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Whilst there are several types of cars that can be run on a 'standard' HO track, their chassis vary greatly in design and construction. However it is fortunate that the track width has been standardized, as the cars have, to some degree. Below are some pictures of a Tomy Turbo chassis, showing the length and width of the chassis.
Dave Gannaway (from "Way Out West Raceways" - see links section) has been working on creating vacuum formed bodies using a Lexan type polymer over similar scaled models. The result is a clear body which can be added to a Tomy SG+ chassis to lower the weight, thus provide more power and go slightly faster. At our racemeets we run a class for this which is a stock SG+ with any lexan body and silicon tyres on the rear.
These are some photos from our recent "Italian Job" meet where we replaced the F1 body with a mini body. The shorter wheelbase and modified center of balance provided for many spinouts on the track!
There was a portion of the competition for "Best Decorated Mini".
During our December 2006 race, we were required to build two different models. The first of these was a Volvo 740 LWB car - for decoration only, the second was any 'closed wheel' car to be raced on a SG+ chassis with silicone tyres. For my 'race' car I built a GT40 as shown below:
Another of our members is also making vacuum formed bodies with a slightly different technique to Dave's above. Karl has only been making the bodies for a short time, but his results are excellent. During the November 2007 race, we ran a GT40 vacuum formed body on an SG+ chassis as our final run for the year.
The above cars were entered into the "best decorated" car, as well as run in the race. Fortunately the judging for the decoration was done before the race, as a few of the cars didn't fare too well by the end of the event; you can see the complete line up in more details in the .
I'm also trying my hand at resin casting, I chose this Johnny Lightning Mitsubishi Eclipse, as it's the same car that I drive (Coupe) and the JL bodies are relatively cheap and readily available. After this first experiment, I've got a bunch of Matchbox type cars that I'm intending to cast. The first step was to prepare the body, filling it with clay so that the silicone doesn't get inside the body, then cleaning and polishing it so no fingerprints are left on. This photo was about half way through that process.
The next stage was creating a box around the car to keep the silicone in, the photo below shows the car just about ready to be engulfed in goo.
Mixing the silicone for pouring, takes between 5 and 10 minutes to get it all a consistant colour. Although a "slow and high" pour is recommended, I found this wasn't such a great idea outside on a windy day.
I took the photo below a few minutes after the pour, so you may notice some residue silicone on top of the LEGO ® blocks. Later in the day I'd noticed these had mostly travelled towards the inside as it dried. Although other resin casters suggest to get fast drying silicone (90 mins), I opted for the slower drying (6 to 12 hours) as this should allow bubbles of air to come out of the silicone with the extra time.
A day later I demoulded the car and removed the clay (a messy job!) all seemed to be working to plan, however the depth between the top of the car and the top of the silicone seemed to be a little on the short side. I think this may have been caused by making my calculations for the volume of the silicone based on when I had my LEGO ® box slightly smaller.
Applying Vasoline to the Silicone and re-inserting the car allowed the second part of the Silicone to be poured into the mould. I later emailed Roger Corrie (see Links section), who suggested that the vasoline should be heated for around 30 seconds in the microwave to liquidify it (more than it is). The Vasoline acts as a thin film between the two blobs of silicone; without it they would stick together and you'd have one big blob, with your car stuck in the middle, and I can imagine a time-intensive job to get it out!!
Another day later the second part of the mould had been made! I noticed this time there were a few air bubbles on the top of the mixture, however this may have also been water, as a mad dash from our backyard to the garage was done on a rainy night.
Removing the excess vasoline from the mould was as simple as putting the mould in the microwave for 30 seconds and cleaning it off with an old t-shirt. The moulding of the replica car was less exciting than making the silicone, a quick brushing of talcum powder (baby powder is recommended) mixing a teaspoon each of part A and B, swishing it
30 minutes later, the first replicant popped out. I was pretty happy with the result, even though there were a few points that could do with improvement. The photo below shows the car fresh out of the mould, from four different angles, including the "flash" which is the extra resin around the car. Looking at the result, the cast could have been improved by bringing the clay level down a bit, and also paying a bit more attention to the details such as the exhaust pipe on the original moulding. That being said, I was fairly impressed by the spoiler, which I didn't expect to turn out at all. One mistake I made was to coat the vasoline on the inside of the car body, which stopped the silicone from properly forming around the front of the windscreen area.
I made three replicant cars, allowing me two to mess around with, and one to complete the project of making a miniture of my car.
The next stage is removing some of the "flash" from the body, then painting and detailing. I'm going to try some Tamiya spray paint on the first one, as shown in the photo below. Although it's looking OK, I believe an enamel based paint would be better for the resin type cars; so I'll pick some of that up when I can.
The BMW cast went well, the only minor point of complaint was that the cast 'rod' that attached the front of the car to the chassis didn't continue through the mould to the casting. This would be the point that would hold on the front assembly (lights, grill, bumper) and attach it to the T-Jet chassis. I'll need to find another way of getting this part on there when I come to make one. I've also been experimenting with adding some colours to the mixture to produce variations on the theme. Thus far I have managed to get red, yellow and grey to work, which all look quite nice when they come out properly. One thing I have been noticing of late is the more casts I make in one session, the less succesful each is - I can make around 3 succesful ones, then the mould has cooled down and the casts contain air bubbles.
Further work on the BMW is shown below, while I still haven't mounted these, they are looking quite nice:
The next car to be moulded was an Enzo Ferrari. This was one of the first casts and has a bit of discolouring, I think this is from the vasoline used to seperate the two halves of the mould "leaking in" to the resin colours, and also because the flash used created some hot spots on the picture. I'll take a better picture soon.
These two photos of the Datsun (Nissan?) 260Z I took are the first casts. Soon I'll start to finish off the modelling side of these cars, rather than creating more casts and start to distribute them on eBay; the money I make from this will be put back into making more moulds and creating new cars.
Whilst I've been enjoying casting these cars, it hasn't been without it's problems. One of these is the final product I'm getting out of the cast. There seems to be sections of the car simply "missing". I was talking to another caster about this, and he suggested that the issue may be with the resin not mixing correctly (especially as the cups I use have ripples on the sides, and the mixing sticks are rounded at the end). He suggested using two cups and mix in the first, pour to the second, then pour to the cast from there.
I spoke to another caster who is creating Scalectrix reproduction parts, Graeme, in Victoria Australia (see links section) and he is having similar problems, stating that his sucess rate is around 50%. This made me feel a bit better as I am probably getting around the same results with a similar type of product.