Topic: Clonehead’s Slotcars lighting up a 289 Cobra

[Clonehead]

They look great Clint. Man what fun it would be to spend an afternoon racing cars on this!

with a little practice, I’ll bet you could take me, buddy.
     Something a little different today albeit still slot car butchering.
The collectors of some of these harder to find cars would pull their hair out if they seen what I had in mind for em.
I had acquired this older release 1/32 70 NASCAR Torino which was released before the digital age, and updated it with a chassis swap from a current release digital Torino. I could have traded the running gear out for the classic Goodyear’s like the analog cars had before carrera dropped the license but, it all had some MInt in box age to it and since I’m running this one with the rest of its livery, I felt it best to go with the newer stuff. Problem was, the wheel color didn’t match the original so, I broke out the Vallejo black and gloss varnish and matched them to the car’s black hood like the originals did. I did take one of those chrome fine tipped paint pens and doctored up the center caps and lug nuts.

Kind of reminds me of painting on Star Wars figures but not that much.


     

[Clonehead]

I actually thought the white wheels looked good on this model but, what are you gonna do? It needed to look fairly factory to go with the others.
   Got one more rare Torino that needs a chassis swap but don’t have the donor car yet. Got another Torino in current production that I have to replace as I used mine for another chassis swap. Then, my digital livery of Torino’s will be complete

Coming up tomorrow, I have another rare one I want to defile. It’s a 917K again, smaller scale this time
   

[Tamer]

Looks awesome Clint. Its all about those fine details. Glad to see you are unretiring some of those older models. Off to the front pages.

[Clonehead]

Thanks for all the glory, Tamer. Were I a member of one of the few existing slot car forums I know about, they would surely think I was mad.
    You know, all this alternate tech I’m learning may lead me back to Star Wars one of these days.
      My quarry was the Porsche. I have my lights ready and wired in two parallel sets. One to track power and one to the brakes.
     I test drove that new dremel 8100 i got to shave off the factory painted on tailight lense bumps on that rear wire frame looking plastic assembly at the cars rear with a simple drum sander bit. Let me tell you, the slow rotation available thanks to this tools slide on power switch made the job go smooth as silk. Better for the little stuff, more control.
   Much more control over the frictional melting factor that many plastics have as you grind into them. I didn’t even need to use a knife to clean the area when I was done. I’m not used to that.
     Anyways, I drilled a hole in each refinished tailight area, got the new lights connected, soldered, and shrink tubed. Time for a final light test and we can mount the lights.

[Clonehead]

After a successful test with the battery, and much wire stuffing in and around that chip to get clearance for the shell to get back on. I got it back together. Even seeming a bit cleaner of an installation this time, the little Porsche still was tough to get back together with all the extras I had stuffed in. I opted to just leave the tailights uncovered with the led lights mounted flush with the inside of he drilled holes.
    I dug around in the spares bin for some red lenses but couldn’t find anything I liked. I may look into casting some in clear red resin.
I do have several more of these little 917ks to do.
  I’m pretty happy with how the lights turned out, those little reds seem about the right size and brightness for this car and the oranges up front look great. I may have to re do the fronts on that first little 917K that I lit up.

[Clonehead]

I ran the wires for the tailights in the same manner as the larger scale version without issue.
  This was a limited release evolution car several years out of production when I got it. I added the chip and factory front lights before adding the other sets.  Many collectors would put this one on a shelf unopened and leave it.
   If they could only see it now.

[Clonehead]

So I took our Porsche for a test run this afternoon. She is a powerful runner. Clocked in at 17 on the straightaway. That is my hotwheels radar gun in that one shot. I broke out the other small 917 that we had doctored up for some side by side shots. Yep, those dim yellow fog lights have to go

[Tamer]

Looks pretty sweet to me. I can't even imagine what you could light up now in reference to a SW Ship or custom project.

Back to the front pages. Glad you are enjoying that dremel. I have it on my to do list to check my clearance aisle when I get back there this weekend.

[Clonehead]

Got the white one upgraded to the new configuration with yellow nanos for the fogs that are much brighter

[jkno]

This is an awesome job!

[Clonehead]

This is an awesome job!

JKNO! It’s good to see your name and good to hear your praise.
Thank you, I’m ready for another one.

[Tamer]

Yepper, looks good to me. Back on the front pages.

[Clonehead]

Thank you Shawn, and now, for more rare and wonderful slot car butchery.
  About 10 years ago or so, revell/monogram made
This great line of ready to run decorated slot cars in 1/32 scale. The available cars were limited but all boasted great detail and solid running gear. Models available included this 64 grand sport corvette in a couple of different decos and this one has been sitting on my shelf because for the life of me, I wasn’t sure where I was going to fit the digital chip. The motor is up front with a driveshaft going to the back gearbox through a tunnel molded into the bottom of the nicely detailed interior.
I didn’t have room with the motor in the front and I couldn’t put it under the interior without grinding away quite A bit of plastic either off of the interiors bottom or the chassis/frame or both. This being such a pretty model, I didn’t really want to carve it up too much. I thought about it for a while, drilled a hole and tried an experiment and low and behold, I believe I can mount it sideways years the rear of the car and still have the electric eye of the chip respond to the track sensors like normal.
  This is going to be the most unconventional chip mount ever, right over the gearbox. Very minimal grinding of material on the bottom side of the cab and around one of the rear screw points made room for the chip with its eye poking through the bottom of the chassis.
   I covered the bottom of the chip with masking tape to shield from any flying gearbox grease and mounted it sideways using a scrap of shrinktube as a contact/glue point on one side and making a simple cardstock brace glued to the chip and to a structure on the frame on the other end to keep the chip ridged and to keep it from dropping down into the big drive gears rotation.  There is clearance, the body fits over it, and on the control unit, the eye is interacting with the control units eye .
  One nagging question, will the gates on the track turnout sections be triggered in time to catch the cars front mounted guide keel when the eye is mounted so much further back on the cars chassis. I mean we would be talking less than milliseconds here. I’m keeping my fingers crossed but will find out soon

[Clonehead]

So the answer is, no, while the electric eye placement works for lap counting, check lane counting, and the pit area, for most of the switches, the gate doesn’t get open by the time the keels stars going through and the switch does not get thrown. Some work and some don’t, weird.
  I tried a couple of reflection and fiber optic tricks but it didn’t help. I’m not quite sure how that eye works. I have never seen one emit light but I assumed it does.
I have never considered moving the electric eye, sounds risky remembering that I toasted a couple of chips a few weeks back.

Going to leave it for now. The factory tailights mounted without issue and I got a new batch of smd led chips from eBay today! Red, yellow, and orange. 10 of each. After a check for brightness, I mounted a pair of the new oranges for foglights in the holes I had drilled out earlier.
  They look good and the car runs good.
I like the new lights
  Yes Shawn, that is a scale walker built from a kit in the background. Walkers just hang out loose at Clonehead’s house, you know.

[Tamer]

Daggone that looks good Clint. Man, I could so see you have a display cabinet or shelf beside you track dio to show off all these bad boys. Off to the front pages.