Eldon Ferrari Restoration
Imaginations run amok as the Autumn Hills engineering team begins work on two ancient Eldon Ferrari's

As a child I remember Eldon, just not very fondly. Miserable cars and miserable controllers pretty much took care of any warm, fuzzy feelings I might have harbored.

Ah but how time dims those horrible memories. It may be true what they say that memory is the last part of a guy to go soft. As proof, let me offer exhibit A...

A few weeks ago, we got a pair of antique Eldon Ferrari’s (60’s cars) from one of the local racers. They looked pretty beat, in fact one of the drivers heads was missing. Or depending on your point of view, one was still there. Needless to say, with their hardened rubber times and itty-bitty whiskers for brushes, it was a cinch these beauties weren’t going to be setting track records any time soon. They weren’t even a threat to get off the line. Pretty? Not even. But just because they are unsightly, doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. And that’s where we start to get excited.

If nothing else, we can probably make them look pretty good. And since we also race with a group that really embraces low-tech, these cars could be right in the groove.

It was time for exploration so for starters I disassembled the cars. And for low-tech style cars, the chassis weren’t so terrible. The nylon has a little flex and they are adjustable for length so they could be a handy chassis for some of those scratch cars we like to build. However, with these wooden tires they’ll never get out of the garage.

I tried a set of Ninco Classics ($5) and with a smidge of a stretch they fit great. Not exactly the same tread pattern, but frankly, that’s a good thing.

They also have a two-sided crown gear that offers two different ratios. You just pull the axle off, flip it around and push it back in place. And that is pretty cool. For now, we’ll refer to the settings as slow and fast though slow and slower may prove to be more adequate.

For the motors, I sorted through the set of five that I had, picked the two best and then opened their brush holders and did a little cleaning with a little alcohol and q-tips. The motors did run better when I was through. I also got a nice response from one of the readers on the Eldon Yahoo Group on replacing the brushes using HO scale brushes and we’re going to give that a try when time permits. Or motors run out...

In looking a the guide blades I could see that the stock ones had a little notch on the front which seems to sit the car a little taller in the slot. The blades from the older Ford GT and Chaparral did not have this notch, so I took those and put them on the Ferrari’s resulting in a little more blade in the slot. I also added standard Ninco braids as copper seems to work better on our track than the braided steel ones.

More to come...