VW Type 2

Hasegawa's VW type 2 pickup now being available again, I can once again consider shoehorning a 956 drivetrain into the storage locker of the VW.

There's plenty of room for the 956 motor under the pickup bed, and I've got all the necessary components:

1. a 935 body from AMT which could contribute fenders, air dams and wings, and which is coincidentally almost the same wheelbase as the VW;
2. a couple of 956 kits from Tamiya to provide mechanical bits;
3. a willingness to use the saw blade in my No. 11 handle.

That being said, the weather is finally looking good, so I'll be out riding the bicycle rather than slouching over styrene models and airplane glue in the workshop for the next few months. Progress on this, and other equally exciting projects, is likely to be slow until fall. So until then, enjoy summer! Fresh air is better than acetone fumes, man.

Originally posted 22 May 2014

Post-Alpine: what's next

The Alpine A110 is ready for final assembly. I'll post pics as it comes together. Next question is what's next once the Alpine is complete.

A while back I ordered a kit of the lovely little Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ Coda Tronca that ran at Le Mans in 1963. The kit came from Profil 24, the French purveyor of obscure resin kits based, where else, in Le Mans, and reproduces the three cars that finished 2nd, 4th and 5th in the GT 1.6 litre class. (Sunbeam Alpines took 1st and 3rd in this class; Bandini and Scarfiotti won overall in a Ferrari 250P). I am not sure if all were running at the end; according to http://www.race-database.com/results/results.php?year=1963&race=1&series_id=8, the winning Ferrari completed 339 laps in 24 hours while the Alfas managed 165, 70 and 7 laps respectively. Given the displacement difference, 165 laps seems reasonable and I am guessing car #34 could have been running towards the end; the others maybe less so. (According to Wikipedia, only the first 12 cars, 6 of them Ferraris, completed the required minimum of 237 laps, so technically all the Alfas earned a DNF).

According to http://www.alfa-models.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=129&Itemid=90&lang=en:

"Scuderia Sant Ambroeus entered two Alfa Romeo Giulietta SZ 1600's with drivers Sala/Rossi and Biscaldi/Kim. Car number 34 with drivers Sala and Rossi did not finish because of a broken rear axle and car number 35 with drivers Biscaldi and Kim was disqualified for oil replenishment during (?) 25 laps. A third Giulietta Sprint Zagato (nr. 36) was entered by Scuderia Filipinetti but retired after 7 laps with enigine problems."

Car #34 is the one that managed 165 laps. Other sources refer to the drivers of car #35 as Biscaldi and Pedretti, not Biscaldi and Kim ... in any case the Internet may be full of mildly inaccurate information, but the one constant is Alfas have always had problems with oil leaks.

Interestingly, 1963 was the first year that Rover-BRM entered a turbine powered car, completing 310 laps, the same as the Cobra 289 that finished 7th. (It was allowed to run, driven by Graham Hill and Ritchie Ginther, but was not ranked). Some of you will know that I once owned a Rover (not a turbine, though), and that one of the combustion labs I completed when I did my mechanical engineering degree included a performing a mass and energy balance around a small Rover turbine engine.

Back to the model: the twin-cam 1600 cc motor is essentially the same as the 1750 and 2000 cc motors I worked on as a mechanic in the period 1977-1984. Given my experience with the 1750s, I would guess it was a tightly wound little thing, with the power coming on with a bit of a bang at high revs. Right up there with the Alpine, in other words, except the Alfa motor was a modern short-stroke motor with wet liners in an aluminum block, and was thus likely able to rev quite a bit more than the Alpine motor, based as it was on the Renault R8/R16 long-stroke iron block. The Zagato bodywork is at least as pretty as the production Giulias and Spiders I worked on, and was a big part of my decision to order the kit.

All in all a trip down memory lane ... so I started cleaning up the resin components which feature a lot more scarf and other mold problems than a Tamiya styrene kit. I'll post progress which is likely to be slow if the weather allows me to get the bike out.

Originally posted 4 May 2014

Highlights

In retrospect, posts to date have focused on the Monte Carlo models, while there is a lot more in the collection, and a lot more going on than just Monte Carlo replicas. Details of some past builds follow, for the keeners -- the rest of you can skip this.

The first three pictures outline similarities and differences in Le Mans car design starting in the early 1990's. The first is Tamiya's Nissan R90V that ran in Japanese Group C racing in 1990. A development of the R89C that ran at Le Mans in 1989, the car features a twin-turbo V8 of 3.5 litres. I built it box stock, except for the omission of the decals which are related to Japanese specific sponsors.

 

The second is Tamiya's Jaguar XJR-LM that won at Le Mans in 1988. Substituting cubic inches for sophistication, the 7.0 litre V12 is naturally aspirated and has only one cam per head, not two as in the Nissan. That being said, the aero bits (venturi-shaped floor pan, rear wing, air intakes and radiator openings) are remarkably similar. Again I built it box stock but painted it in an approximation of British Racing Green instead of the horrible purple and white livery of the Silk Cut-sponsored race winner.

 

 

The third is a newer build, Tamiya's Porsche 911 GT1 that ran to 2nd place at Le Mans in 1996. The motor is an evolution of the classic Porsche twin-turbo flat 6 of 3.2 litres. Here I applied all the decals, a challenge given the curved nature of the body that can be solved with lots of gentle rubbing and plenty of liquid decal set. Again the motor is different from the first two but the aero aspects are similar, limited in this case only by the rules requiring something more closely resembling a production road car.

 

 

I've got a raft of unbuilt Le Mans cars: Aston Martin DBR1, Ford GT40, Porsche 956, Sauber Mercedes C9, Toyota TS-One, Audi R10 turbo-diesel, even the Mazda 787B rotary that won in 1991. The basic idea of the collection is to illustrate the wide range of engines allowed at Le Mans, but also that aerodynamics always seems to lead to the same shape. Too bad Formula 1, or NASCAR for that matter, don't allow engine designers to go wild ...

 

Tamiya kits are complex but once you get a feel for dealing with small parts, they go together well, and the well-defined creases arising from their typically clean injection molds reward both a steady hand with the paint brush and minimalist glue application.

 

The next picture shows a couple of challenging builds from Revell. In the back is Tony Nancy's classic front-engine dragster, with a blown Mopar 426 motor. This would have been state of the art in 1963, generating quarter-mile times of just over 8 seconds at 180+ miles per hour. Pretty scary, given the driver straddles the driveshaft and final drive... I wouldn't want to be sitting there when the crown and pinion disintegrate.

 

In front is a Kurtis Midget racer, designed for short dirt track ovals. The motor is an Edelbrock modification of the classic Ford flathead V8. The date is not given in the kit documents but Kurtis built over 1100 of these, from the mid-30's to the mid-50's, with not much change over that period. Again the driver straddles the driveshaft (although not the final drive, which is under his backside).

Both Revell kits are very finicky to get right, even more so than Tamiya's kits. The molds are not as crisp as Tamiya's, meaning there are lots of very small parts but detail is not as fine.

Changing gears, the next few pictures show chophouse efforts based largely on the standard, relatively easily built AMT kit series of big American iron. The first is a modified 1960 Ford Starliner. I've always thought this was a clean shape and admired the way the curve of the front fenders rises past the headlights, quickly turns horizontal, and flows in a beautiful straight line all the way to the vestigial fins, unlike the Impala of the same vintage where the fins seem tacked on as an afterthought. That long low rear deck inspired me to see how far I could stretch it ... the result has the cockpit, narrowed to seat only two people due to intrusion of the front wheel wells, shoved forward into what was the engine bay. The cockpit has also been shortened by removing the back seat, thus lengthening the rear deck even further. 

The Thunderbird 390 motor with tri-carb setup lives under the back window and connects via a very short driveshaft to the independent rear axle from a recent-generation Nissan Skyline. (A solid axle wouldn't work with the short driveshaft, and I didn't have the patience to cast a Hewland transaxle for this purpose). The pics are carefully selected to mask my somewhat sloppy finishing job; most of the effort went into engineering the chassis to get it all to fit just as it would in real life, not in sanding the deck perfectly smooth to hide the joint where I spliced in some sheet styrene.

Next is a pair of modified Chevy Nomads. In front, the AMT AlterNomad kit, a modern Caprice with Nomad wagon rear, has been turned into a pickup truck using the complete chassis and bed from AMT's Chevy 454 pickup which, coincidentally, has the same wheelbase. Call it an 'El Caprice' ... the 'El Nomad' in the back is similarly modified, and includes drag motor and chassis scrounged from the parts bin. Both have gotten a top chop, the El Caprice's being somewhat cleaner.

Next are a pair of stock cars from overseas. In front is Tamiya's Volvo 850 as run in the British BTCC series in the 1990's, and in back is a 1970's Datsun Skyline with a 2 litre straight 6, a Fujimi kit of an early predecessor to today's fearsome Nissan Skyline. Unfortunately both are curbside kits, meaning no engine detail, so assembly is pretty quick and overall quality of the build rests entirely on the finish.

Back to the chophouse ... This Chevy Vandura is a Revell kit, which also included the race car trailer used in the El Nomad setup above. Here a horizontal section has been taken out of the body at about the boundary between the orange and black paint; at full scale, the cut would be close to a foot. Lots of fun cutting and gluing this up, and unlike the Revell racers above, the kit is an easy build if you choose to go the box-stock route. The picture was taken before I had finished tidying up the grille and headlights.

Lancia is a brand with a lot of history, but has been part of the Fiat empire since the mid-70's. The next picture shows two Lancia racers. In the back is an older build of the 1979 Beta Monte Carlo that finished first at Le Mans in the 2-litre class. (A Porsche 935 run by Kremer won overall that year). The transverse mid-mounted motor is a turbo 4; the kit, by a little-known firm named ESCI, is molded in clear plastic allowing a lot of the chassis bits to be visible. The period Martini decals were dried out when I got the kit and are now flaking off. An obscure kit of an obscure car.

In front is the Lancia Stratos that ran in the European rallye series in 1978, this particular one being the one entered in the last race of the season in San Remo. The Pirelli sponsorship was new for that race, earlier cars had green and white Alitalia livery. The Hasegawa kit is very detailed, except for the engine, which is a shame as the motor was the 2.4 litre V6 out of the Ferrari Dino 246, and it would have been nice to build it. Like the Beta, the decals are peeling in spite of the multiple coats of clear I applied to lock them in.

More chopping: The twin turbo V6 out of the AMT Dodge Stealth kit fits nicely in the back of this Deuce Coupe, allowing a pretty deep section to the body without having to make room for a V8 up front. I probably cut up half a dozen of these Dodges, in order to stick the engine and 4WD drivetrain in a range of unfamiliar locations. I don't remember where I got the Deuce body; the wheels come from AMT's Porsche 935 which I chose to cannibalize rather than build once I discovered it had no engine detail.

One of the Dodge Stealth bodies got cut up as part of the design exercise shown next. The engine and complete front-wheel drive drivetrain have been lifted from a Japanese kit of the late-80's Honda Prelude and transplanted in the rear of a scratch-built mid-engine chassis which demonstrates engineering potential if not beauty. Essentially it's a Honda version of the Toyota MR-S. There's even a briefcase-sized luggage bin behind the motor.

This Chevy pickup from the early 50's was converted to 4WD using bits from the parts bin. I got carried away and fabricated the spark plug wiring and fuel lines for the overhead valve 6. The stake bed was taken from a 1920's Ford Model T pickup. Various tools accumulated over the years are stored in the bed of this shop wagon, which has vintage Sinclair decals.

Finally this Vickie has had the cockpit shortened and moved way back to allow room for the Revell Parts Pack 283 motor, with the blower mounted in front of the crank instead of the more usual location in the V of the block. The intake scoop on the left of the blower was scratch built.

 

So there you have it -- a quick overview of some of the better past builds. If you read this far, you're a real keener. Stay tuned ...

 

Originally posted 22 May 2014

Alpine A110: progress is being made

The body trim is complete and the decals applied; I've put on a coat of clear to keep it all from moving around and will let it sit for a week to harden. Once dry, it will get lights, glass and a few other bits. 

The chassis & interior is complete and is just waiting for the paint to dry on the body so it can be handled without leaving big thumbprints in the roof.

I'm not out of the woods -- glass, lights, door handles, wipers and other teensy-weensy little bits are all time consuming and can ruin an otherwise decent effort.

Barring any future screw-ups, I'd rate this as a mid-level success story, mainly on the basis of the orange peel in the paint. The true fix for this is to throw away the spray can and get a new one, or soak the nozzle overnight in thinner, but my cheap side reared its ugly head again and I paid the price of trying to work with a slightly dirty nozzle.

This was also my first try with something called Bare Metal Foil, a very thin foil with a sticky back that allows you to model chrome trim without having to tape and brush on silver paint, with all the worries about paint bleeding under the tape. The chrome strip along the sides is chrome foil, and the strip down the middle of the hood is flat black foil; both worked well. One of the two sets of window frames is also foil and shows that getting it to wrap around a tricky shape will require some effort as it is really not much better than the silver paint and a very steady hand that I used used on the other side. 

What's next, you ask? There are a range of other projects sitting on the shelf, including a couple ordered from Europe recently that have not been delivered yet. Not sure what's next ... the 1964 Falcon Sprint is a nice idea but will require some fabrication; meanwhile there is a kit of the Maserati 450S that Fangio drove to a win at Sebring in 1957 in the mail. Fangio! His co-driver, Jean Behra, subsequently crashed this particular car at the Mille Miglia and again at Le Mans, but won the Swedish Sports Car Grand Prix with Stirling Moss as co-driver. Stirling Moss! I ordered the Sebring version. The car also has a well detailed Italian 4-cam V8 so that should be neat. (I went out and bought a fresh can of red paint for the occasion). This will be a great partner for the 1959 Aston Martin DBR1, with which Carroll Shelby won Le Mans, which is also sitting on the shelf waiting to be started. Carroll Shelby!

Then again the snow is melting and the bike will be coming out soonish, so there may be less time over the summer for modeling. Anyway stay tuned.

 

Originally posted 6 April 2014

 

 



Alpine A110: slow but steady

The A110 project continues at a slow but steady pace.

The orange peel was sanded off and another coat of blue put on, which still shows some orange peel but is better than the first attempt ... I suspect it won't get any better than this unless I switch to an airbrush, a complication and expense I am reluctant to engage in.

The chassis is finished, requiring just minor paint touchups here and there. The kit came with a full-length skid pan which I have decided not to use, even though the pan is molded in clear plastic.

The lovely little twin-cam, with double-barrel Webers and a tubular header leading into a single muffler, is a tight fit under the rear deck, and I suspect #4 sparkplug, along with the alternator belt, had to be removed from inside the car. Next: interior details. Once the paint has hardened (in a week or two), I'll start on decals and trim prior to a coat of gloss to seal it all up properly.

If there ever was a car less well suited on paper to the Monte than the Alpine, with its peaky little motor hung way out back, surely it must be the 1964 Ford Falcon Sprint driven by Bo Ljungfeldt (details here). I know from experience, acquired many years ago in my 1972 Chevelle, that a big V8 with torque all over the map, combined with rear wheel drive, can be very exciting, but not particularly quick, in slippery conditions. Of course my Baldini winter tires and lack of a limited slip probably didn't help, but still, the weight is not where you want it for traction.

In this vein I picked up a kit of a Falcon which I intend to build up to mimic Ljungfeldt's 1964 Monte Carlo winner.

Now before the purists all object that the 1964 Monte was won by Paddy Hopkirk in a Mini, I'll point out that the Falcon won on number of stages won and overall time elapsed, but the Mini won overall due to the various formulas used to handicap bigger motors such as the Holman & Moody 300-HP version of the venerable 289 lurking under Ljungfeldt's right foot. Ljungfeldt was classified second, with an 850 cc, 2-stroke Saab driven by the legendary Eric Carlsson in 3rd, so the rules clearly favoured little engines.

So let's all agree the Mini won according to the rules but the Ford won on time. The kit, by a new company called Trumpeter, appears to be very detailed, and will go well next to my model of the 1967 winner (another Mini). The only challenge will be decals as the Ford kit does not include these. To the Internet.

 

Originally posted 30 March 2014

Alpine A110 progress

Progress on the Alpine continues at a pace consistent with having a day job. The water-cooled, 1.6 litre inline 4 must have weighed a fair bit, based as it was on a Renault 8 (some references say 16) iron block, so it must have contributed to the 'handling', such as it was, in unpredictable ways, given its location way out back. And I am guessing that the Alpine-designed twin-cam head with a pair of big double-barrel Webers must have made for a fairly sudden onslaught of torque, further wreaking havoc with the handling. I once drove a Porsche 912 (an early attempt at a cheaper 911) with a peaky little 4-cylinder motor and similar carburation; the throttle was an on-off switch with nothing below about 4500 RPM, then suddenly everything worked. I can't imagine crossing that torque boundary with a tail-happy car in snow with skinny little tires, even if we are only talking about 100 or so horsepower ... at least it's got a proper A-arm rear suspension setup, not swing axles.

Nonetheless Alpine A110s took first and second (and either third or fourth, depending on whether you believe Wikipedia) in the 1971 Monte Carlo rally. Next best was a Porsche 914/6, the lovely little mid-engine roadster equipped, in 914/6 guise, with a 2-litre 911 engine instead of the standard VW Beetle motor. The 914 might have been the Miata of its day if it had been sold with a VW badge at a big discount, but that is a story for another day.

Alpine got into financial trouble by the mid-70's, and was bought out by Renault. The last Alpine, the A610, was built in the mid-90's; today the factory in Dieppe is the base for the RenaultSport division of Renault.

 

Getting back to the kit: chassis bits are painted and either assembled or close to it; interior bits are painted and need assembly and decals for the instrument panel. The smaller bits are not entirely up to Tamiya standards, with mold separation lines needing to be removed; it's obviously an older mold and could use a good cleanup. The body needs sanding to get rid of the orange peel, which is clearly visible in the photo and due to my use of spray paints rather than investing in an air brush; this will be followed by decals and metal transfers which will be time consuming. Stay tuned.

 

 

Originally posted 7 March 2014

Alpine A110

Having been prevented from shoehorning a Porsche 956 motor into the storage locker of a VW pickup by the unavailability of the Hasegawa VW pickup kit (http://www.hasegawausa.com/product-pages/hsgs1211.html), I've decided to tackle Tamiya's kit of the Alpine A110 that won the Monte Carlo in 1971.

It will fit in nicely with the other rally cars in the collection: the Mini that won the Monte Carlo in 1967, Lancia Stratos (1978), Audi S1 (1986) and a pair of Peugeots (1985 205 and 2001 206). Some of these are shown in the photos; the Audi and the 206 (not shown) have not been started.

The engine compartment of the 1985 206, nominally a FWD econobox, contrasts with the basic layout of the Mini.

Quite the evolution, really. The Mini had a stock 1275 cc pushrod motor making something like 65 horsepower with a pair of SU carburettors (the spell check doesn't like the British spelling here). Race upgrades consisted mainly of an undertray, extra headlights, a roll cage and snow tires; the rules were pretty strict and the aluminum valve cover was disallowed in favour of the stock stamped steel version.

The Alpine had a 1600 cc Renault motor hanging out the back, probably pushing 100 horsepower by virtue of a twin-cam conversion and a pair of Webers, but it was still very close to the road car. It was very pretty but the handling must have been extremely tail-happy, being based as it was on the Renault R8 which made the Corvair look good. Yes, that's a watercooled inline 4 in the tail of the A110 ... it's just missing the valve cover and a few auxiliary bits, and some of the paint needs tidying up.

The Stratos (below) demonstrates the early shift in rally car design from modified production car to purpose built racer; it was built for rally first and only a handful were ever sold to the public as road cars. The mid-engine 2.4 litre V6 came from the Ferrari Dino 246 and was a couple of generations ahead of the vaguely agricultural long-stroke motors in the Mini and Alpine. The Stratos was one of those designs that stood out for being completely outlandish but extraordinarily sexy, even before considering the Ferrari motor. What a tightly wound, muscular little thing it was.

The Audi was purpose built for rallying and few if any were sold for the street in this particular form. The front-mounted 2.2 litre 5-cylinder motor was turbocharged. The chassis was one of the first applications of Audi's quattro 4WD system. Unlike the sensuous Alpine or the muscular, strutting Stratos, it was all German efficiency: big square fender flares and a tail full of radiators. Function trumps style.

The 205 was a pedestrian FWD econobox with monster 4-cylinder turbo motor mounted in the back seat and driving all four wheels. A number of other manufacturers went the same route, with the Renault 5 Turbo and the Austin Metro 6R4 being prime examples. At some point the sanctioning bodies decided that something a little closer to an actual road car was needed, hence the 2001 206 with motor mounted in front where it would have been in the equivalent econobox. The turbo and 4WD were considered acceptable modifications.

I will post more as progress is made. The wet paint acquired a cat hair on the roof that will require some sanding and another coat, meanwhile the drivetrain is moving along as illustrated by the pictures above.

Originally posted 3 March 2014