I thought someone might bring up the Marcos, that old chestnut....
I think it's a corker and I'd love to give it a blast down a few trunk roads.
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I'd like to dig into the roots of it's development and see how the seed of the idea was germinated. It probably started out in someone's potting shed as a four pot before the idea out grew them and it was transplanted to where it could blossom into fruition.
Edited by normd2 on 22/02/2008 at 09:22
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I reckon this story is an oaks!
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I thought the thread was going to be about this one (you cant drive this one though) -
Man builds F1 car out of 956000 matchsticks: snipurl.com/205hs
This guy must be nuts...
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A question that always occurs to me whenever I read about one of these matchstick chaps is, do they scavenge around for used matches, and then chop off the burnt bits? Or use new matches and then accumulate enough phosphorous to make a bomb as a sideline?
Or do they cheat and use special matchstick builders match blanks, bought by the pallet-load? And are they standard size matches, or large cooking matches?
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According to an article I read on the matchstick car, he scraped the phosphorous off. ~But you can buy phosphor-free matchsticks. (I nearly wrote phosphorous-free matches, but that seemed to be an oxymoron - safety matches notwithstanding.)
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>>This guy must be nuts...<<
No, he just got the modified Ferrarri plans from Maclaren.
:)
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Man builds F1 car out of 956000 matchsticks: snipurl.com/205hs This guy must be nuts...
The worrying thing about that link is that it refers to matchstick builder conventions.
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"The worrying thing about that link is that it refers to matchstick builder conventions. "
golly - a bunch of guys with a common interest who get together to chat about their hobby - what a bunch of weird geeks they must be.... :)
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Yeah! Probably give themselves silly names.
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As well as the Marcos with its wooden chassis, there was a car called the Africar in the 70's, designed in Europe but intended for production in Africa and other third world areas.
It was like a kind of big Mini-Moke, 2-wheel drive but utilitarian with a monococque made from glued plywood. If I remember right, it had a flat four engine of the makers' own design. It never got anywhere - perhaps I'm the only person left who remembers reading about the Africar!
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No you aren't SS.
The engine and running gear of the prototypes were Citroen GS I seem to remember. There was a 4WD one and I seem to remember a six-wheeler too.
It wasn't a bad idea in principle - locally-sourced easily repaired body with cheap imported running gear - but I don't think the prototypes were all that impressive in use, a bit undeveloped probably, and the project would have come up against existing import and assembly operations in Africa. I believe buyers would have taken a bit of persuading too. In those days you aspired to a Mercedes in Africa and made do with a Peugeot or VW if you had to. People bought more and more Japanese cars but they didn't really admire them. No one fancied the idea of some eccentric wooden thing, obviously second-best for an impoverished market... people have their pride, and their pretensions.
In the end the promoters and inventors of the thing got into some business difficulties, bad luck and bad management both. It could have worked all right in a slightly different world.
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No you aren't SS. The engine and running gear of the prototypes were Citroen GS I seem to remember.
2CV
www.oldwoodies.com/feature-africar.htm
Tony Howarth, where are you now?
Edited by Hawkeye {P} on 24/02/2008 at 09:57
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They might easily have made one with 2CV works Hawkeye but I remember fairly distinctly, although one can always be wrong, that the ones they took through Africa for promotional purposes were GS powered, and I think would have needed to be... There was a TV film of the trip, not all that good and pretty coy about the running gear, perhaps because the promoters were still negotiating with manufacturers for a good deal. As I said, they ran into fairly bad business difficulties and I think went broke.
Of course I know full well what a 2CV is capable of.
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By the way, the thing in the OP's link seems to have quite a lot of the suspension and running gear made of laminated springy woods... one would like to know more about it actually. Time will tell whether it's any good, but I bet some of the components are fabulous looking.
Not too sure about wooden brake discs though although I guess you could use the smouldering dust to get your pipe going like a mediaeval person with an unusually elaborate tinderbox...
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Lud
I recall the programmes on the Africar and they were indeed GS based pick-ups. I recall being amazed that they drove anywhere without breaking down - points trouble was the curse of that engine.
Anyone with any engineering experience could tell that the wild claims were fantasy and the work of either a con-man or an obsessive, blinkered, Citroen nut - he didn't seem to have the slightest clue how to assess likely durability under arduous conditions.
He was claiming payloads that would have put three times the rated load on the already fragile components - over some of the harshest roads in the world. [Can anyone recall what a joy it was to do a rear wheelbearing on a GS - even with the special tool?] Front wheel drive in a heavily-laden commercial would have been useless too.
Fatigue-free wooden bodies do make excellent sense though. Properly designed and treated, they are far less likely to deteriorate under heavy vibration, shock load and torsional stress - marine use over hundreds of years can testify to that.
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Yes, with the right basic system and choice of running gear it could have worked if enough people had gone for it.
Two great advantages of wooden bodies is that they can be sourced locally - think carbon footprint, think basic cost - and are easily repaired, far more easily than pressed steel and the like. And a properly designed collection of wooden boxes is super-rigid.
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>>perhaps I'm the only person left who remembers reading about the Africar!>>
See my posting last Thursday afternoon...:-)
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Well the Mosquito fighter bomber did very well and was made from plywood, so clearly wood can withstand the demands of a high performance life. (The reason for a wooden structure was a shortage of metal.)
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Leif
Indeed. I would dearly love to see one fly again - even if it was sneered-at by the purists as a "replica."
Maybe I should start entering the Euromillions - what a legacy to leave behind.
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The Japanese Zero was made of wood but in two halves, front and back. Held together by a ring of bolts, and worked well apparently.
A late artist friend had a perfect expression for this sort of engineering. Unfortunately I can't write it down here except in coded terms.
Would FU do PU?
:o) sorry o
Edited by Lud on 24/02/2008 at 23:39
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The Japanese Zero was made of wood but in two halves front and back. Held together by a ring of bolts and worked well apparently.
And the reason it was so light and fast was the lack of armour to protect the pilot.
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After posting about the Africar I looked it up on the net and sure enough, it says it had a 2CV flat twin engine. But something sticks in my mind about this lower than low-tech car peversely having its own specially designed flat-4 engine. Maybe this was just part of the hype put out at the time for a vehicle that was, looking back, a no-hoper from the outset.
However, the Africar is in good company if it was intended to be produced with a new flat-4 engine that never materialised. Alec Issiginis originally intended the Morris Minor to have a flat-4 engine. But when it appeared it had a side-valve engine carried over from the Morris 8, and later, after Morris and Austin merged to form BMC, it was given tha A-series engine from the Austin A30, that lasted in modified form until the Metro became the Rover 100!
Edited by Sofa Spud on 25/02/2008 at 17:35
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Yes, the beancounting fat mustachioed carphound suits running Austin and Morris right through all the mergers to BL always starved Issigonis, their engineering genius, of development money for engines and almost everything else. They just paid him huge salaries and got him a K, but I'm sure he would rather have been allowed his head like crazy old Ferdinand Porsche under Hitler...
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