[BEEJAY7]

Just for a change I thought I would show you a "work in progress".

I like several others on this Forum bought some resin bodies of 50's Classic Sports Racers from American Company Resilient Resins. I also wanted to try one of EJ Hobby's Retro Brass Chassis, so this seemed a good idea to combine the two items together.

Work on this Ferrari 250 so far involves building the chassis, (real nut & bolt job), making some body mounting posts and roughly preparing the body.

The results to date are shown below :-

The body is supplied with a lexan windscheield, but there are no dashboard details, steering wheel, driver figure or the all important (for this particular car) exhaust system. I do think Resilient need to include these items on future releases.
The resin is fairly thin in places and the body needs a fair degree of finishing to get a decent shape. It does however, appear to be fairly accurate, much better for instance than the same car offered by Ninco.

The wheels and tyres used are Pink Kar Ferrari GTO ones, and I must admit my first impressions of the tyres were , what rubbish, throw them away!, but I then tried the rolling chassis on my test track, (slippy ole' Scalex Sport), and the grip levels were very good, better than Ninco Classics !, remember we are talking non-mag here, so I may well keep them. I just wonder if the extra grip on Sport Track is generated from the heavy ribbed pattern on the Pink Kar tyres....Interesting.

The chassis is a work of art, (if you love retro chassis), and is really a copy of the original Strombecker one. The chassis is supplied with a couple of alternate motor mounts and 1/8th oilites. Keeping the American theme, I fitted some 3/32nd oiites from Professor Motor and a TSRF Guide system. The chassis was given to me by Paul (Revvvs) Reveley,after I expressed an interest in these chassis in an earlier post, thanks Paul I owe you one.
As for the motor......The Dark Prince of the Desert, Mr. R. Sheldon sent me no less than 4 Team Slot motors to try out. If you have not seen these before, they are great brutes of motors, the can being finished in chrome with red Endbell sections, just right for the 50's/60's feel of the car. Axles, Crown wheel and pinion are Slot.it

I'm not really sure what colour to paint this car yet, as I'm still researching histories of various cars on the web so if anyone has any suggestions, please contact me.

Regards

Alan

 

[R Livingston]

Alan,
Saw a dark red Ferrari Testa Rossa at Lime Rock last Monday; it was not the fastest car, but it was a beauty.

Motor you selected is looking healthy. The pedigree is good! The Vintage setup would be axle spacers between hub and bearing on each side, with crown gear having no groove for the motor shaft (it's the only system I know!).

You may find that you get better grip if you stiffen the rear axle carrier so it cannot vibrate relative to the rest of the frame. I fixed a Monogram frame this way, with HO rails running beside the motor all the way to the rear motor mounts, soldered the whole length. Other guys stiffen the frame with tubes from the top of the bearing carriers to the motor mount bracket, making it a space frame at the rear. But I prefer rails soldered to the underside, where the weight is needed. The EJ's chassis is a repro of the Strombecker frame, which was copied from the Monogram frame of 1964, which was inspired by chassis scratch built by the midwestern US club racers of that era, who used heavy brass, not that thin-gauge stuff.

Also, you might want to experiment with a loose body mount. Put a blob of some rubbery glue in each of the screw holes, to damp the vibration of the body on the chassis.

The car is looking good!

 

[MAF]

Hi Alan,

These colours look nice Silver/Red and would match your motor

Marlon.

 

[David Lawson]

Alan - Here's a car I snapped at Goodwood last week.

But if you're going for an all American retro why not do the Sebring car

David

 

[gascarnut]

Is there somewhere that one can find some details and/or pictures of the full range of Resilient's 1/32 scale offerings? Their website seems to have only 1/24 cars.

Thanks!

 

[JohnP]

Thanks for posting Alan. I was thinking of getting a couple of these bodies but some of the cars looked a little "slab sided" to my eye: the Scarab for instance, although Iceman's examples have turned out very nicely. And, your Ferrari is looking great too

I'll be interested to see how you deal with the headlamps. Marlon's example might be a good option as it doesn't appear to have any covers (MMK style

) and the silver and red finish looks terrific.

Dennis, I've seen pictures of the 1/32 cars on ebay although I didn't spot any at this time.

 

[BEEJAY7]

Thanks for your comments and ideas Chaps.....I think I am more confused now than when I started.

I've got to admit I was very tempted to go with the old bevel gears, Patto's does some lovely stuff, but in the end Slot.it won out, at least I have plenty of spare crowns and pinions. My chassis has rear mounting pegs which hold the chassis fairly rigidly so I'm going to hold off any additional bracing sections until I've run the car a little more. I do see what you mean about the thin metal at the rear of the chassis and "beefing" up this area would work.

Marlon, where did you find that picture?.....It does look good in those colours and no headlight covers..the wheels are very similar to the ones I've used..Ummm. A real contender.

David...Great photography as usual, I do like the yellow car, not sure about the green nose band ...reminds me of Norwich City's football strip!. I love the Sebring car but it does seem to have a strange exhaust system, doesn't seem macho enough for the car with that tiny rear exit pipe!. I might have a go making some decals for this one.

Dennis, I have spoken to Doug (Resilient Resins), about more 1/32nd shells and I know he monitors this Forum . The website doesn't really say very much about this scale of cars, and I know he is looking to add more detail, and possibly some more releases. I think he wanted to see how the initial release of 3 cars goes. As JP says the best bet is probably to monitor US Ebay as he seems to put them on there before his website.

John....I was dreading the headlight question. There is a fair amount of resin behind the front panel of the car and I think it is possible to grind out enough material to form a fair representation of the headlight recess. As for the lights themselves Slotbug are selling Mini Cooper headlight units, which would be the fairly universal 7" units in use at this time. As for the covers.......I guess I'll have to try Howmet's peanut on a stick method, although I will probably burn the house down in the attempt!....or I might try and find some suitably shaped packaging....

I'll have a week to think about it cause I'm off to Spain , I promised to take my wife shopping in Barcelona !...little does she know about the significant number of Slot Shops there!...

Regards

Alan

 

[JohnP]

Here is a link to resilient_resins on ebay:

resilient_resins

Quite a few 1/32 shells it would seem although not all models feature pictures of the actual body.

 

[BEEJAY7]

Interesting John...As usual I was completly wrong, Doug seems to have released a whole lot more than 3 models!....including some rather tasty F1's.

Regards

Alan

 

[MAF]

Alan, the red/sliver one came up in a Google image search, I've tried to find out some more info on this one without any joy so far

. If I found out anything I'll let you know.

 

[BEEJAY7]

Thanks for all your suggestions as to which, (of the many), 250's to build.

After some further research I thought I had better finish the car as the 1958 Le Mans winning car of Olivier Gendebien and Phil Hill. Especially after reading Phil's comments on a very wet race :-

"It was impossible to see the smaller and slower cars in the rain and darkness. I drove down the Mulsanne straight at top speed and waited to hear the resonance of exhaust in front of me. As soon as I could sense the location of a car in the blackness, it was a flash of light, the bare outline of car and driver and then back into the darkness, peering ahead for the next one." Hill sat on a tool bag to see over the windscreen. "I picked up a full lap that night mainly because I could see and the others couldn't."

I did manage to make some headlight openings for the car using my trusty old Dremmel and a cone shaped stone tool, fairly straightforward really, a set of Mini-Cooper headlights and then some I shaped some headlight covers, (after about 6 attempts!), using Howmet's hole in a slab of wood method., (I also burnt my finger!).

Grille is small mesh from 4D Models, Driver Torso from Fly, Head from Maxi-Models and exhaust from my spares box, made up from many different parts. I made a "ledge" to cover the motor and to provide a base for the driver figure. Part of an Airfix MGB dasboard was used together with a steering wheel I had in the spares box.

Look forward to building many more models from this manufacturer.

Regards

Alan

 

[Revvvs]

Lovely stuff Alan - glad to see the chassis got put to good use! (Although not what you originally had in mind for it I think - any updates on that project for us?)

How do you find it runs on the track?

Paul

 

[BEEJAY7]

Thanks Paul......The chassis runs very well, they really are superb. Although it has fairly high ground clearance it does hold the corners very well, I think the TSRF Guide helps a lot with it's deeper profile and the Pink Kar tyres are excellent.

Once again thanks very much for letting me have it.

As for the Cunningham.....I'm afraid the EJ Chassis is just too long, even when a trailing guide is fitted. I could have made it fit but it would have required either cutting the chassis or the superb bodywork on the Cunningham, neither of which I wanted to do. So it looks like a scratchbuild, but it won't be anything like Howmet's masterpeice.

The Cunningham has also dropped down the list, I'm afraid as I've got to build a Mini for Mclaren's Proxy and then one of Mac P's '34 Alfa's.

Regards

Alan

 

[JohnP]

Very nice job Alan

Thanks for posting - I love seeing these home-mades.

Btw, hope your finger recovers soon. Oh, the plight of the dedicated scratch builder!

 

[David Lawson]

Very nice detailing and paint finish Alan and importantly it "looks right" as well. Why not try their Lotus 25 shell next?

David

 

[BEEJAY7]

Thanks for the comments Chaps.

Really impressed with these shells and I hope to build more of them, (now I seem to have cracked the headlight problem!).

JP.....Do you have any influence with Mrs.H, as I need a hand knitted finger cover and I thought you might be able to help, I know she admires your ability to manipulate brass.

David, a little off-topic, but the foundations for my slot shed are now complete and the structure is being delivered in two weeks time, so you never know a layout could be up and running soon.......... How is the Lawson Summer Palace coming along?. Potential here for an SF scratchbuilders Summer Garden Party.

Regards

Alan

 

[jhardy33]

Great work Alan! I'll echo David's comments, "it looks right".

David, I recently received one of the Lotus 25 shells. While it's not as finished as say a Beardog resin, it's not too bad. It looks true to scale. Very small. Smaller that my Super Shells Lotus 25.