[woodingboys]

Just recieved my first ever Le Mans Miniature and oh wow, what a beautiful thing it is....

After briefly studying the fabulous details for many minutes.... out came the Phillips and off with its head (and body too) to look at the practicalities of squeezing a chip inside.

First conclusion, only a Sureguide is going to work. 
The only place a chip is going to fit is on the motor.
If anyone has done this Bugatti Type 59 before please do share your findings.

Failing that we will all be leaning together.... :-)

[Graham]

As a matter of interest where do you buy the Sureguides from ?

[woodingboys]

Hi Graham,

Sureguides were developed by 'MrModifier' from SlotForum.
Christian name Richard.
Is one of the club organisers in Wales.

I have been trying to get hold of him, but have struggled to get a response recently.
I still have a few guides, but need more.
If I cant raise a response I will have a go at remodelling in 3d a new one and let you know.
Not wanting to pinch someone else's design, but there is a need for Richard's guides where your digital powerbase can support the protocol of the LED passing the sensor before the blade. 

Be aware that the out of the box ARC Pro does not support sureguides. The older, and in some cases preferred by some, Advanced Power Base does support Sureguide operation.

Hope that helps.

[woodingboys]

So it turns out the Le Mans Miniatures look a lot better on the surface....

As reported in other forum posts, the chassis and running gear leave a lot to be desired....

So the job of chipping this little Bugatti has become a bigger project than first anticipated.

My first attempt at squeezing a modfied F1 chip inside the body failed, I moved onto fitting an even smaller SSD chip, which is the initiative of a chum who has been helping with some advanced electricary that theoretically allows 32 cars to run simultaneously on Goodwood. (In practice it cant cope with more than 8 due to speed).

The F1 chip, could be adapted by someone with better soldering skills than I, but removing the capacitor (only needed for analogue running) and the JST plug. This combined with moving the LED to a flying lead would just squeeze inside the body on top of the motor.

Here is an image of my failed attempt to use the F1 chip....    

And here you can see how Fat the Chip is with capacitor and JST plug.... (see the shiny motor side protruding at the bottom of the body)    

So we have resorted to the use of a brand new and significantly smaller SSD chip:    

And that was the easy bit.....

Looking at the prop shaft on the original car, the alignment between motor and crown pinion is not good, creating a lot of resistance within the spring trying to act as a UJ.
The answer has been to remove spring and sleeve the prop shaft (at least in theory). 

With that completed we will be rebuilding and squeezing it all together. 

NB the motor has Kapton heat resistant tape on it and will have space for a bit of foam between the chip and the motor.

Sadly I had too many other things to do before Gaydon and will only be able to provide a static display of the Edwardian cars on the Goodwood track, which based on my experience of the running gear in this one and the fragility, I suspect thats all for the best.....

[woodingboys]

As a matter of interest where do you buy the Sureguides from ?

Morning Graham, now in touch with Richard. He is still selling the guides, 'SureChange' at £30 for 10 plus £1.50 postage.
He has also kindly said he will send me a bunch to sell at Gaydon, so I will have a stack available there for sale individually and no postage :-)

Cheers
Paul

[MrFlippant]

So we have resorted to the use of a brand new and significantly smaller SSD chip:

Who makes that chip, and where can you get it?

[Dr_C2]

Hi Greg, the decoder is part of a development platform rather than a commercial product. As Paul mentioned, the Scalextric F1 decoder although itself quite small, didn’t quite fit so we decided to try something smaller.

c

[MrFlippant]

Hi Greg, the decoder is part of a development platform rather than a commercial product. As Paul mentioned, the Scalextric F1 decoder although itself quite small, didn’t quite fit so we decided to try something smaller.

c

Ah! I thought maybe that was one of your projects. :)

[Dr_C2]

After some conversations with Paul we now have a plan to complete the digitisation of these lovely 1/32 scale Bugatti’s.


Also, as Paul mentioned these models are very fragile - even the process of disassembly/assembly needs very special care. Racing them will require even more care.

So what follows is the plan for completion of their digitisation. If others have wisdom to offer on how best to achieve this, it would appreciated too.

So first the ‘extra’ parts:

   

[Dr_C2]

Then plan:

As mentioned earlier, the ‘small’ SSD compatible decoder sits above the motor with a two-wire ultraflexible connection to the sure-change mounted LED. The LED is not show fitted in the above photo. Happily it does all fit.

We decided to replace the ‘simple spring’ style of universal joiner with a propshaft ‘liner’ approach to reduce internal transmission friction/loading.

The photo shows six of the required liners. These have an outer diameter of 2mm and an inside diameter of 1.5mm. Perfect!

The pinion gears fit ‘tightly’ onto the liner using a slot.it pinion pusher/puller. The liner is then a sliding fit onto the 1.5mm motor shalf. This is where the high temperature epoxy comes into play. Not yet tried - so if anyone has a better idea please let us know?

Positioning while the epoxy cures will be critical to achieve the correct propshaft length so the pinion correctly engages length-wise with the crown gear.

The final step will be to install axle stoppers to set the optimal meshing with the crown gear.

So that’s the plan :)

c