My scratchbuilt slot car
Discussion
I loved my Scalextric set when I was a kid, and naturally when my kids got to the right age a Scalextric set was on the cards as a Christmas present. The new cars with their powerful motors and magnets are impressively quick but of course a few cars from my youth came down from the loft soon enough. The next part of the slippery slope was to hit the web and realise we’re in something of a golden age for this stuff; ebay worldwide searches mean you can track down all manner of strange cars from different countries, and there are companies like Pioneer who make impressively detailed cars that I lust after.
You need to let these ideas ferment inside your brain for a while, then after a while an idea pops up. My idea was to make a slot car that looks more realistic on the track; not by the detail in the mouldings but how it corners. With memories of Saturday evening TV in my mind and exciting American car chases, I decided to make a slot car with steering, and with suspension that leans when it corners.
I chose the subject – a 1977 Dodge Monaco police car. Scalextric recently released a Dukes of Hazzard Charger, Pioneer will release one soon and it's the usual Hazzard police car. Also you couldn’t go 5 minutes in the early ‘80s without one of these police cars oversteering around a corner with chronic body roll. They never put any prisoners in the back; they’d be swimming in sick after a few corners.
I use a 3D CAD system at work so got busy with the chassis design, I wanted to use as many standard components as possible so the rear axle, motor, guide blade, wheels and tyres were all standard spare parts. The roll centre of a car with live rear axle is in the middle of the axle, this set my roll centre for the front and back so it should look real. I designed the chassis parts to be made with SLS – a rapid prototype method of manufacture so there’s no tooling to pay.
The bodyshell came from a long forgotten kit that I believe was only released in the US and obsolete 25 years ago. That was a huge relief, because otherwise I’d have to model one in 3D and it was proving tricky! I got some resin bodyshells made which would be tougher than the plastic kit, and tooling outlay was low-ish.
Windows and interior were vacuum formed, I found a 1:32 cowboy figure which donated its head and hat to be a US Sheriff because using a driver figure with crash helmet seemed wrong.
I’m no model maker, my skills are about the same as a 12 year old boy so please excuse the crudity of the build. I generated the artwork for the decals and got some waterslide transfers made up – the gold background meant it needed to be done on an Alps ink printer, but the results are impressive
But look at how it goes!
Want to see a video? Turn down the sound… I’m struggling with volume levels
youtube 1
youtube 2
You need to let these ideas ferment inside your brain for a while, then after a while an idea pops up. My idea was to make a slot car that looks more realistic on the track; not by the detail in the mouldings but how it corners. With memories of Saturday evening TV in my mind and exciting American car chases, I decided to make a slot car with steering, and with suspension that leans when it corners.
I chose the subject – a 1977 Dodge Monaco police car. Scalextric recently released a Dukes of Hazzard Charger, Pioneer will release one soon and it's the usual Hazzard police car. Also you couldn’t go 5 minutes in the early ‘80s without one of these police cars oversteering around a corner with chronic body roll. They never put any prisoners in the back; they’d be swimming in sick after a few corners.
I use a 3D CAD system at work so got busy with the chassis design, I wanted to use as many standard components as possible so the rear axle, motor, guide blade, wheels and tyres were all standard spare parts. The roll centre of a car with live rear axle is in the middle of the axle, this set my roll centre for the front and back so it should look real. I designed the chassis parts to be made with SLS – a rapid prototype method of manufacture so there’s no tooling to pay.
The bodyshell came from a long forgotten kit that I believe was only released in the US and obsolete 25 years ago. That was a huge relief, because otherwise I’d have to model one in 3D and it was proving tricky! I got some resin bodyshells made which would be tougher than the plastic kit, and tooling outlay was low-ish.
Windows and interior were vacuum formed, I found a 1:32 cowboy figure which donated its head and hat to be a US Sheriff because using a driver figure with crash helmet seemed wrong.
I’m no model maker, my skills are about the same as a 12 year old boy so please excuse the crudity of the build. I generated the artwork for the decals and got some waterslide transfers made up – the gold background meant it needed to be done on an Alps ink printer, but the results are impressive
But look at how it goes!
Want to see a video? Turn down the sound… I’m struggling with volume levels
youtube 1
youtube 2
Ritchie335is said:
Thats fantastic! Why aren't all slotcars like that?
Most slotcars are racing cars, and racing cars tend to stay pretty flat around corners. That's fair enough I think.But watching this Dodge go around the corners is hypnotic, you just watch the gap between the rear wheel and the wheelarch, trying to get it to lean further. I can't explain it, but it's an amazing experience to try hustling it around the track.
I took it to a slot car event recently because a guy who builds tracks wanted to see the car in action. I drove it for quite a few laps and had tremendous fun (actually trying to keep up with a Pioneer Dodge Charger), then he tried the car for a while too. A young lad came past who does a bit of racing and he asked for a try - he was much faster than me who designed and built the car, and faster than the bloke who built the track. Not just a bit faster, noticeably faster. Having my arse handed to me in my own car was quite humbling....
CobolMan said:
Fantastic, have you thought about selling it to Hornby?
No, I don't think they'd be interested. And if they were, there's nothing stopping them just making one, they could probably do it cheaper than me!
Evangelion said:
So let me get this straight - you deliberately designed and built a car that handles like s
t?
t?
It's done to make it more realistic for the car. Let's have a look at how old American cars handle
To me, this looks pretty close, compared to a normal slot car which corners like a gokart.
The actual cornering speed isn't too different from a normal slot car, in fact the suspension means it seems to generate quite a lot of grip. But it does look a lot less in control, which is what I wanted.
Superb- thanks for posting.
As a child I had an old Airfix slot car set with a sharknose Ferrari and front engine Cooper F1 cars which had proper ackermann (spelling?) steering, had endless hours of fun drifting them around the track with their hard rubber tyres that would faintly smoke after a protracted session of cornering like that.
They would also squirm under full acceleration with the back flicking left and right if you gave it full beans off the start.
I couldn't see any springs in your pictures, assume you have something in there to right the cars post turn?
As a child I had an old Airfix slot car set with a sharknose Ferrari and front engine Cooper F1 cars which had proper ackermann (spelling?) steering, had endless hours of fun drifting them around the track with their hard rubber tyres that would faintly smoke after a protracted session of cornering like that.
They would also squirm under full acceleration with the back flicking left and right if you gave it full beans off the start.
I couldn't see any springs in your pictures, assume you have something in there to right the cars post turn?
It’s interesting you should mention the back squirming under acceleration – when you lift the back of my car up and blip the throttle, the torque makes the motor & rear axle twist in the chassis. A slot car with axle tramp, what more could you want? I haven’t noticed any effect when it’s on the track though.
There are adjustable coil springs for the suspension, I had lots of agony getting them soft enough and eventually moved them quite a long way inboard to get the leverage in my favour.
There are adjustable coil springs for the suspension, I had lots of agony getting them soft enough and eventually moved them quite a long way inboard to get the leverage in my favour.
A few months ago I was told about the 808 keychain camera, that's the search term you'll need when you go searching for it about 2 minutes from now
It's the size of a car key fob, weighs about 15 grammes (is that 1/2 oz?) and they cost between £7 and £30. That's cheap enough for people to stick them to R/C planes and fly them around or to bikes when cycling to impending doom down a mountain side. They're also ideal for strapping to your slot car and hammering around the track. USB connectivity and a tiny memory card handle the business of downloading stuff to your computer.
There are various different kinds with different frame sizes, unfortunately they're all 30 frames per second so it can be a bit bouncy.
Want to see what I recorded yesterday, and skilfully* edited this morning? Click the picture for the youtube link
It's the size of a car key fob, weighs about 15 grammes (is that 1/2 oz?) and they cost between £7 and £30. That's cheap enough for people to stick them to R/C planes and fly them around or to bikes when cycling to impending doom down a mountain side. They're also ideal for strapping to your slot car and hammering around the track. USB connectivity and a tiny memory card handle the business of downloading stuff to your computer.
There are various different kinds with different frame sizes, unfortunately they're all 30 frames per second so it can be a bit bouncy.
Want to see what I recorded yesterday, and skilfully* edited this morning? Click the picture for the youtube link
- Yeah, right
Hugo a Gogo said:
Dukes of Hazzard is fine, but surely it's got to be the Bluesmobile?
Actually I've just started one now!
This is done by importing CAD data, cleaning it up and then getting a 3D print done for a master model, which can then be cast in resin.
I've just completed it with the bad guys' limo, a 1972 Cadillac
Once I chose this car, I've been seeing them in lots of places. My DVDs of the Rockford Files are getting a good hammering and the bad guys are always lurking around in a Caddy like this
Here's the cleaned up CAD data ready to be printed
3D print
And the completed resin casts
Edited by garethj on Wednesday 22 February 06:06
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