1/24 Historic Road Course Cars - Section 2
1/24 K&B Lotus 30 - ...well kinda. It is a K&B in body only as, it is fitted with an Atlas AT-406 motor & chassis, as shown. The lower half of the clam shell body was cut out and altered to recieve the vintage drive train which is a sight better than the original equipment!
It sports attractive Testors drilled rims & tires and is set up to "float" within the body creating a very good handling car. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite powerful enough to garner a championship but, did recieve a second place in points in the Historic Sports GT class for the GSRA Fall 2001 season.
1/24 Revell/K&B 1960 Porsche RS-60 - This car was raced to a second place overall in points for the GSRA Fall 2000 season with two wins & six second place finishes. The original 1.5 Litre Porsche was known as a "Giant Killer" placing 3rd and 4th overall at LeMans in 1958 as an RSK "Spyder."
The 1/1 car as shown above, is a 1958 Type 718 RSK, powered by the 150HP Boxer-4 cam and races in the Vintage circuit today. The RS-60 actually came along in 1960 and was a refinement of the previously proven design.
For the slot car, I started with a "home set" Revell injected body which was in great shape & hardly used. I installed a home made piano wire roll bar & exaust pipe and polished & detailed the body.
Underneath, I slid in a K&B adjustable aluminum chassis with the "Super Challenger" motor and fabricated some body mounting posts to mount the body.
The drop arm was secured to the chassis with a screw & nut for better handling. Original gearing was canned for a Cox nylon spur & brass pinion with a slightly quicker ratio.
Four spoke aluminum rear wheels were sent off to George Lowe for him to mount silicone tires and in the old junk bin were some "GRC Spitfire" wheels & tires for the fronts.
The K&B Porsche wheels & inserts or an adequate scale replacement could not be found at the time of assembly so, unfortunately the miss-matched wheels were used in order to be able to race a full schedule from the beginning. Plans are to replace these when the correct ones are found.
The "last" Scarab was rear-engined with a quite different "wedge" look and peaked fenders for extraction of heated air from beneath the car. Lance Reventlow had been through the wars and after being commissioned by Briggs Cunningham to do a Buick engine conversion on a Cooper-Monaco, the last Scarab was born. The Cooper-Buick went on to have a successful career with drivers like Walt Hansgen & others but, never achieved the domination of Cunningham's earlier cars.
Reventlow's shop didn't ordinarily do such conversions as the Cooper-Buick but, had other things in mind when doing so and the crew took careful notes. Reventlow commissioned one last car, the last Scarab. Many different ideas were put together and the Buick motor was totally re-worked, going from 215 CI to 239 CI, ending up at between 250 & 300 bph. The car was basically a cross between the Cooper-Monaco and the old Scarab single seater weighing in at about 1,200 pounds dry.
The car was raced by Reventlow and did reasonably well but, after IRS troubles and a "high maintenance" wife, a broke Lance Reventlow sold everything and quit racing for good. Texan John Mecom was the benefactor and formed a team of sports racers including A.J.Foyt. The Scarab, as depicted here, was re-fitted with Chevrolet power and won the 1963 Nassau race as #77.
The #91 shown here is from the 1963 Laguna Seca race.
The slot car competed in the 1998 Inaugural MGPMRC "Historics" Series on the club's 76 ft. plastic Riggen/Revell 12 turn track, and garnered a second place and Concourse honors overall for the series. The car body was restored from an already built model kit,
and uses the original Monogram frame & driveline.
Special added features such as the hood scoop, fire extinguisher, tachometer and the hand turned wheel inserts from the model kit were used to better duplicate the original car. The Slot wheel inserts were thought to be too small so it was decided not to use them.
Paint & stripes are all automotive acrylic enamel with decals for the numbers & sponsors. The circles around the numbers are done with lettering enamel applied to the rim of a plastic model hub and carefully used as a "stamp" of sorts to apply the paint.
