Krocket Posted November 3, 2020 Share Posted November 3, 2020 I got a pretty good deal on this Ideal Futuramic Car on Ebay. It was made to fire caps and shoot sparks out the tailpipe in the rear. After I squirted some penetrating oil down the actuating cable and adjusted things a bit, the cap-firing mechanism worked fine. The original flint holder was missing, but I fabricated a bracket to replace it, with a black-powder bullet as a weight! The car has a sort of modified friction mechanism; the shaft of the spark wheel sits on top of the back wheels and is turned by them. You can't get much regular "friction" action with the actuating cable attached, so you pretty much have to use the cable to pull the rocket car along the floor. I assume this is why they attached it in the front. The seller thought the car was battery-powered, but the door on the bottom is where you put the roll caps in. Krocket Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ranger Posted November 4, 2020 Share Posted November 4, 2020 Unusual and nice car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golddalek Posted November 5, 2020 Share Posted November 5, 2020 Nice catch indeed, looks a little like "Batman: The Animated Series". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RoboDerby Posted November 5, 2020 Share Posted November 5, 2020 Neat!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Krocket Posted November 5, 2020 Author Share Posted November 5, 2020 Thank y'all very much for your comments, and indeed the Futuramic Car does resemble something that the classic Batman might drive. My friend that I demonstrated it to thought it was odd that it fired caps, since it has no guns on it; on the original box shown in the Alphadrome archive this action is referred to as "backfiring", lol. I would think if you were driving a rocket car and it backfired, you'd be history. When I first saw a picture of one of these a few years back, I thought it was probably battery powered and fired caps in full automatic mode--sadly, no. And before I got it, when I thought from the sale pics that it was missing its internal mechanisms, I had the idea I might convert it to such. But I now realize this would be pretty much impossible, since the roll caps you can find these days don't have the holes in the paper strip they used to have, which made "machinegun" operation possible.. The toy I remember best that did this, although I never had one, was a Thompson machinegun with a charging handle. There were also several battery powered cap-firing guns that were full auto. Krocket Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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