Double, Bubble, Toil and Trouble

After many months (working on and off), I've finally finished the BMW Isetta bubble cars I bought from Lagartija last year.

The cars came as a resin kit with interior and windows, and I had to source the running gear, choosing a particularly slow 10,000 rpm motor to ensure the cars didn't drive too quickly.

The bodies needed a lot of preparation to ensure everything went together without the wheels fouling the bodywork - a lot of time with the Dremel thinning out the body and checking and re-checking the fit.  Then the bodies could be finally primed, and then painted.  One car was modelled after the Isetta I saw at the Malta Classic Car Collection.  This involved a lot of tricky masking and this car had to be painted and repainted to get it as good as possible.

The other car was painted in the classic BMW Motorsport colours - white with dark blue / mid blue / red stripe across the car.

Here's all the completed elements before it was put together...

The kit came with a set of decals and front lights...

...and rear lights.

One of the resin chassis cracked during fitting but I managed to repair it, and both chassis had to be installed carefully to ensure the wheels were square against the body.  But after a lot of work, the final cars do race well together.

MG K3

Andy got me an MG K3 kit from George Turner for Christmas.  Andy has a few of these cars but this variant attracted me as it had a male driver and female passenger.

I found inspiration from some photos of a similar MG K3 at Brooklands:

I sprayed the resin chassis black, and the primed the body with grey.

The body and mudguards then had a few coats of midnight blue.  The car was detailed in silver and transfers added, and the driver and passenger (inevitably) painted up to match coats that I and Louise own.

Once put together, the car is a pretty good representation of the photos I found, and also runs very well on the track.  Click on images below to see in more detail.

New Start Finish gantry

The existing start finish gantry was a vintage Scalextric item with start lights fitted underneath.

The problem was its fragility.  It would regularly get knocked by a car and the start-finish banner would fall out, or the start lights would slide down the metal poles.

At the recent Slot Car Festival, I found a more sturdy laser cut gantry from MHS Model Products.  This comes flat packed and needs a knife to cut away the places where it is connected before being pressed out.

I constructed the gantry, sprayed it white, and fixed the chequered flags and START / FINISH signs, once I'd painted them also.  Before glueing the side structures, I cut a couple of slots so that the LED lighting panel could be inserted and removed.

Installed on the track, this should hopefully be more robust and resist the inevitable crashes when racers are going for that fastest lap.