In Progress » FichtenFoo Monoracer

06.08.2007 » Concepts/Initial
Progress

I actually designed this a few months
before announcing our new forum group-build called
Sci-Fi GPX. Check
the GB out here. I’ve based it off of a real-life
monowheel as well as a racer from Venus Wars.
This will hopefully be a sleek racing looking
craft when it’s complete. What I really like about
it is the large area for graphics on the sides
of the wheel. That’ll be fun to design for. I’ve
thrown together some quick designs, but am not
sure what my final will look like.

The difficult parts of this build
will be the rounded sides covering the engine
and such and the wheel/rim. The sides I have a
solution for as you’ll see below. As for the tire/rim,
a friend of mine offered to maybe lathe it up
for me if he can get access to the equipment.
I still need to find a cheap 1/24 cycle kit with
a rider (Heller makes some) so I cna use some
of it’s parts and modify the rider. I’d like to
try and make this a resin kit so that I could
do a couple different designs and see if anyone
else is interested.

For the sides, I wanted nice smooth
round parts. I bought my daughter a wiffleball/bat
set a few months ago and saved the part of the
package that covered the ball. I LOVE blister
packs for cheap clear plastic. I ended up using
it as a sort-of mold for making the rounds. I
poured some resin into the blister and swirled
it around until it hardened. When removed I got
fantastic round shapes as you can see below. The
figure is a 1/24 Tamiya figure I’m using for scale
reference.