1966 Dean Van Lines Brawner Hawk by Mark Gussin
This is the Dean Van Lines sponsored car car that Mario Andretti put on pole for the 1966 Indianapolis 500 with a qualifying speed of 165.899mph, however it retired from the restarted race on lap 27.
I have been e-mailing Pete Sardella for some time and he has been kind enough to help me greatly with his expert chassis and general slot car knowledge. Pete is an accomplished slot racer; illustrated by the fact that back in 1990 at the "Ontario Grand Prix" he won all 3 classes (sports, saloon and F1) and the overall concours awards.
So
in March 2000 I persuaded Pete to build a chassis for a bodyshell
I had. It was a resin copy of Strombecker's hard to find Brawner-Hawk;
but it had no windshield or ancillary bits.
I sent over the rear U-bracket, the wheels, motor, gears, guide and bodyshell; Pete then set about chassis construction.
Lo and behold a good few weeks later he sent me over some scans and then in the post, the completed chassis. There is no way in a million years that I would be able to construct a chassis as well as that. It is beautiful, simply beautiful.
Here's a few comments from Pete on various elements of the chassis:
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The frame allows the front wheels to follow the guide flag independent of the main rails and motor, just like a flexi board (proxy car). Took me more time to figure out how to get the frame to do this in such small quarters!
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There is a piano wire soldered to the front axle tube. This is needed to reinforce the tube, which is the weakest point on any F1 frame and first to be hit.
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The body mounts.
A piece of plastic was epoxied to the body and a screw guided through
the nose opening attaches the frame to the body.
The chassis stood on the shelf for well over a year but then that slot car Frenchman who lives in California defined the rules for the second Marconi race. The justification (or kick up the derrier!) at last!! There was a category for the Brawner-Hawk to race in so now I just had to get it finished.
Pete
had already done the body mounting so the shell was filled, the panel
in front of the dashboard added and the driver section cut out. Then it
was cleaned and painted. The difficult bit then started. I made up the
decals using Alps' wonderful printer; the artwork was a nightmare and
took absolutely ages to do. The windshield was cast using an original
as the former for the mold. Suspension was made from piano wire bent,
soldered and painted. There are oil pipes running along the sides at the
bottom. These were made from aluminium as were the intakes. The exhaust
pipes and oil cooler were cast in resin. Finally the wheel inserts were
made using Hallibrand style inserts from a recent Revell AC Cobra kit
that come chromes and the gold was just painted in. 
Mario (the driver) is part resin and part plastic but he gets by(!). He has been siliconed to the motor so I hope he stays put and behaves.
I also felt a bit of reinforcing in the nose wouldn't go amiss so I added a bit of carbon fibre inside to add a bit of strength just in case of impact (grrrrrrrrrr!).
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Motor type: Cheetah Chassis: Handmade brass Pete Sardella special(!) using SCD U-bracket. Body: Resin copy of Strombecker slot car Wheels and Tyres: SCD. Fronts are Delrin on aluminium wheels, rears are aluminium made by SCD with Ingram sponge tyres. Chas Keeling of SCD is based in Bradford, England, his telephone/fax no. is 01274-682120 Gears: can't remember but supplied by SCD Guide: Sakatsu #2262 trailing type |
I don't have very much spare time any longer, so finishing this off was a real achievement. I am also delighted to say that it has been a joint project and as Pete did the whole chassis it should rightly be entered in the 2001 Marconi race as a joint entry. Pete's chassis looks fantastic, I am sure goes extremely well so I hope the bodyshell does it justice. Thanks for all of your help Pete.
I also wanted to show just how good one of those high volume 1960s manufacturer's products can be made to look and run; albeit there is not one single item on this slot car actually made by Strombecker!
I hope you enjoyed this article - Mark Gussin
September 2001
