What is this?????

[Pepsi 62]

one of our racer's has come across this little gem in a pile of stuff he acquired.
50/60's F1 car 4 wheel drive

[waaytoomuchintothis]

There were a couple of 4WD slot car arrangements in the mid 1960s, one of them also had steering and independent suspension. But I think that may be a parts-o-rama, combining bits of several chassis with an old Pittman motor. The body could be from any of several makers in that era. The lack of detail at the rear of the car or anything to attach the rear to on the body makes me think the body and parts of the chassis came from a source that didn't have much to do with the running gear, which appears to have hypoid gears or at least, beveled pinions. That said, it is a jewel. If it runs, that's even better.

[Pepsi 62]

thanks, the pitman motor makes sense, there was another one in the amongst the bits with an axle and chassis attached

[chappyman66]

It looks like an interesting mash up. Might be a K's motor from the UK? Body looks maybe like a Monogram Ferrari. The brackets look like they are soldered on, and you have mismatched front and rear wheels. It does look like you have two nice sets of bevel gears which are pretty cool all by themselves.
So looks a bit like a home-brew special, but if it runs it's fun just for that alone!

[Pepsi 62]

it does run, I didn't see it but he was sending it round

[HO RacePro]

Probably every slotcar hobbyist who ever fabricated a custom chassis has tried their hand at a 4-wheel-drive slotcar. The concept is seductive even though it has an unblemished history of failure. Just the same, we creative types want to try, if only just to turn a lap with our oddball invention.

Lord knows I've tried my hand at it several times. The first time was back in the 1960's when I took a pair of Aurora Thunderjet chassis and spliced the back end of one onto the front of the other by heat welding the plastic. I got it to work, but it would have benefited from a bit of flex in the roll direction. Getting equal weight on all four wheels would have helped. It never performed well -- too much loss in all that gearing.

Many years after that I tried an HO car with two motors in direct-drive. One motor in the front, one in the back, both sidewinder, with wheels mounted directly on either end of the motor shafts. Just why it didn't perform well is still a bit of a mystery. No gears to eat up power. It should have been faster than a car with a single direct-drive motor, and probably was in a straight line, but not enough to make up for poor handling. Again, flex in the roll direction may have helped.

A couple of years ago I took that same concept into a 1/32nd chassis build. This time I did build in chassis flex. But the car was heavy, so again no joy.

I can still spend a few idle hours fantasizing about how to build a four-wheel-drive slotcar that would be competitive, if not a world-beater. Someone once said the impossible is only stuff we haven't done yet.

Like I said, seductive.

Ed Bianchi

[RichD]

One of the guys in my 1/32nd club built a 4WD car for a proxy series and that ran quite well. The motor was in the usual sidewinder position with a spur gear on the rear axle. There were pulleys on the front and rear axles and a belt with a tensioner if I recall correctly. In order to make room for the pulleys the wheels and tires had to be a little narrow. The car did drive differently than a conventional sidewinder car. 4WD setups seem to work better if the front wheels turn a little faster than the rear wheels.
I believe that 4WD slot cars to not have the same advantages as their 1:1 counterparts for several reasons. For one thing a slot car has a guide flag, so it effectively has much more side grip in the front. When a car is accelerating the weight shifts to the rear and the front tires loose some grip. Combine those two things and 4WD slot cars will have little advantage over RWD ones. The extra gears or belt and pulleys will add at least some weight and also some friction losses. Having to use narrower tires does not help either.