DSV - Danske Standard Vogne - 1:24 Slot Car Models of 1965-1971 Danish GT-cars

My good friend Jan Juul and I have for some time discussed the possibility of making a Slot Car class based on the smaller GT cars that raced in Denmark in the 1965-1971 period.
Some years ago we made two Lexan Escorts painted like Tom Belsø and Fl. Rasmussens's car and recently I finished a long-time project of the Belsø car with a home made grp body

My Lexan Escort painted like Fl. Rasmussen's 1969 car

My grp car painted like Tom Belsø's 1969 car

As we felt a growing interest from other racers, and we decided to proceed with the class and I began collecting information of the cars that raced back then and which of them was available in 1:24 scale.

We consider to limit the class to max. 2000ccm as the Falcon, Mustang and Camaro are a bit too big compared to the other cars, but the rules are not fixed yet.

Here is some of the cars I found:

Mini, Escort, NSU - even the Escort looks huge compared the the other two

Mini, Abarth, Falcon, NSU. The Mini and Falcon are plastik kits from Tamiya and Trumpeter and the Abarth is a resin shell from Cursa

Porsche 911, NSU, Abarth, Mini - P911 is a Fujimi plastic kit

We tested the Escort and the semi-built NSU on both the highspeed 8-lane wooden Blue King-type track in Hørning and the 4-lane plastic Carrera track in Ikast and found the cars to be surprisingly fast and stable - and great fun to drive on both tracks :-)

The track owner (and a good friend) even pestered me to sell him the Escort, which I did and went home to finish the NSU :-)

Originally I planned to paint it in the colourful scheme on the best known of Leif Pedersens cars, but I found that they were from his championship winning years from 1972 and onwards, so I had to find another solution.

Leif is a fellow member of a facebook group, so I contacted him and he was very helpful and supplied me with this picture of his 1971 car:

The car was silver with metallic blue upper sides, but the makings was a challenge as I can't print white colour on my laser and inkjet printers :-(

However I decided to give it a chance and drew up the decals in CorelDraw and printed them on white decal paper on my Zerox laser printer:

After some test prints I succeeded in getting the background colour for the "motor-depotet" (greyish blue) and "Audi-nsu" (light grey) right and after some nerve wrecking cutting, the decals went on - and the result was ok. Leif was so kindly to approve them also :-)

here is the painted and decalled body with correct gold coloured wheels in front of a picture of the real car. The window sheets included with the body did not fit properly, so i made my own from clear plasticard. they are not perfect, but look ok from a distance (!) - the wheel inserts were cast in resin.

Now I had to make the interior from scratch. Leif was again helpful and told me that the car had a passenger seat but no rear seat.

I am a happy owner of a 1965 vintage Mattel Vac-U-Form vaccumm forming machine. I surely has it limitations, especially on the size of the objects, but it has served me well and makes it possible to make lightweight copies of many things.

Here is a test shot of some door sides, which did not fit :-(

Here I am experimenting with driver inserts. I finally choosed grey driver and passenger seat in the top of the picture and made the rest in black cardboard.

The driver and passenger seat is mounted on the cardboard after several test has been made to make a perfect fit. The rear part was later seperated to mae it possible to get the roll cage fit into the car. Also shown is the dashboard which is also vac-formed.

Roll bar assembly mounted in the body. It is made of plastic tube and mounted on black cardboard.

The chassis used was a near-vintage 1:32 Schöler chassis from around 2002.

10g of lead is placed in the front of the car and 3g just in in front of the motor. The wheels are 13mm outside diameter aluminium wheels with foam rubber tyres. Width rear is 10mm. Motor is Fox10, which we also use in other classes in Denmark.

Interior is made from vacformed components and cardboard base. Arms are resin.

Finished car - ready to race :-)

I used Tamiya's racing version af the Mini Cooper and mounted it on an old Schöler 1:32 chassis (my last one). I made suitable wheels using 13mm alu wheels, turned down to 7mm front and 10mm rear. Rubber is foam rubber front and rear. Wheel inserts are resin copies of the wheels from the kit.
Nov. 29th. 2013: Decided to make a new chassis for the Mini for two reasons, to get more weight down in the car and also to save the 1:32 Schöler chassis which is the last one i have.

Looks wicked with the open engine lid

Leif Pedersen looks as fierce in 1:24 as he did in 1:1 :-)

Notice the oil coolers and hood catches, like on the original

Nice little car and great fun to build.

Erik Høyer's 1970 Austin Cooper
Next in line was the model of Erik Høyers 1970 Austin Cooper. Erik was dominant in the below 1300ccm grp.2 class in the late 60's and his Austin Coopers were the cars to meassure yourself against. Like Leif Pedersens NSU they were always in top shape and ready for race :-)

Here the Mini is shown with the Escort and NSU for comparison

I drew up the decals in Corel Draw and used my (2nd) Zerox laserprinter to print the decals. The laser printed decals are very vulnerable and a bit stiff, but they are waterproof.

I cut the decals close to the edge and as the decals are brittle the edge seems to break up. I therefore paint the edge with a marker in the appropriate colour.

The big roof decal and most of the others are mounted and some touching up is needed :-(

Decal works is finished

here the body is shown with the NSU :-)

Now its time for detailing of the body and interior

I drew up a simple chassis using some exixting components, but making and assembling was not that simple as it seemed to every component had to be modified to fit inside this little car.

Made a new chassis for the Mini today. 1.5mm brass plate. Looked like simple project, but there is not room for any standard components in this little car. Guide is mounted directly on the chassis.