Introduction: K'NEX F1 Race Car

By KnexFlux forum page
About: Hello! I'm a maths tutor and primary school teacher and have always had a passion for making things. This started at an early age with LEGO and K'NEX. I share my K'NEX projects on instructables for others to …

In this I'ble I'll show you how to make a K'NEX Formula 1 car.

It may be small, but it features more than at first glance. Of course, the main feature is the Hand of God steering mechanism, which leads back to the cockpit. This makes sure the car is easy to drive around with and I think it actually handles like a F1 race car would. What is not visible is the V10 engine. It sits neatly under the bodywork. I tried to make things work (rotate) but the size of the car just doesn't allow that. It still looks cool though. Other than that I'm pleased with the colour scheme. Are there any yellow F1 cars? There were. In 2010, Renault had a yellow/red/black F1 car, I loosely based my design on that car.

I also made a B-model of the parts of this set. It's a (Racing) truck. You can see the pictures of it in the last step.

In the following video you can hear me talk a bit more about it (Starting from 5:56):

Supplies

The following parts are needed:

Rods:

  • 1x Green / red rod
  • 4x Yellow rod
  • 2x Dark Grey rod
  • 1x Blue rod
  • 42x Silver rod
  • 38x Black rod
  • 4x Orange Flexi rod

Connectors:

  • 1x Black 8-way
  • 4x Blue 3D
  • 3x Silver 3D
  • 19x Yellow 5-way
  • 4x Black 4-way
  • 17x Yellow 4-way
  • 2x Red 3-way
  • 10x Dark Grey 3-way
  • 6x Orange 2-way (V-shape)
  • 1x Orange 2-way ( l-shape)
  • 4x Grey 1-way

Clips:

  • 26x Y-clip Black
  • 8x Y-clip Orange
  • 14x Ball joint Black
  • 3x Tan / Bronze clip
  • 2x Orange splice
  • 12x Silver spacer
  • 10x Blue spacer
  • 3x Hinge Blue part
  • 1x Hinge Black part

Other:

  • 1x Stub Axle (not on parts list, but I've added an extra picture)
  • 4x Dark Grey Gears
  • 4x Black Rims
  • 4x Tyre Small

Step 1: Building the Chassis

In this step we will start building the F1 Sports Car. It consists of a basic frame, but it already has some gears built in. This is to transfer the motion from the Hand of God steering to the Steering Mechanism in the front. Some parts may look obsolete, but are actually crucial.

Step 2: Building the Steering Mechanism

In this step you'll make the steering mechanism, which consists of hinge parts (only in bright blue, why K'NEX!?), tan clips, and of course the Y-clips that I use often.

For long I tried to make a small sized, reliable steering mechanism that would fit in small cars. The solution came when I was messing around with hinge parts and tan clips. The "nose" of the tan clip fits in the small hole of the blue hinge part, which creates a hinging effect. The trick lies in the fact that they are not on the same level. You can see this in the 3rd image.

The cool thing about this mechanism is that you can size it up as much as you want. Now the with is a blue rod + 2 connectors wide. It could also be a yellow rod, red rod... etc.

Step 3: Hand of God Steering

In this step, you start by adding the last gear in the Hand of God mechanism. I use a stub axle for this part, but there are other workarounds if you do not have this specific part. One could use a silver rod, and use another part to act as a lever, or even use a 5th grey gear to use as steering knob.

You will also be adding the V10 engine in the back, even though static, I think it looks kinda cool.

Step 4: Finishing Up

In this step you will finish your Formula 1 car by adding some bodywork. Again I think the orange flexi rods do a lot of work to make the car "look fast". And there you go! Your car is finished!

After making the pictures, I wanted to try to build something else. I had a (Racing) truck in mind, and that's what it became. If you like to have instructions for the B-model, let me know!

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