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SCG takes you through the process of
building up a 1971 Dodge Charger 1/24 scale slot car for use on a home
slot car layout. The car will be built for layouts such as Carrera
Exclusiv 1/24, Sears/Marx 1/24, and other 1/24 plastic slot car tracks.
It is not meant to be used for commercial 1/24 slot car raceways but it can be run on small wood or custom 1/24 tracks if your club allows it or if you have a track of your own. Project Updated: April 28, 2001 |
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Tools Required for Assembly:
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See below for some changes to the parts listing for this project under Part 2. |
 A roll of Velcro such as this one pictured can go a long
way for mounting many model kit bodies to the FCR Chassis from Parma.A bargain compared to having to buy the strips from Parma for the FCR chassis and they are basically the same thing. Just cut to the length needed and cut the strip in half for the two sides of the body / chassis. |
The building of the chassis is pretty straight forward. You want to make sure the holes in the adjustable oilites (bushings) are lined up for each side of the chassis. You can fine tune your car either to sit higher or lower with these. I chose myself to have the car sit higher in the rear and lower up front. Some spacers are added to the rear between the tires/wheels. The front does not need any.
You will have to remove the inner fender-wells from the model kit body or there will be interfere between the front wheels/tires. They are somewhat of a tight fit but they will work. These tires/wheels from ProTrack makes the car really stand out even though it's not really painted yet.
I did come to a snag though but I think I can work around it. Most of the model kit bodies that fit on this chassis are not a tight fit unless the lower rocker panels (part below the doors) curve down. These FCR chassis were mostly made to fit stock car bodies and most of them have smooth, flat sides. So when mounting this body, I noticed it curves the front end a bit too much and causes the front grille unit to be off a bit. I think I can fix the problem by gluing the hood in which you have to do anyway and fixing the grille to the front to try and keep it straight. The body problem is not likely for most of the cars that will fit on this chassis, just that some with the curved rocker panels will give you some trouble. The newer Mustangs, etc. are ok since they do not fit tightly on the chassis and are mostly flat to mount. This will probably not be a problem when I do the Starliner.
Some tips when assembling your chassis: The pinion should be attached to the motor using a gear press tool to avoid bending of the motor shaft. The crown gear is best mounted on the right side of the chassis and the red wire goes to the right side of the guide flag. Using the spacers you purchased, you can fine tune the guide flag height related to the track.
Ready for a paint job |
This body is too narrow for the FCR chassis and because of this it curves the front too much when trying to get it to fit on the chassis. I have acquired a Ferret WOM-Bat chassis #F1711A and this will work with the wheelbase only slightly off. The front wheels are American Line units with model kit tires from American SATco replacing the rubber band units. I measured on each side where the chassis mounting points would go and used a small hand-drill to make the holes (be careful). The rear tires are custom made silicones from Jack Stinson with the wheels being units I got from an auction that was on eBay. |
Ferret WOM-Bat 1/24 chassis mounted to 1/25 scale AMT 1971 Dodge Charger model kit body [click for larger image] |
The next step will be getting the various body parts together (the car not me) and choosing a color for painting. AMT will probably issue a pre-painted version of this car in the future so you can always wait until that is released to do this conversion. The weather is supposed to be good for the rest of the week so I plan to get some painting done. I do not paint much so I have one of those basic Testors / Model Masters airbrushes with a can for the air supply instead of a compressor. Some of the acrylics and water based paints. They can also be brush painted on with good results if you take your time and do several light coats with sanding in between. The ProModeller Monogram paints are good for brushing but they are now discontinued :( I mostly use Testors paints for airbrushing so I will check my stock to see what I have for this body. |
The weather for this past Summer has been pretty good and not too hot in this area. I mostly paint outside because of the ease of painting since I don't have a paint booth inside the house. The airbrush I use is a simple model from Testors and uses compressed air. If you do a lot of painting, it's best to get a better airbrush and a compressor but this set-up works ok for me. The only problem was when I wanted to paint it was raining out so after the sun popped out, I decided to get to painting the body. The body is mostly one piece but I still had to glue on the hood and the lower front pan to the body since I wanted to get a good match.
From the box art model, the color looked like a lime green color. Well I tried to mix my acrylic paints to get the same color but it came out a little darker. I decided to go with the darker shade then. It took about 2-3 light coats with the airbrush to get a nice smooth paint job with some sanding in between coats. The water-based acrylic paints work pretty good and they do not have toxic fumes but you should still take some precautions when using them. After the paint was dry, the various other components like the rear spoiler, bumper, etc. were painted if necessary and assembled to the car. The decals were left until I finished assembling the body and attaching it to the chassis.
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After I got the decals on the body, I took some plastic
sprue cutters and trimmed the posts from the chassis flush with the body
so they wouldn't be sticking out too much. I would hate to see a
car after a wreck with this chassis with those posts sticking out.
The car came out nice and the chassis works great on my layout. I plan run a timed test drive with the car shortly but the initial test went pretty smoothly. |
The car was matched up against my 1963 Chevy Impala Lowrider and it handled pretty good for a model kit body. The Ferret WOM-Bat chassis has a slight flex to it with the hinged construction so it takes the curves pretty well. The body is a tight fit so the chassis does not have lots of room to flex. The chassis would work the best on a wider body like the NASCAR stock cars but it still makes for a great conversion. They never did make a slot car of a 1/24 scale 1971 Charger R/T so here is your chance to make one for yourself for your own 1/24 track at home or for a club. The car costs about $60 to build but it is well worth it and a bargain compared to prices for the vintage stuff!!!
This car was fun to build and although I had to run into some snags like the FCR chassis being too wide for it. I do plan to get possibly another Charger and either build it stock in another color or make a Petty #43 version out of it. AMT is planning to release a pre-painted version of this kit for the future so we will have to wait and see what color they choose to release it in.
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