Demon MF-1 / MF-83 1/12th Car

[dinglem]

Not all of you will be aware that as well as motors and ESC's, Nick Adams of Demon Power products also dabbled in the 1/12th market, and for the 1983 season he developed his 'Demon MF-1' car (sometimes also called the MF-83 designating the year). The car was designed with significant help from Mervyn Franklin (hence the 'MF').

I never acrually raced 1/12th cars, but my interest in Nick's work has spread a little from his motors and esc's, and so when this lovely example became available I absolutely jumped at it, and I have since almost completed mustering sufficient spare parts to put together another original fibreglass chassis example to go with this. Whilst chatting about this car with Nick he actually emailed me a photograph of his own cars and that of his ex-wife, which he had stumbled across in his shed looking very sorry for themselves. Nick had a lot of spare parts for these cars and was in the throws of sorting me some to send to complete my second build when sadly he passed away.

There is a Pb link too.... the red moldings were produced by Keith Pleased of Pb for Nick, and you might notice the front end moldings were (controversially as it turns out) subsequently used on the Pb Sizzler car.

Some info and pictures....

Nick's cars

And mine.... just need to fit the rear tyres...

Spares.

[dinglem]

Construction sheet.

[winner_evo]

Nice! I do like a 1/12th car.

Have you got anywhere you could run it?

[dinglem]

I haven't even given that a second thought yet actually! That'll give me something to research tomorrow

Makes my mind wander back to the days of Thursday nights at GEC Stafford on their huge indoor carpet track though.

[Dadio]

More nice finds , I've started looking at Pan Cars recently as I've kind of completed my wish list of off road cars and again I know nothing at all about them , looked at the price of modern ones

[V12]

Just found this thread.

A bit more about the Demon car could be found at Classic RC.
https://classicrc.wordpress.com/1-12/demon-products/demon-mf-1/

It might be useful to visit other pages at the museum too.
There are lots of info about pan cars. Also about old motors, speedos etc.

[dinglem]

I am slowly gathering parts up to enable me to build another car, which recently took a huge step forward with the discovery of some original chassis parts in a toolbox in the old Pb workshop. Everything for this car seems to be virtually impossible to find.

If anybody else has some parts available - front and rear beams ideally - then please do let me know.

[dinglem]

Another mag review:-

[dinglem]

Plus a nice period photo from Jan ‘84.

Whiffle wheels??

[1911Colt]

Your car and Nick's are later ones, but the bits in the bag are an early one, correct?

[dinglem]

I am gathering there were three iterations of both the upper and lower chassis. The upper was initially a thin triangle (see the schematic in the instructions posted above). Then there was a fatter, stronger triangular shape which seems to be what I have, and then finally the full length upper deck like Nick ran.

Lower chassis initially had four large square holes at the front, with the second row of holes subsequently being reduced with a more tapered look, and finally becoming a full triangular cut out which is I think what Nick ran.

[1911Colt]

Ah, ok. I was looking at the leading edge of the chassis, flat vs curved.

[dinglem]

Yeah I had spotted that too…. Still trying to work out whether it was a personal mod or not…. I have pictures of another Nick Adams car in much better condition and that too has the same front curve, plus a shot if his spares box showing yet another lower chassis plate with the same feature.

[V12]

For the leading edge of the chassis.
Early cars came with the flat shape. Newer cars and the cars distributed by PB to foreign countries came with the curved shape.
I think I posted this before.

BTW PB made the parts for Nick. For this reason the plastic parts were same color as those for the PB Alpha 1/8 scale cars.
The center shock of the MF-1 also was an Alpha part.

[dinglem]

Yeah i was aware of the joint project nature of the car. I also gather there were some raised eyebrows when certain parts from the MF-1 were used on the subsequent Pb car. I have already posted on the Pb page asking whether anybody on there has a spare Alpha shock absorber!