YouTuber Builds Amazing Pinky Toe-Sized R/C Car That Navigates Tiny Streetscape

R/C cars are cool, and at the extremes of size, they’re even cooler. Just as a full-sized radio-control Crown Victoria is a wild thing, so is a teeny one that can navigate around a tabletop. For one YouTuber, building ultra-tiny R/C cars is a passion, and their latest build comes complete with a miniature streetscape to navigate, to boot.

This tiny Nissan Micra is the work of YouTuber diorama111.  What they have is a very particular set of skills in turning tiny die-cast models into fully animated R/C cars. It’s a job that requires finesse and a very deft touch, both to machine the tiny parts required and to assemble them together. One is almost reminded of a watchmaker as the tiny steering linkages and drivetrain are assembled from scratch-built components. This isn’t just someone body-swapping a shell onto an existing RC car; it’s all built from the ground up with bespoke pieces. And, as a guide, when we say tiny, we mean it. Hot Wheels are pretty small at 1:64 scale, but this build is on another level at 1:150 scale. Miniscule indeed.

The first step in the build is to prep the wheels. They’re cut from the plastic axles of the die-cast model, and turned on a micro-lathe so they can be fitted with rubber O-rings to provide more grip. Always a stickler for detail, the O-rings are sanded down to have the appropriate flat profile of a roadgoing tire. The front wheels are then assembled onto tiny hubs made of brass and steel wire, which sit in a frame made of sheet aluminum for the steering mechanism. Meanwhile, the rear wheels get assembled onto a drive axle with a gear drive tucked in neatly at the back. There’s no laser cutters or 3D printers involved here; it’s all done with files and a hand drill, and assembled with tweezers.

Hilariously, in the quest for compactness, nothing is sacred. The DC motor that drives the car is smaller than those you’d find in some cell phones. Even it gets disassembled and has its housing sanded down to better fit inside the car’s body. Meanwhile, the connections between the control electronics and the lights and motors rely on tiny strands of wire, not dissimilar to the hair-thin strands you’d find in a pair of headphones. The soldering involved is not for the faint-of-heart, with the pads on the bottom of the main microcontroller smaller than the tip of the tool itself.

A particular treat is the lighting setup, too. It’s neat to watch the die-cast model getting its painted-on lights drilled out and replaced with LEDs and fiber-optic light pipes. The results are great, too, with the lights looking remarkably lifelike despite their tiny scale. Watching the little car with its hazards on is an inexplicable delight.

Typically, the tiny R/C cars on the channel use a small electromagnet to actuate the steering left and right to build a full-function R/C car. This build is different. Instead, the steering arm has a strong neodymium magnet mounted to the bottom of it. It’s set up so that the steering will follow a metal wire stuck under the road of a streetscape diorama. As the car drives along above the wire, the magnet tracks the wire and turns the wheels to guide the car along it. Meanwhile, a remote control is used to tell the car when to start and stop, and to activate the headlights and indicators. The brake lights come on automatically when the car is coming to a stop.

As you might expect, the craft skills of the broader streetscape match the car. There are working traffic lights, pedestrian crosswalks, and expertly-painted street markings. All it’s really missing is the actual buildings that would make it a city. It’s neat to watch the car find its way around the roads, following the hidden wire beneath the surface. It would be fun to set up a few cars driving themselves around like this, following the wire, while navigating a fully-functional R/C car around on your own. Thanks to diorama111’s skills at building those, that would be eminently achievable; we’d pick their tiny 1:150 scale Toyota Crown to drive around the tiny town.  Other members of The Autopian staff might prefer the Smart ForTwo for its own unique charms.

If you don’t want to watch the whole construction process, just skip to the end and watch the little car tooling around. What makes this build more compelling is the attention to detail. The lighting is a big part of this; it helps make the car feel more like a real living thing, rather than a little plastic simulacra. Beyond that, the slow speed plays into it as well. We’re used to R/C cars zipping around in a way that is generally pretty incongruous with the performance of a real car. The way these little builds are able to slowly maneuver at low speed looks really good, even if they’re not capable of going much faster.

It definitely takes some advanced crafting skills to pull off a build like this. At the same time, the way it’s broken down in the videos serves as a really good guide as to how you could pursue similar builds of your own. Those eager to try would be well advised to start at a larger scale than 1:150, to be sure, before working down from there.

Model train fanatics know the joy of cities and towns that appear to be living in miniature. It’s seldom something that we see with a more automotive tilt, but this hints at such a thing. Please excuse me, because I’m off to unearth my old Tomy Bit Char-G cars for a race around the tabletop…

[Ed note: Oh, damn, do I know where my Bit Char-G cars are? I gotta find those. – MH]

Image credits: diorama111, YouTube screenshot