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This is not so much how I do it as how I used to do it.
These are some of my chassis from the early seventies and they lean more towards JohnP's philosophy on chassis building rather than the perfection of Howmet's.
I adopted the view that function was more important than form and as long as it handled well, it's appearance was incidental.
These three chassis were all built for an F1 championship series that ran from about 1970 to 1977 in a small club I belonged to. They were basically a frame with different shaped body mounts to fit whichever Betta shell was fitted to it at the time and I adopted the unsentimental Enzo Ferrari approach of cutting it up when it had served it's purpose and using the parts for the next car.
The McLaren chassis is a prime example of this as you can see it's been cut in half and soldered to a different body shaped sheet, for all I know it may not even have been the front and rear halves of the same chassis and the U-bracket has obviously been used more than once.
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Ferrari
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Ferrari Chassis
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Lotus
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Lotus Chassis
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McLaren Chassis
I used conventional materials apart from cutting up drink cans and flattening out the metal and cutting it to the shape for the body.
The shells were painted in the days before decals were freely available hence the freehand "artwork" of the team liveries!!
These cars have survived the last 30 years in a box and I stumbled across them a year or so ago and it was fun to get them running again.
Recently I built a scratchbuilt chassis for the first time since the seventies and it was a fun exercise, I learnt from that and intend to have a serious go at a chassis this year - depending on how it turns out I'll post the pictures.
David
These are some of my chassis from the early seventies and they lean more towards JohnP's philosophy on chassis building rather than the perfection of Howmet's.
I adopted the view that function was more important than form and as long as it handled well, it's appearance was incidental.
These three chassis were all built for an F1 championship series that ran from about 1970 to 1977 in a small club I belonged to. They were basically a frame with different shaped body mounts to fit whichever Betta shell was fitted to it at the time and I adopted the unsentimental Enzo Ferrari approach of cutting it up when it had served it's purpose and using the parts for the next car.
The McLaren chassis is a prime example of this as you can see it's been cut in half and soldered to a different body shaped sheet, for all I know it may not even have been the front and rear halves of the same chassis and the U-bracket has obviously been used more than once.
Ferrari
Ferrari Chassis
Lotus
Lotus Chassis
McLaren Chassis
I used conventional materials apart from cutting up drink cans and flattening out the metal and cutting it to the shape for the body.
The shells were painted in the days before decals were freely available hence the freehand "artwork" of the team liveries!!
These cars have survived the last 30 years in a box and I stumbled across them a year or so ago and it was fun to get them running again.
Recently I built a scratchbuilt chassis for the first time since the seventies and it was a fun exercise, I learnt from that and intend to have a serious go at a chassis this year - depending on how it turns out I'll post the pictures.
David
