Fun with emergency vehicles
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Upgraded motor for Artin 1/43
Artin 1/43 offers a fire truck and a highway patrol car. I decided to have some fun and rig the emergency vehicle with flashing lights all over.
v Artin 1/43 offers many different cars; many more than are available with the standard sets. See the full line up at Slot car World.
v Among all these cars, the ones my 4 year old really wanted to get (what a surprise J) are the fire truck (part number 4747) and the highway patrol car (part number 4746)
v Of course, he was not content with just the way they came, as they had no lights. In addition, the fire truck, being very top heavy was very difficult to handle.
v A few modifications were mandatory so he could have his fun. First to make the cars easier to handle and at the same time faster, I replace the standard Artin 1/43 motor with the SCW motor (part number SCW1). For $5.00 that little motor is a screamer. It is rated at 24,000 rpm (I suspect that is at 12V) although I could not verify it, since I do not own a tachometer. Mostly, it has just fantastic pickup and braking. Read this Article by Harry Wise on this motor.
v So I dropped one of these motors in each of the fire truck and the police car. In addition, I added lights to the fire truck as there is plenty of room inside (the police car will have them at a latter date).. I added flashing white lights in the front, flashing red and yellow lights in the back, and flashing red/blue lights on the top. All LEDs came from http://www.superbrightleds.com and the electronics to drive all that was home made (see here for the article)
v The results were almost better than I expected. First and foremost the two cars handle very well and are incredibly fast. At only 10V the police car was as fast as my fastest Artin 1/43 car (with the standard 1/43 motor at 7.5 V), clocking about 9 seconds on my track. Second, they were much easier to drive for the kids, specially the fire truck. Third, my 4 year old won't let go of the fire truck as he just loves these flashing lights.
v See a movie of the fire truck
Last Update: 8/20/06 Drop me a note