Z4

After Louise got her new car last month...

... I started looking for a Z4 slot car.  Cartrix used to make a BMW Z3 which I found a few years back for Andy in the same colour as his car but surprisingly, no-one seems to sell a Z4 convertible.

Carrera though do sell a Z4 M Coupe, and it's too nice (probably, but watch this space...) to attempt a soft-top conversion as I did for my 350Z.

The model is a pretty good recreation of the race-ready BMW Z4 GT3, which is a 480 bhp V8-powered Z4 M coupe that BMW sell to customers (with a spare quarter million quid) to use in motorsport.

A shadowy flight into the dangerous world of a man who does not exist

My enthusiasm for Knight Rider is pretty obvious - here's the first car I bought for myself, way back in 1999:

Surprisingly, nobody sells a Knight Rider slot car.  Scalextric did in the 1980s and it was an abomination:

Apparently, Scalextric used the tooling for the Triumph TR7, lengthened the nose and stuck some bits on it.  Consequently, the proportions were all wrong.  I've got one (obviously) but have always been looking for a plastic kit I could convert but these are so rare now and I've never yet seen one for sale.

But I recently discovered a company called Betta & Classic, one of the oldest slot car companies, which manufactures dozens and dozens of lightweight bodies.

I bought a few bodies from them that I'd like to build but can't find anywhere else and the 1984 Pontiac Firebird Transam was the first on the list.  They are very light and so coupled with racing chassis, they'll go very fast.  I prefer a scale speed that looks right on the track so just bought a standard chassis from Pendle to go with it.

The bodies come in thin white plastic or even thinner clear plastic.  Of course, if you buy both, you can cut holes for the windows out of the white version and just pop the clear body up inside for a perfect match.

 First thing to do was paint the gold skirts:

...then mask them off to spray the whole car black:

 With the chassis built and interior painted, it's ready to put together:

This is a much better proportioned model, as you can see below next to the old Scalextric version.  Michael Knight definitely prefers the new model ;-)

So the new car isn't KITT but as well as being a model of the exact version and year that I used to own, there is still a close Knight Rider connection.  (Sorry, this is where it gets really geeky...).

In the pilot episode of Knight Rider, the hero is initially a police officer called Michael Long:

Unluckily for him, the dodgy-looking lady on the right shoots him in the face halfway through the episode.  Luckily for him, he doesn't die, takes on the surname of his saviour Wilton Knight, has reconstructive plastic surgery, and... the Hoff is born.

Michael Knight joins the Foundation for Law and Government (FLAG) and gets issued a black Transam called KITT.  But they chose a Transam because Michael was already familiar with the car because, as you probably guessed by now, Michael Long drove one but in black with gold skirts (which you can just make out in this screen grab):

So the new model represents both my and Michael Knight's first car!

A quad of quad bikes

I'd been searching for ages for a quad bike to race against the one Andy picked up the Slot Car Festival last year.  I bought the little quad bikes a week or so ago because I'd pretty much given up hope of finding a bigger one at a sensible price.  Inevitably, the very next day, someone put one up for auction on eBay and I managed to win the item a week later.

The little quad bikes are 1:32 scale so look right on the track but they don't have the detail and race-ability of the ones from Avant Slot.  These are said to be 1:24 but the riders look even bigger than those on the Scalextric motorcycles and Ninco go-karts (both 1:18 scale) so I think it's more like 1:16.

I also found this short National Geographic clip about how slot cars and track are manufactured.  The narrator talks about Scalextric which I doubt would please Carrera whose cars and track are featured in the video, but in the UK at least, Scalextric means slot car in the same way as Hoover means vacuum cleaner.

Staying Alive

Whilst the layout has had emergency vehicles and a helicopter on standby for urgent medical evacuations for a few years, it didn't have anywhere for first aid treatment on site.  At last year's Swindon Swapmeet I bought a First Aid Hut but somehow it never made it home (accidentally left by the car in the car park remains our best guess since Andy and I can't find it with the rest of our slot car stuff).

Anyway, at last weekend's Swindon Swapmeet I found a vintage First Aid Hut in perfect condition, with the original box.  There was just enough space for it next to the helipad.

I've wired it up with lights, along with the timekeeper's hut at the start finish line.  Between them, the two buildings have far fewer bulbs than some of the other installations (like the tunnel or helipad) so I had to wire up a simple voltage divider which halves the operating voltage and ensures the bulbs don't blow.

In the background of the hut photo you can make out a few new trees installed on the layout (about time too since it's called Highwood!).  These are in a few other locations as well but notably around the Big Screen installation.

Swindon Scalextric Swapmeet 2013

Andy manfully struggled from his sick bed to join me at the annual Swapmeet in Swindon yesterday.

Andy managed to find probably the only remaining Ninco Go-Karts still available anywhere to add to his already large collection.  I bought a couple of small quad bikes made by Powerslot.

These are tiny but whizz around quite quickly although the nobbly tyres don't provide much grip, particularly since the bikes are so light, but they're a new novelty!

I bought some lead figures - First Aiders and TV Crew - which I'll post about when I've painted them.  I also managed to find some surprisingly well painted pit crew and driver figures.  I'd painted my first pit crew figures with blue overalls, so I bought some more in white and red.

This really fills up the pit lane well and means I have a different coloured crew for each of the three cars:

Event Board

I recently bought a couple of unopened Airfix kits from the 1960s of a Time Keeper's Hut and an Event Board (original price 2/- and 3/- respectively).

I constructed and painted up the hut, and took the option of mounting the event board on the roof.  The board comes with a set of cards with car manufacturers and numbers on them.

I've installed this next to the Start-Finish point where the 1960s control tower once stood:

...and included a time-keeper / commentator figure:

...and also installed some lights:

The control tower was moved to replace the cardboard Scalextric control tower (always too modern for the track and the style didn't match):

...and installed lights in that too:

The Big Screen

I didn't plan to have a Christmas project (like last year's Top Gear track) but ended up with one anyway.  There's always been a bit of unfinished scenery in the far corner between two curves of track.  The gap was cunningly covered by a roll of grass paper:

This looked ok but the cats had a habit of walking on it and falling through to the table-top below.  But I needed an excuse to put the effort into creating a proper piece of scenery.  Inspiration finally came from the old digital photo frame gathering dust in the corner of the bedroom.  Could it be rewired to create a big screen for the track...?

Of course it could!  I removed the LCD screen and wired in an extension lead (two lengths of phone cable proving perfect for the twelve wires needed).  A slight error led to my blowing the power supply (lesson: always double check your connections!) but I managed to rewire the power into the input used by the internal battery, now disconnected.

Then I started on the scenery with the trusty MDF, cardboard and offcuts left over from when I made the layout table back in 2009.

Add Plaster of Paris and last week's Guardian:

Spray on some paint, glue on some grass and install the big screen:

In place on the circuit, with some added people, barriers and the time-keeper's hut:

It's not completely finished - I have some 1/32 scale trees and more spectators on the way from China - so I'll add them later to fill up the open space a bit.

I've wired the power for the screen through the switchboard and the memory card has been loaded up with all the images of my slot cars, with the addition of this welcome screen:

Here's some video of the screen in action: