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Wow. You are fearless in your selection of projects! What will you use for material on the body?

That is pretty darn cool and I imagine having a couple of those going up against one another would be a LOT of fun!
Thanks for sharing "Part 1"! :)

That is going to be really cool!

Love that....you have created a beautiful chassis there. I look forward to seeing how the body work goes. I would recommend a resin body....but I would wouldn't I?

I have several of the newer Scaley outfits, I wonder if you could use their body?

Well, we've got a chassis that works.

Now for the body . . .

Initial outline drawing photocopied, and glued to a lump of balsa, and roughly cut out:



Then some sanding:



. . . and more sanding,until it starts to look about right:

.


At this stage, I'm starting to wonder if the mechanism will fit inside it, so decided a quick resin cast would be in order:



Everything fits, but I made the mistake of trying out some colouring pigment. Looks nice, but what messy stuff! Think photocopier toner - only worse! I'm still getting a tiny spill off my hands - it gets down the sides of your nails, and quite honestly, I think you have to wait until it grows out.

The other problem is with a dense black shell, you can't see inside well enough to gauge how much more material you can remove.

So I did another one with straight resin:



and looked at it alongside Scalextric's offerings.


So far, so good.There followed a long spell of further sanding and shaping of the master, to reduce the overall size(these things are TINY), and get

rid of the woodgrain effect.At first I used coat after coat of cellulose-based sanding sealer(plenty of fresh air required - you can feel this stuff dissolving your brain), then filler primer, then automotive gloss, until:



This looked good enough to make another mould.

A big difficulty, I've found, is that when your eye is tuned to one scale(1/32), it's difficult to maintain a sense of proportion in another.

It helps to have a figure to put alongside the model:



The standing figure is from a 1/24 railway range, and gives a better idea of the sidecar's size.

If anything, it's still a bit bulky, but it gives the flavour of the original and I think I'll get it all working before refining it further.

. . . to be continued.


David.

Impressive and cool....I like what you have done very much.

Wow! That is shaping up nice!
VERY cool approach to making these - any chance of this developing into a fun run proxy?
(would be awesome to see a whole field of these together!) :D

Thanks for the kind remarks.

I'm looking on this as a developing project. Although the chassis works, it is a bit flimsy and light, and I'm considering trying to make it with PCB,and the wheel and motor bearings soldered on - just to give a bit more low-down weight.

The challenge that will make or break it is going to be modelling the crew in a reproducible way, as the human figures are such a crucial part of the way these sidecars look. Once this is sorted out, and I have a reliable chassis, it won't be too difficult to produce a variety of body styles.

And yes, TuscoTodd, wouldn't a whole field of these on a big track look great!


David.

Wow, that looks awesome, going to have to research those real ones

That is looking awesome! Love to have a few when you cast them.

This is great - chasing down a unique and unusual subject with a full-on *scratchbuilt* effort.

The vintage Ulrich "Mini-Men" may be useful for 'posable' 1/24 figures, but there are more modern approaches - one of course involving 3d printing of the figures...

Anyway, this build thread shows that anything can be done, inspiring and instructional - great thread.

Thanks.