Lancia D20: Complete (#1 for 2024)

This 1953 Lancia D20 is a 1/24 resin kit from Profil 24. First one complete for 2024. Not one of my better builds but at some point you have to get it off the bench and into the display cabinet. 

An unusual car, apparently unrelated to any Lancia road cars of the time, and a perfect topic for Profil 24. As always kits from small cottage-industry kit makers reflect the passion and world view of the founders, and you had better be prepared to accept the quirks, such as the weak hubs for the wheels. I am considering fabricating these from brass tubes in the future...  

 

Lancia made 7 of these, of which two were prototypes. This one, apparently the last one made, was driven to first place in the 1953 Targa Florio by Umberto Maglioli. In that race it ran with a 3 litre V6. The Italian version of Wikipedia implies the D20s all had inboard front drum brakes (!!) and a de Dion tube in the rear, but this kit doesn't have the detail to confirm this. 

 

Four cars, including this one, were entered at Le Mans, all with a supercharged 2.7 litre V6 in place of the unsupercharged 3 litre. None finished; two suffered engine failures and a third lost the transmission, all perhaps due to excessively enthusiastic boost levels... the fourth (this car, in the hands of Maglioli and Taruffi) suffered electrical failure. 

  

According to the Pininfarina website, four additional D20 chassis were converted to D23 Spiders; this led to the well-known D24. It's not clear if any of the original D20s survive. 

 Stay tuned, you never know what's next.  

Miller 91: Updated photos

So I have a Faithful Reader, who knew? Cause for celebration, I'd say. "Aurfalien" has been fighting the HRM kit of the Miller 91. Pics below, some new and some from the build, are meant to help clarify some questions around the front suspension. Comments are based on my experience as a car mechanic (although not on Millers!) Feel free to write again.

Hopefully this explanation is not too simple! I've been accused of pontificating in the past. So here goes: Front suspension on this car is unusual due to being a 1926 vintage front-wheel drive setup; very little looks like a modern FWD car. The drive part starts with the transmission which sits at the front of the engine, under the radiator. Drum brakes are inboard, up against the transmission on either side, then there are driveshafts extending out to the wheel hubs. The two driveshafts were actually modelled in the kit as a single long aluminum tube joining both sides.

The axle consists of a de Dion axle; this is the bent tube that joins the two front wheel hubs and runs in front of the transmission. This has two big brackets per side, each bracket bolted to a quarter elliptic leaf spring (painted in a bronze metallic colour) which run rearwards and are anchored in the chassis. So the tube is free to move up and down on the leaf springs, carrying the hubs with it; the axle can't move back and forth (much) due to the springs acting as trailing arms. Brake and drive torque is taken through the driveshafts growing out of the drum brakes. 

The shock absorbers front and rear are friction type units, basically a round stack of clutches. In front, the round part attaches to the frame, with a long arm reaching forward to the de Dion tube. As the tube moves up and down, the stack of clutches is rotated but resists motion due to friction, thus providing some (highly non-linear) damping. 

The steering linkage (see photos further down) starts with an arm on the left side of the cockpit, on a shaft coming out of the steering box under the cowl, that drops down and connects to a long rod leading to the left front hub. Another rod (apparently pushed through a hole in the bottom of the transmission, but don't quote me on that) crosses side to side and joins the left hub to the right hub, so that when the left wheel is steered, the right will follow. These rods were probably brass tube or aluminum rod that had to be cut to length. 

In back, suspension is a simple beam on elliptic leaf springs.

 

 

Honda RC 110: Spokes

Regular readers (if any) will know I am not afraid of spoking wire wheels at 1/12 scale. The Alfa P2 (192 spokes), Auto Union Type C (224 spokes), Ferrari 156 (288 spokes) and the Honda RC166 (72 spokes) all went together reasonably well for a lifetime total of 776 spokes so far. So perhaps I could be forgiven for thinking another 72 spokes on this Honda RC110 would be, if not necessarily a breeze, at most a moderate challenge.

The wheel consists of two photoetched rims, joined to the hubs by a pair of sacrificial strips.  Spokes are cut from 0.25 mm wire provided, bent and glued to little grooves etched in the PE piece. The first row goes on OK but subsequent rows involve knocking earlier spokes off. So as you get to the last of 18, each spoke involves one step forward, three back. Bah.

Then once you've got two half-rims done, you stick them together with a plastic hub in the middle. It is sad that I have had to rely on great gobs of 5 minute epoxy to (hopefully) hold the first 36 spokes together.

(The rear wheel is yet to be started). It's been blocking me for a while so it's now headed for the Shelf of Doom to reflect.

Honda RC 110: Motor and chassis

Frustrated with the Ossa Monocasc and its bazillion little breakable rivets, but wanting to complete a bike, I tackled the Gunze Sangyo High Tech kit of the Honda RC 110, an unsuccessful 50 cc GP contender from 1962. 

Typically for the High Tech series, there is a lot of white metal and assorted bits of tube, rod and wire. But so far so good and there are a heck of a lot fewer parts here! Although to be fair there are 72 spokes made of 0.010" wire involved (63 still to go). 

 

This 50 cc 4-stroke only managed about 10 hp and its only 1962 win was in the Finnish GP (held in Tampere that year) on a course that was "better suited to go-karts" according to one snarky online source -- top speed was apparently not an issue. Luigi Taveri managed 3rd in the 1962 50 cc world championship on the basis of this win. The other riders all had bikes with 2-stroke motors and lots more power, and this situation was not improved in 1963 with the RC112 and its twin cylinder motor, still a 4-stroke.