[JMay]

For those of us brought up in the 1960s & 70s on Scalextrics the staple diet for F1 was the Formula Juniors, and at one Christmas my brother & I were given 6 of these ( 4x Lotus, a Porsche & Cooper) plus 4 Minis, a Healy and Mercedes with track by an Aunt who bought a job lot from a neighbour. Sadly these have long gone over the years with just a few broken bits in a tub remaining. 

Fast forward now to recent toy fair and picked up a Lotus C82 for £3. The  motor is inoperable as no brushes, armature looks a bit toasty, rear exhausts broken, guide pin gone, the usual issues but a complete shell with wheels & tyres in good nick. 

Several CAD hours and 4 prints to get the design working we have.

   


Pod is based on a slimline pod I created for the Supershells F1 range, with an added under pan feature to match the original Lotus under pan. This clips in position using the original front and side clips.


   


Part of the numerous iterations was the under pan fit plus juggling fitting in the FF50 motor which is thicker than the original FJ motor. To get the motor in and not  lose the driver, something had to give and in this case having to use a 1mm offset cog such that the rear axle could be positioned higher up to avoid that jacked up stance. I also change the rear tyres to a pair of Ninco classics which are a smaller diameter to help with the stance. Bearings as per the Slimline chassis’ are courtesy of Tony Condon who has a stock of the Supershell F1 bodies and parts (see the JS FB page link in the forum Traders section under JS Chassis). 

One of the beauties of these cars is the steering mechanism which had the guide integral but was prone to breaking due to wear & tear thinning the pin down and then one last off would snap it. Fortunately, the guide pin is on a section that can be prised off and replaced.

   


The 3d version is thicker, deeper and longer so more akin to a blade than a pin now it still fits via the steering pin, but uses a screw to retain. Braids are retained by ferrules at an angle to avoid having to put in a feature below the plate line (3d printing issue) requiring supports.  Haven’t got a working original pin to compare against would hope the blade being longer and more forward will perform better than the original.
On the track the car has a lively performance with the Policar 25K motorand a 28T cog and performs like a more top heavy F1 Policar due to the tall tyres no doubt but it will slide with opposite lock as I remembered. 
The Lotus conversion kit of pod and guide is available via the JS Chassis FB page or send me an IM using this forum. Will see how this goes and will potentially look at doing more conversions for the other Juniors.

Cheers
                      John