Bessie Remote

[13drwho]

Here's an obscure one, the 3rd Doctor's remote for his car, Bessie! It appeared in The Daemons. We never see any effects on the remote (lights, sounds, etc.), so this is static. The steering wheel turns and the antennae extends, but that's it. It's a fun little prop for my TARDIS trophy wall.

Mine


Reference from the episode

 

[Volpone]

I love that the prop builders added a "steer" label. And that there's buttons for the horn and hood, which were simple, non automated items, but no buttons for throttle and brakes. (There should probably be a clutch and gearbox too if we go by footage of Pertwee driving, but with things like the "hyper drive" or whatever it was called, it's safe to say Bessie was more than meets the eye.) Anyway, the point is, they were on the prop so they should be on the build and it's a pretty nifty build.

 

[elkad]

For my build, I'd have the LED's light up when pressing the corresponding buttons, & when you turn the wheel left or right, it slowly moves the dile left to right. I give your build two thumbs up & a five star build quality.

 

[13drwho]

I had a hard time finding the right size switches, so mine are not real switches. I made one out of styrene, made a mold, and cast enough so they would be uniform. So I wasn't able to make it do anything as none of the buttons are real. Still, I think it will look good on display in my console room.

Thank you for the comments and likes.

 

[elkad]

Did a little image searching & found possibly the switch used for this prop. It's called a Rowenta Vacuum Cleaner Switch. Ive seen white, black, red. If they don't have specific colors, the color can be panted on. It measures as a 13 x 19 mm button.

 

[13drwho]

@elkad those are too big. They are around 12.5mm X 9.38mm. That was the size on the drawing on here, which I believe was yours.

I looked at major electronics distributers and couldn't find anything that small in the right style. Maybe I could have found something in vintage switches, but I wasn't willing to spend that much time looking for a switch for an obscure prop.

I did think about going with a bigger switch, but then I had to decide if I would scale up the whole thing so it didn't look out of proportion, or accept it looking wrong. This was a way to maintain the original size and get it to look pretty close.

Thank you for looking for options!

 

[13drwho]

Finally done, here is the display stand... and it proudly displayed on my trophy wall in my Console Room!