Pendle Slot Racing stock a wide range of ready to run cars and kits by a company called Scaleauto. The cars that particularly piqued my interest were those with the “raid” style chassis’. These are four wheel driven, feature working suspension and an arm that drops down which allows the guide to stay in the slot when the car is going over jumps and bumps.
A raid car would be completely different to the other slot cars I’ve built for this blog, so I ordered one from Pendle’s for £49.96, along with some Rothmans decals by Teamslot. If you would like one for yourself, please follow this link: Scaleauto Porsche 959
The chassis is a thick plastic construction and does have an adjustable wheelbase should you wish to mate it to a different body shell.
The motor sits in the centre and drives a centrally mounted spur gear which sits on a shaft which crosses the centre of the chassis. At either end of the shaft sits a pulley which turns a belt which in turn drives each set of wheels.
The suspension comprises of simple spring loaded shock absorbers as one would find on a Mardvae or Kamtec RC car.
The guide is attached to a sprung arm that drops down whenever the wheels are lifted off of the ground. Great for going over jumps, bumps and other obstacles.
The body and interior are injected plastic as one would find in an Airfix or similar kit, with soft rubber mudflaps and photoetched metal details such as grills and window wipers. (the window wipers are beautifully crafted little pieces, photos don’t do them justice)
(Photoetched wipers. It’s nearly impossible to get a camera to focus on them, but I hope this kind of shows what they are like.)
The kit goes together nice and next to no modifcation is needed to get it to go together. There is a little flashing on some components from the injection process, but that’s common with plastic kits and is easily removed with a scalpel.
No instructions were provided so it’s important that you get a good look at some images of the real car before construction. Most notably, the things on the roof are tail lights and not induction scoops for the motor. That nearly caught me out haha!
The interior is nicely detailed with two figures, seperately fitted seat backs, fire extinguisher, roll cage and a nicely detailed dash board with gauges and heater controls.
The co-driver was posed as if holding a map, but a map wasn’t included in my kit. To make one I cut a section out of an old Sky Box card (which is the same size as a credit card). It does the job.
I’m terrible at hand painting liveries, but this is what I came up with haha! It’s a mere interpretation of the Rothmans livery, not an exact replica, I know.
“How does it drive?” is the question I wanted to answer when building this car though. I wanted to know if this chassis actually works and I’m pleased to say that it does!
It’s not going to win any speed awards but it pulls itself around the track nicely. You can slide it around and if the back drops off the of the track, the arm allows the guide to stay in the slot and the four wheel drive lets the car scramble back up again.
I’d also made some jumps and bumps for the car out of blu tack. it crawls over things with ease and, at speed, is happy to jump over things too!
It’s not had any particularly hard landings yet but the jumping hasn’t phased it at all. The suspension and soft thick tyres seem to soak up the bumps nicely.
My only criticism of the way the car drives is that the motor gets really warm after a few minutes. I have heavier cars in my collection so I was quite surprised. It may be that there’s a bit of binding somewhere in the mechanism of the chassis that’s causing friction and getting the motor hot, but it sounds and looks ok. It’s a mabuchi style motor that powers the car, so it’s easily swapped out if it goes pop.
All in all I’m really impressed with it. As it has so many parts and no instructions, I can’t recommend it for beginners. It goes together nicely though and is brilliant fun to drive! Well worth the £50 in my opinion.
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By Richard Francis
