Mercedes 170V Berline - Véhicule d'Inspection

A few years ago I bought an Airfix 1:24 scale kit of a Mercedes 170V Berline. I planned to kitbash it into a track inspction vehicle. I tried all sort of electric motors with simple homemade geraboxes but the thing went too fast everytime I tried to run it. The best was to buy a good gearbox but those were pretty expensive. Eventually the project dissapeared in a box for a few years but the car was lingering in the back of my head.
Recently I remembered a topic on MLS were they used small RC cars as motor unit for small hand cars. If the wheelbase is right I could use something like that for the car.

Today I found something that was suitable for this. It's a small RC car. It's without the transmitter so at the moment I think I only use the motor and ' gearbox' and not he RC unit. For I just want the car to make it's rounds on the tracks it does not rally need RC. If I do want it to operate with RC I think I build in a HobbyEasy 2.4 Ghz set; these are small and cheap and there is enough room for it. But for now, I will be happy enough to see it run without.

Enough talk, now the pictures:

The donor:


Wheelbase widht is perfect!


And the bodywork fits very nice as well (You can see the old "chassis" in the back)


Because the lenght of the wheelbase of the toy car was too short I cutted the chassis in half, just after the battery compartment. Then I measured the wheelbase and cutted the old chassis from the kit in size. Glued together with superglue and some strips of plastic for extra strenght.
The testfit with the body looks OK. The fronth wheels rest on the kits chassis and are reenforced with plastic strips.




That's all for now folks!

Excellent idea and project. That's given me some thought for a Citroën HY van....

Where did you get this toy car from, what sort of scale is it?
Plus some details about the wheels please, size, source and how did you change them?

Thanks Carl!

The toy car was an unbranded cheap RC car in 1:32 scale. It's the kind you can buy in toy shops, discountshops or bazars for about 10 to 15 euro. This particular one was laying unused in the toybox of my youngest son (don't worry, I've got his permission to use it!).
It runs on 2 penlites, however it runs on a more normal speed with only 1 penlite (and still manage to go uphill).

The wheels came from Bachmann (#92422 Small metal wheels 24.5mm). These are relatively cheap casted wheels. They were just a bit too wide for the metal axle of the toy, but I glued them in place wit a mixture of Bison contact glue (for the ' filling') and some drips of CA powerglue. Seems to work OK...
The front axle is the axle that came with the wheels, shortened off with a Dremel.

Front seats are glued on the chassis. You can see the line between the original kit chassis and the toy chassis right under the seat.
In the front an extra weight is added. The vehicle is very light and get derailed easy, specially with its front wheels (it jumps a bit). So extra weight might prevent this from happening. Perhaps the engineblock will have to leave to make room for more weight (you can't see it anyway).





And some progress on the bodywork:





Paul

And a short video (sorry for the unstable camera work, I was sitting on my heels in an uncomfortable position...).

Good work Paul.

Not much progress: the driver is placed on his seat (Fujimi 1:24 scale driver figure) and the hole for the spare tire is filled with styrene and Milliput and sanded in shape (almost).