Why not trying it once again after such a long time ?
I found the drawing of this outstanding AUDI Record Car and decided to build it. The first job was to redraw it. The clearance of the original car was much too low for a rail project. The difficulty was to find an acceptable compromise between necessity and appearance. Especially the pods at the wheels had to be placed higher but still good looking.
A block of hard Balsa, side view and top view glued on, and up and away with a dremel, some routers and sanders, plasticine in the ears... For those who take into account to try it, too, PLEASE BY ALL MEANS USE A VACUUM CLEANER DURING THE SHAPING PROCESS IF YOU USE A HIGH REVVING TOOL ! The dust is not only extremely fine and light ( and covers mom´s furniture beautifully...)but it consists of tiny fibres instead of particles. Very dangerous if breathed in. The final shaping was done manually with reducing grit. Then the torso was covered with three layers of clear coat, again sanding with reducing grit between each layer. Doesn´t the result look a bit like a chicken ready to be grilled ? ;-) The sidepods were shaped and treated separately because working on the body was much easier this way. White base color was sprayed on, sanded extremely fine and theGreen putty was the next step. And again - filling sanding, etc. etc. Last but not least the finished sidepods were glued in position. To see even fine spots in the wood I used Mr Surface for the final coat.
Ah yes, I forgot the wonderful work of hollowing the torso. Always keeping in mind not to press too much and see the router outside through te wall...
The bodyholders are also from Balsa. I glued them in position, test - fitted the body on the chassis then and when everythin fitted well I glued two tapped, round parts of brass which I had cut on my lathe, into the bodyholders. The window shield was cemented in position and masked and then the body turned into aluminum. The final work was puttin on the front grille, the Audi Logo and the exhausts at the sides. My intention was to finish the body in a way that should resemble a bit more to those original railcars instead of driving it to the today possible perfection.
The chassis bases on an actally produced vintage - like motor (I forgot who makes it but it is still available). The rear axle and motor mount is cut from a piece of square brass tubing, the pickups are very thin brass sheet. I´m a bit unhappy with the steering, I´m afraid the angle it can take might be too small.
The wheels were the last challenge. On one hand we have the really excellent spoked wheels from Ninco, on the other hand the model has different wheel dia.´s rear and front. So I cheated a little by cutting the same inner diameter into all four rims to fit the cut down Ninco spoked wheel inserts, but the outer dia. cut exactly after the drawing. It resulted in a somewhat bigger flange at the rear rims but - what´s perfect ...
Finally the model moved to a slotracer who is in with railracing "professionally".
I could not test its performance, I do not know whether it fitted the rail track or not. It was a "blind project". I had lots of fun doing it and must say it was really enjoying to work with Balsa.
Hopefully it made into a nice static decoration on the track at least...
Roland
