Subaru updated

After I am satisfied with the car way it’s looked, spray primer-surfacer to the body for getting ready to paint job.

I pick up an image of a “Japanese Crane” which is a symbolic of “Japanese traditional married couple”.

Japanese Nation Bird is Pheasant not Japanese Crane, but Japanese Cranes mostly take action in a pair and it seems so strikingly, it is the symbol of married couple in a very good relationship in Japan and we have a history that it often becomes a motif of Japanese traditional art crafts and arts.

So, I made this tiny Subaru for my wife and wish it that we keep enjoying slot car together for a long time. 

And I’m still thinking of a good looking livery which goes with an old Subaru. While I am thinking of it, I design a chassis.

The cheap and ugly

Subaru has only recently become famous in the WRC as Subaru WRX .

But Fuji heavy industry had exported 360 mini-car to the United States in 1969 already.

I started a small project to convert an ARII kit into a slot car. In the first place, I would build it straight without hesitating. Even I attached wide fenders from the kit, I wondered something missing.

It seemed to be not enough volume under the waistline, I fixed side sills and front lower balance.

There were some finishing images, so I didn’t make rear lower balance at this point.

Fling a pair of dice

In my childhood, every boy was large-influenced by TAMIYA’s fine model kits. I certainly was the one of them.

Those days, if you said “Porsche 934 “, it was no doubt that it meant “orange Jagermeister car” and “green Vaillant car” for most of all Japanese boys.

Since then, they still have been my favorite pairs of porsche racing liveries.

Time flies...


As I am grown up a middle aged man, I’ve met a wonderland of slot car racing, and sometimes want to re-paint my “Porsche 356s” which it of course comes to my mind the orange and green cars even though the liveries don’t match the time for 934 and 356.

Here is an original ninco porsche 356 in my stock.

Orange one is mine, 

and green one is my wife's car.

They look happy together.

Not just any treasure

When I was a newbie to slot car, I used to watch foreign websites one after another every night.
One day I hit the Mark Gussin’s page, I fell in love with his collections, especially this racing transporter.

I was searching for it for 4 years or so, finally I got this in March 2009.

I've been so lucky to have it since then and still feel happy.

A joy of little reworking

Scalextric released Ferrari 330 P4 a few years ago.
That was a very good runner even in straight condition OTB and non magnet,
also cheaper than RACER’s resin car and appropriate scale size.

At first, I sanded down tyres to make their shoulders round.

Rounded shouldered tyres showed more old fashioned appearance
and gave mild handling to cars.

Scaly P4 has one piece chassis and no rolling movement, I cut out the chassis
to let it move freely between the chassis and the body, and a little lowering down.

At last, I created headlight covers from plastic bottle.

Ideal state

Carrera had released two monumental porsche GT racers.

The old one was  RSR turbo, and the recent one was 935/78 "Moby Dick".
Both of them were inline-drive as carrera's usual standard.

They unfortunately couldn't compete with FLY RR 911 or 934, I decided
to convert their stock chassis into FLY chassis, to be how the porsche

should be.

 

They were needed a little work to be fit FLY chassis to Carrera

bodies because FLY had a shorter wheelbase than Carrera's.

Then, I gave them some adjustment on their wheel arch and

they were done! 

I have respected a character of FLY RR chassis, it is why I didn't

use Slot-it HRS universal chassis.

Lexan tinkering

A few years ago, I got a little bored of racing with stock Scalextric ASCARs,
so I modified a 1/32 lexan body NASCAR truck.
I got it from www.HotLapsRacin.com known as "marair23" on eBay.

The original cars they sold were below.

They were nice cute livery RTR, but I picked a clear lexan body to
start my project.

I tried to make it something different on lexan, then I worked some
tinkering on the body here and there. Also, I used ALPS MD-5500
printer to make some water slide decals.

Here is the result.  My fantasy livery.

Front,

and back.

The chassis pan was from Scalextric camo taurus with SCX NASCAR
dodge charger axles.

I enjoyed working on this.