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A cure for the Revell March

How DO they do that??
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wixwacing
Marshal!!!
Posts: 1871
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:22 am

A cure for the Revell March

Post by wixwacing »

The Revell March has been a bit of a thorn in my side for some time. I bought the Blue Thunder version with the intention of racing it and found it to be a good model in plastic track situations. But it wasn't great. The dramatic over gearing cause the model to be sluggish on uptake and vastly inferior when it came to engine braking. So the idea was put on the back burner for few years!. A chance purchase of a second one rekindled my desire to get this potential GT car up and competitive. The problem was always going to be the gearing so rather spend time and money tarting up the rest of the model, I tackled this issue first.

The problem was the extraordinarily high gear ratio and comparatively low torque motor. A boxer motor of some sort would be an instant cure but I decided to persevere with the motor. Revell have mounted their motor higher than most and this generates a greater motor / axle gap. They have made their own gears to fit the model and unfortunately, the great divide between the pinion and spur gear leave all after market gears wanting. There is nothing available to bridge the gap 'off the shelf' Bugger!! Mmmmm? What to do? Well, five or six years later I have resolved the problem!! Because the motor and axle are too far apart I decided the only fix was to introduce a third gear as an idler!!! Brilliant, so this is just what I did.

Firstly, an idler is not going to affect the final drive ration so that has to be established first. In doing this I have plumped for some standard gears giving about 3.2 : 1 final; drive ratio. Next with wheels removed I introduced an idler gear to the gear train. Holding it snugly in place I ran a 2.00 mm drill bit through the idler and into the plastic part of the motor mount. I then fashioned a small piece of brass and drilled the idler shaft hole and some extra holes which would act as keys when bonding it into place. A 2.00 mm drill shank became a donor for the idler shaft and was cut to size. The whole assembly was held in place and a couple of spots of superglue were applied to hold it all together. I had previously drilled some key holes in the plastic chassis for the final bonding stage.



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When all was in place and looking promising I epoxied the plate in place taking car not to glue the idler or any other moving parts. For this I used extra strength Araldite. The whole was left for a couple of days to cure. On returning to the project and after resoldering the power leads I ran the motor. Eureka, Success of the first order. The gear system worked fine, if a little noisy. The noise was caused by a slight mismatch in pitch of the gears but a few minutes running with a fine polish and Vaseline concoction soon had it running quieter.



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Still not silent but improving all the time, the model is a ball of fire!! I had it running at the Red Team's home track and was very, very impressed. Today I sorted out some urethane tyres and tidied the rest of the model. Gave the body a soapy bath and polished some of its battle scars and the model now looks a million dollars.



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So think laterally when it comes to those hard to fix models. Its nice to bung an aftermarket chassis and the works to cure a problem. But trust me, it's even nicer to come up with your own solution!
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When I'm not racing slotcars,
I'm out in the back yard, burning food!!

When I win, it's because of my talent, not my car or my controller!
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