Anthony's Model Cars

Renwal

The Visible V8

A model kit made in 1960. Price when new $ 10.95

Allthough it does not fit in my 1/24-5 scale collection of cars, I have always been fascinated by the Renwal Visible V8 kit in a 1/4 scale. The kit was, at least in my personal opinion, a very sophisticated kit for the time it was issued. All the working parts, pistons, crankshaft, valves, rocker arms and more made it a very special kit. I still remember the one I saw at the local hobby shop when I was a kid. I liked it very much, but the price was way, way out of my league.

In 2012 I finally decided that I should go for it. I found a build one on eBay which didn't cost me much, but it was not in a very good condition. A few weeks later I found another one, not on eBay, but on a webshop were I had bought some other good stuff. And it was cheap! And not assembled! And after about 0.01 second I decided to buy it for only $ 80.00. A steal!

And here are the pictures and "how to's" of my Renwal Visible V8 build.

Renwal Menu

The box with all the parts
The assembled crankshaft with the pistons
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The assembled engine
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A close-up of the working rocker arms and valves
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The spark plugs in the kit were red light bulbs, each with two wires. But I didn't like that visible wire mess on the outside (eight cables for four plugs? Nah..., I don't think so...) so I used the black cables from a telephone headset. These cables also have two (very) small wires, but both are inside the black insulation. It does look much better and far more realistic.
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A close-up of the working gear box with three forward gears and a reverse gear.
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A close-up of the working clutch
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A few close-ups of the working crankshaft and pistons
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The original Visible V8 should be powered by 2 "C" size flashlight batteries, but I would like to have a variable speed control. To achieve that I build a voltage regulator which runs on three rechargeable cell phone batteries (connected in serie to get 10.6 Volt, 1000mA). The output of the regulator varies between 1.5 - 9 Volt and is controlled by a potentiometer.
The next problem I had to solve was that the working spark plugs needed a constant voltage to work properly. First of all I replaced the original red light bulbs with blue LED's which give a more realistic effect. In that way I solved two problems: real spark plugs don't spark red (unless there is something very wrong with them) and the lifetime of a LED is much, much longer than that of a light bulb. But that second circuit also needed power so I found the solution to build another voltage regulator which runs on a single 9 Volt rechargealbe battery. It gives a constant output of 3.2 Volt which is perfect for the LED's. These 9 Volt batteries don't have much power, but as the LED's don't need much it'll last for a long time before recharging.
To get all that electronic stuf in one place I used the larger battery box of The Visible Automobile Chassis. It contains the on/off switch, the potentiometer, the two voltage regulators, the three cell phone batteries, the 9 Volt battery and an on/off LED indicator. The 9 Volt battery can be taken out for recharging, but the three cell phone batteries were connected in serie so I had to find a solution for recharging them. Lucky for me I found a small recharging circuit which I could squeeze into that box too. It's located on the right and if you look closely you can see the little plug in which the charger plug goes (see the 'Black Box' picture).
After solving all those problems I had to find out a way to get two separate voltages (1 variable for the engine and 1 for the spark plugs) to the engine block. After some serious thinking I suddenly realized that the solution was very simple. I work with computers every day and what is the most common thing you see on them? Right, USB cables. And USB cables have four wires! Problem solved! I quickly dived in the spare parts box at the office and found a couple of male and female USB connectors which were perfect for the job I had in mind.

And here is the result and the details of the wiring on the engine.
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The 'Black Box' with all of the electronics and batteries.
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Testing the engine... will all the electronics work....? Well, at least there is no smoke or fire...
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Yes!
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And with a little bit of the paint the 'remote control unit' is ready for use.
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And here is a picture of how I realized the final USB connection in the large showcase of The Visible Automobile Chassis.
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So, what happened to the first V8 I bought, the one in a not very good condition? Well, I was obviously not throwing it away. I decided to paint it! And if anyone thinks that that was not a good thing to do to a Visible V8, consider the damage you see on the picture below. Large parts missing on top of the left cylinder row and a lot of clear pieces were broken and had to be re-glued.
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And here is the engine as it really would have looked.  I left the valve cover of the left cylinder row off to show the valve and rocker arm details.
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