[Phil.Insull]

Hi All,
Thought you might like to see some pictures of my take on George's magnificent ERA kits,
The first two are Prince Bira's White Mouse racing stable cars Romulus (#34) & Remus (#16) in the racing colours of SIAM (Thailand) while the next pair are the hill climb six wheelers as used at Shelsley Walsh hill climb in 1934 (#61) Raymond Mays and 1935 Ken Wharton (#42). Almost completed as I still need to paint Bira's goggles and the silver radiator surround on Remus.

Hope you like them as much as I do
Cheers
Phil

 

[rmcclure]

Great job! Lovely looking work there. What were the kits like to put together? Did they come with a chassis like his other kits?

Thanks a lot for sharing with us.

 

[Phil.Insull]

No problem glad you like them.
The kits do come with chassis, exhausts, suspension and detailing parts, and would be straight forward to build if you use the scalextric motor / gears, guide that the chassis is designed for. Me being me I like to use Slot.It bits and this does involve some modification at the rear of the chassis in order to get the necessary clearance for the crown gears and the Scale Auto slimline motors I used needed a couple of mm dremmeling off the ends of the shafts. The guide hole also needs slightly opening out with a small round needle file to get the Slot.It deep wood track guide in. (Wolves my home club has routed wood tracks). Wheels are Penelope Pitlane with the wires painted the right colours, the race number plate on the 61 car is cut from a bit of spare tin plate and the BRDC, Remus, SIAM and white mouse decals are home made. The twin wheels are difficult mainly due to getting the allen key driver down between the rubber to tighten up the outer hubs, other than that a piece of cake really. (I broke the tip off my NSR wrench

)
Cheers
Phil

 

[abie321]

Really nice cars Phil - really like the 2 wheelers!!!

 

[aerodynamic]

They look fantastic - it's so nice to see so much variety on one model in terms of colour of body and chassis, and then the different hill-climb rear layout. Do you use Ortmanns? Next question is how do they go?

 

[loosesalute]

Really beautiful Phil. The no.61 car is my favourite.
What sources do you use when researching liveries ect. on these type of cars?
Cheers,
Kev.

 

[bensonsnuts]

Love the Bira cars . Read his book recently and since then he seems to crop up all over.

 

[PeterSussex]

Thanks for starting the thread Phil, and thank-you for the pictures.

I reckon that the ERA, together with the 300S Maserati are the best of the GTM kits. My ERA is falling a bit behind but a little progress is made every now and then. here is the car pretty much as it now stands.

Still lots to do. The wheels are slaves to support the car until the correct ones are available, and only then will I try and do the guide. The exhaust is temporary and will be replaced with a Brooklands system in due course, whilst the driver/seat arrangement is undergoing changes. The original set up has a seat set over the motor, but the seat is way too high, resulting in a driver with a very short body. I have now done away with the seat cushion and am giving the driver a few more vertabrae.

Here is why Phil had to shorten the motor drive shaft.

Front end detail.

Phil, I like the Shelsey cars, but did you know Mays used twin rear wheels for some track events?

Peter.

 

[Phil.Insull]

Hi Peter,
Yes I was aware that the ERA's ran in some races with the twin wheel layout - however most slot race meetings (including mine) don't allow this due to overall width restrictions hence I went with the hill climb liveries to allow them to be a bit different (May's in his cloth cap for example). I'm surprised no one has pulled me up over my mistake on the Ken Wharton caption it was in fact the car he ran at Shelsley Walsh on 28th August 1955 and is based on a fine colour photo on page 70 of Martyn Wainwright's book 1950's Motorsport in colour (Veloce - ISBN 1-904788-15-7).
Kev I do have a reasonable library of books on all kinds of motorsport from 1900's onwards although you can glean quite a lot of picture material using the internet tools like Google Images. It is interesting sometimes to compare how cars look in more recent historic events such as Goodwwod F.O.S. to how they looked at events during the periods in which they were more "front line" technology. For instance I must have found nearly a hundred pictures of Remus & Romulus all with variations in livery, markings etc. I find the best thing to do is build it and mark it as you want - very few people ever get it spot on mainly due to the difficulties in scale reproduction but George's kits are some of the best I've ever seen which is saying something when we've had some high quality stuff in recent years from the likes of David Jones, Pre-Add, TRRC, Penelope Pitlane, Proto Slot, Slot Classics to name a few. Like most kits builders however I still like to individualise my work in some way,(different driver style, paint job, decals, etc) sometimes others like it too which can add to the sense of pleasure. As a little aside I am always a bit surprised at slot events where practically unmodified plastic RTR bodyshells (albeit nice ones) with custom built race chassis finished in the top three in the concours ahead of a number of very nice kit and scratch built bodied cars. While I can appreciate the beautiful engineering that goes into these chassis to score a car whose body has been bought ready done off the shelf higher than those where the builders have made an effort to paint / complete them themselves seems to be a bit strange, but maybe that's just me?
Looking forward to seeing Peter's completed car - keep us posted with progress please and any other GT ERA's later on this thread - I'm pretty sure my friend David Lawson has got one of these kits and knowing what he can do from scratch I'm betting his will be amazing.
Anyway glad some of you like them
Cheers
Phil

 

[andybob]

ERA'S are some of my favourite cars these look brilliant

 

[Phil.Insull]

Hi,
Apologies to aerodynamic I missed a couple of your questions, Romulus & Remus have Ortmann rears the twin wheelers have Pendle's Scalextric replacement tyres all round. How do they go - quick in a straight line but the high roll centres mean they're a bit on tip toe through the corners compared to the fifties F1 cars and so slower on the Wolves copper tape tracks. I gather from George that with the circular magnet fitted on steel rail tracks they are like bullets as you'd expect. The six wheelers corner better having a larger, wider contact patch and smaller diameter rear tyres and are about 1.5 seconds a lap quicker round Wolves International track albeit still not on the pace of my quicker 50's F1 cars with brass chassis and weight much lower down. In other words pretty true to life in terms of relative performance, and a real joy to drive once you get into a rythmn.

Cheers
Phil

 

[Philip P]

Wonderful cars, beautifully made.

Thanks for sharing the photos with us.

Philip

 

[loosesalute]

Thanks for the info Phil.
I always enjoy looking at the work of folk like you.
Cheers,
Kev

 

[Mr.M]

QUOTE (Phil.Insull @ 6 Sep 2011, 06:13) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>In other words pretty true to life in terms of relative performance,

Have you not been to Goodwood, Phil?

The ERAs usually leave more modern machinery behind them. They are incredible to watch.

Only 10 days to go now!

Awesome models from everyone by the way!

 

[vfr750]

QUOTE As a little aside I am always a bit surprised at slot events where practically unmodified plastic RTR bodyshells (albeit nice ones) with custom built race chassis finished in the top three in the concours ahead of a number of very nice kit and scratch built bodied cars.

Probably a topic that could have its own thread. For me the chassis carries just as much weight in scoring as the body, after all they are slot cars not static kits. There are also instances where excellence is ignored when a body is so good that people assume they are off an RTR. It happened to Ralph a couple of years ago at Bordeaux, people assumed that the MRRC body he prepared was off a Fly car. Micks concours Vanwall on Sunday was another example that was of Airfix origin but some assumed it was a modern Scaley body. I'm not for a minute implying for a minute though that Phil was referring to these

Cheers

John

edit: Forgot to say, nice cars Phil

 

[tifosi]

I must say that I have no problem with people using pre-decorated bodyshells for these events but to then put them into concours is just not on.
I gave an automatic '2 points for turning up' to all of this type of shell on Sunday (and yes, my backup Maserati was a scaly prepainted shell but it was kept away from the concours!).

I did look closely enough to see that the Vanwall was an Airfix...

I would rather see a scratch livery poorly executed (like mine

) than a factory painted job on the concours judging line.

One of my back up cars for Flanders sports a modern MRRC/Monogram Porsche body beautifully painted and tampo'd in China, if I decide to run it I will put on the scruffy Monogram original and accept the low points in concours.

I am looking forward to building my ERA and making my usual mess of it but I enjoy myself so what the heck

 

[scaleslotcars]

QUOTE where practically unmodified plastic RTR bodyshells (albeit nice ones) with custom built race chassis finished in the top three in the concours ahead of a number of very nice kit and scratch built bodied cars

Yes this probably does need to be in another topic,
but I always mark these sort of cars out of half the marks, i.e. if it is marks out of ten I mark the car out of five and only judge the chassis work and give nothing for the body.
Problem is it can sometimes be tricky to pick out the rtr bodies from the scratchbuilts, re. Ralph's Porsche that John mentioned.

Lovely ERA's Phil, I've got a couple of Mac's Pre-Add Era bodies here to do and these have given me some liveries to finish them in without trawling through the internet, thanks

 

[CJA]

Ey Up Guys,

Nice to see your twin wheelers Phil, after you telling me about them on Sunday. Very nice.

The GT shells are so so sharp !!.

I'm after a Falcon at the moment.

vbr Chris A.

 

[Phil.Insull]

hank you guys for the kind comments, finished off the remaining bits on Romulus and Remus so thought I'd post another picture - but decided to try the black and white period approach others have done before on SF. I also couldn't resist doing the same on my GT Models Austin Seven Racer.
Cheers
Phil

 

[yellowbug1977]

Great cars, please post were to buy them from. Would like to build one or two for myself.
Paul