Converting the Red Barron to the Black Knight

[Pete J.]

What thickness of brass sheet did you use to make the leaf springs? I am planning on making two sets of springs for an upcoming rat rod build and would love any tips you might have from your three attempts to get what you wanted. Did you use a wire brush for polishing out the edges?

Kevin

Kevin-

.015" for the thickness. No, I didn't use a wire brush but I considered it early on. My process is a bit more cobbled together.

When you get the brass sheet, clean it with acetone. Most brass sheet has a coating on it and if you anneal it without cleaning it, you get a real nasty surface that is hard to polish.

Next step is to anneal the brass. Heat it cherry red and quench it water. I know, I thought that was the process for hardening it but apparently for nonferrous metals that is how you do it. Then you have to reflatten it. I made myself a small “rolling pin” out of aluminum and use a piece of ¾” MDF as a rolling surface. If you have not done this before, a little practice and you will get it down.

The annealing will dull the surface of the brass but that is a good thing. I then marked my cut lines with a diamond scribe to get the width I wanted and using a straightedge and a utility knife scored my way through to cut the sheet. I reflattend it and marked my lengths out and cut them.

Next I found the center of each leaf and scribed it so I knew where to bend it and where to line them up to solder them. The next step was to prep the surface. I did that with needle files and sanding sticks. Once I had them down to a decent gloss with fine scratches, I put a final polish on them with a fabric wheel in my Dremel and some fine jeweler’s rouge.

Then I bent each one with a bending jig. A dowel would do the same thing. I was careful to bend them on the center marks I had made before. Then I lined up all the center marks and soldered them together. After they were soldered, I dressed the edges with needle files to square them and took the file marks out with a sanding stick and then gave them a quick shot with the buffing wheel.

Edited February 13, 2013 by Pete J.

[Pete J.]

I was rummaging around in my parts box and found all three sets of springs that I have made for this kit and thought you might like to see them. They are in order from the kit part in the back (the ugly red plastic piece) to the final iteration in the foreground.

The engine is coming along. The crankcase is done and cylinders glued on. I have also added the exhaust. It is a little weird, but that goes with the whole build. After doing some research on the engine it looks like Tom Daniel’s may have scavenged it from a 1/35^th scale Fokker aircraft kit. The real deal would be much larger in relation to the car as designed, so artistic license has been invoked in all aspects of the engine build.

Edited February 16, 2013 by Pete J.

[crazyrichard]

pfffft so.o.o nice

and seeing those brass leaf springes next to the styrene version ... what a difference

[Pete J.]

C

Coming down the final stretch with this one. Engine is wired and ready to go. I have the body to finish up and polish out. The interior is done. I have some gages to get on board and some touchup work to do and we are off to the races.

This shows how the exhaust fits. Perhaps it makes a little more sense when you see it in the chassis.

Here is the engine, wired up and done and test fit into the chassis.

[MAGNUM4342]

EXCEPTIONAL! I don't know how this one slipped my radar but i'm glad I found it.

[Pete J.]

Ok, this build hit that point in time that it needed to be done and it wasn't finished. The timing was the San Diego Model Car Club February meeting. As I think I mentioned this needed to be done as it was a club single kit build. The option was to take in a bunch of parts or assemble what I had. I chose to assemble what I had completed.

First photo is the interior. I am quite happy how it all came together. The gage bezels are cut from brass tubing on the lathe. I believe I showed photos of the steering wheel earlier.

Here are a couple of shots of the rear end. All things considered I think it is quite nicely integrated.

Here is a side shot. This is the first time you can see parts not added. The front end is missing steering and drag links.

This gives you a better shot of the front.

Now, here is the deal. Even though it is more or less done, I am going to continue to fabricate a new front end that is period correct with all the functional parts. As that comes along, I will continue to post photos. The disassembly and reconstruction may take a while. In fact I was even thinking of striping it down and making frame rails and just adding the parts off the this one. We shall see. As I said, I am not really happy with this as it sits.

[Pete J.]

Oh, by the way, I have decided that the "Darth Vader" references are way off base. It is much closer to the Rick Moranes character of "Dark Helmet" from Space balls!

[Scale-Master]

Trippy...

[Alyn]

Very clever building, Pete

The brass and aluminum look great with the black paint. Nice to be able to add some metal parts and retain the metal finish. It's always a drag to build something really cool out of metal and than have to paint over it.

[crazyrichard]

just sick !! love it

[Custom Hearse]

Oh, by the way, I have decided that the "Darth Vader" references are way off base. It is much closer to the Rick Moranes character of "Dark Helmet" from Space balls!

"You better buckle up Sir!"

"Ahhh, buckle this! Ludicrous speed! Go!!!"

[Dr. Cranky]

Wow, looking beautiful in black. Great lathe work.

[Shardik]

Jim,

As long as you're still adding details, the Daimler DIII engine has two magnetos and two spark plugs per cylinder; one on each side. Also, the camshaft runs along the top of the cylinders with the valves on either side. If you're interested in reference photos I have a couple hundred .

On a separate note, if your interested in the aces of WWI, check out this book:

About half of it is personal correspondence and after-action reports by the pilots themselves. Fascinating reading.

Edited February 22, 2013 by Shardik

[Pete J.]

Johann-

First of all thank you for your interest. I am always interested in aviation books because flying is my first love. Having said that I have a lot of problems with engine as it came in the kit. Honestly I had no intention of making this an accurate replica of the real thing and took a lot of liberties with it. Bluntly, Tom Daniels also took far more liberties than I and as such left me with little opportunity to bring it up to an accurate representation of the real thing.

First off, I suspect that it is a 1:72 scale engine out of an aircraft kit. The real engine is about 65" inches long, almost 5 1/2 feet. Scaled out, that would mean that the engine should be close to 2.7" long in 1:24 scale. This model engine is nowhere near that length. It is just under an inch long. This would make sense for a 1:72 scale

On top of that it has a lot of peculiarities specific to aircraft engines of the era that would make it very unsuitable for an automotive engine without a lot of modifications. First it that the intake air runs through the crankcase to warm the air. This is an anti-icing measure that robs power from the engine. I modified the engine with a side mount intake that would theoreticaly go into the pair of updraft carbs just to give it some semblance of reality.

Second the valve system is top mounted for ease of maintenance as was the custom of the period. This also helps with the compression release access used to start the engine by “hand propping it”. Something you just couldn't do with and engine of this size with a crank. There had to be a starter somewhere on this piece and there is no provision for starter anywhere on the model. Building an accurate valve train was just a waste of time in my estimation.

As far as the dual magneto/plugs this is something that is almost exclusively used on 4 cycle aircraft engines. Dual ignition has two purposes. First and foremost is to provide a backup in the event of the failure of one system. It matters a whole lot more in an aircraft if the electrical system poops out than on a car. It also improves combustion marginally but that can also be achieved with better plug location on a single plug engine and would not be considered worth the additional weight and complication on a hot rod.

So, for those who are interested in seeing an accurate portrale of a Mercedes D III engine, this is not the place to look. This engine is so bastardized to begin with that I felt compelled to improve it visually and ignore the original engine. Perhaps someday I will have the urge to build the real thing, but today is not that day. This engine is more about improving my skills as a miniature metal worker and making something that looks good. Artistry was much higher on the priorities than accuracy for this build.

Edited February 23, 2013 by Pete J.

[drifterdon]

This engine is more about improving my skills as a miniature metal worker and making something that looks good. Artistry was much higher on the priorities than accuracy for this build.

Pete, You hit a home run with the artistry of that engine. This whole build is just amazing and I love the Dark Helmet reference. Thats what came to my mind when I first saw the windshield/google/helmet pic.

Can't wait to see the finished build. Keep up the stunning work.

[cobraman]

Beautiful work !

[Builder]

Crazy nuts craftsmanship. It's too much. Awesome and then some.

[Pete J.]

This was a bit of a challenge. I wanted a realistic hot rod front axle. I don't own a mill.....yet, so getting a real curve with the grooved I-beam look was going to be a challenge. After reviewing the options I took a page out of Mark Jones play book and did it in layers. Here are the layers. They are slightly rough because they have not been cleaned up yet. The small round things are the end bearings.

Ok, back to the bench.

Here it is all soldered up. The round aluminum pieces are jigs I used to make sure that the bearings are soldered on parallel and at 90 degrees to the ground. They are aluminum so solder didn't stick to them.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Pete J.

[58 Impala]

Great front axle, I've been thinking about making my own front axles. What type of metal did you use and what type of solder?

[vintagedragfan]

nice Pete!!

[Pete J.]

Great front axle, I've been thinking about making my own front axles. What type of metal did you use and what type of solder?

It is all brass so it solders togeather well. I used a silver based solder from radio shack. They seem to be the only ones I can find that have a really fine gauge solder. Everyone else seems to think you want to do plumbing.

[lanesteele240]

Yep. That is darth vader.

Geore lucas will probably have these rolling off the line in days. I want one of yoda and chewy

Looks awesome.

[58 Impala]

Thanks for the info Pete. I thought you were using brass, the color of the metal in photo kind of threw me off. It kind of looked silver like PE. I already have the fine RadioShack solder, you're right everyone sells the huge solder. I did find some silver solder at Ace Hardware that was a little bigger for slightly larger jobs.

[Randy D]

Hi Pete,

Getting caught up here, Really looks awesome with the black and polished metal!!! Thanks for showing how you are building the front axle. Great stuff!!

Randy

[Scale-Master]

Great work on that axle!