Tale of woe...... Brabham BT46

[quattro]

Or maybe it should be 'Tail' of owe.

40 odd years in the waiting and making.

Polistil slot cars from the 70s.

Brabham BT46s. Tyrrell 008s. Lotus 78s. ATS HS1s. Ferrari 312 T2s. Ligier. Wolf. Renault. etc...

Got my decals together and sat down to do up the Brabhams. They are not quite 1/32 but close.

40 year old models and old decals from some old tameo.

You know how it goes. get around to it one day.

Today was the day.

Cars out of the dusty old box and stripped.

Decals out of the old folder and still looking usable.

Mrs brings over a cup of tea whilst she settles down and gets in her 'Walking dead' fix.

At that moment two of my placid friendly cats decided to have a barny with each other.

One figures the best escape route is across the table I am working at.

In slow motion the cuppa goes flying and the tan brown 'ocean' goes over every decal sheet I have laid out.

All five of em.

And then the car shells go over the edge as its tail flicks around to see f it is being chased.....

Decals are floating around on the table. Didn't know a cup of Brooke Bond was such an effective release agent...

The polycarbonate shells are old and a tad brittle. One front suspension unit and one rear wing gone.........

Everything comes back to normal time. Silence for about 10 seconds..........

Versuvius.

The neighbours knocked to see if everything was alright.

The Mrs gets online and sources two more bodies.

Thank goodness for eBay. A couple of old BT46s located.

I get on to a well know decal website.

Thank goodness for Indycals.

By the time everything gets here the mood will have passed me by. You know how that is. Might do em in ten years or something.

Cats back in the room curled up together three minutes later.

Mrs finishing her TV viewing. Neighbours scratching their heads about my reaction to a couple of ruined 'toys'.........

I made another cup of tea after spending the last 20 minutes drying everything up and throwing out what has been wasted.

Heard it is therapeutic to share. No one here gets it.

So how you all doing? Waiting for the new season I guess.

[hurtubise56]

Cats, the most unpredictable animals in existence! Sorry to hear of your troubles, don't give up now!

Brian

PS - Forgot to mention that I had to move a cat off the keyboard to type this!

[clm1545]

Pretty sure that all of us who have cats in our lives can relate to your adventure.

[pbh51]

I don't have cats for this reason.

[quattro]

Cats consigned to the conservatory from now on whenever I am working on something.

Lots of yeowwlls of protest coming from behind the blinds and sliding door but tough.

Anyways. Interesting side note.

Never really understood why these Brabhams were not quite right.

Front end is like the Fan car, the B version. Do not have the little box like front wings.

Back end have no pods ahead of the rear wheels.

Then it struck me.

Polistil made the prototype car that was supposed to have the surface cooling bits on the sides.

The one presented with Martini logos on it from '77.

They obviously tried to get ahead of the game here and then had to amend their sticker design

to match what actually raced from Long Beach onwards with the Parmalat logos.

It was only after taking the stickers off that I saw it.

At the time I guess we all thought we would see the surface cooled job eventually,

until those ground effects things in black started beating everyone.

Then Murray decided on the fan idea........

Guess I will do one as the prototype.

Will share once I have something going.....

[alterrenner]

Don't forget to post a photo of the cats! They're legends now!

--Frank