Summer doldrums, 300 SL

It being summer in the northern hemisphere, all us daylight-deprived Canadians are hanging out on the deck with a couple of cold ones well into the night, taking advantage of those long summer twilights that you don't get further south. (I suspect Minnesotans and others from the northern Mid-West states probably feel the same way).  During the day we are madly running around hiking, canoeing, biking, running and participating in all kinds of other sports where we can actually go outside without having to put on a parka and three pairs of socks. So indoor activities, such as modeling, tend to grind to a halt until the flying, freezing slop returns in October or November.

That doesn't mean that the credit card needs to grind to a halt. The latest addition is Tamiya's excellent Mercedes-Benz 300 SL. The complex tubular chassis is very well done, in what seems to be a more flexible and less brittle styrene formulation than I am used to; it's a shame that it isn't really visible once the car is complete, in spite of the clear undercarriage. I am tempted to build and exhibit the chassis separately from the body, which will require covering up the gearbox and differential which are hollow and not meant to be viewed from above. 

For the mid-50's, the 300 SL is an interesting mix of old and new. The straight six, with overhead cam and fuel injection, is state of the art for its time, except for the siamesed exhaust ports for cylinders 1, 2, 5 and 6. The suspension, while independent all around, is by swing axles at the rear, and not even MB's novel low-pivot swing-axle. This was used on the later 280 SL and the big sedans up to and including the classic 300 SEL 6.3. The picture below is a good shot of the low-pivot system, which actually works surprisingly well, and which thus represents the triumph of detailed, focused German engineering over a single bad design decision made at the outset. Sort of like the 911 with its engine hung out the back.

 

Mercedes didn't switch to a proper independent rear until 1968 with the smaller 280, and 1972 with the 450 S-class.

With 70 kits either incomplete (about 10) or unstarted (about 60), many of them very challenging builds requiring much custom work, I figure I've got enough work for about a year and a half if I work at it 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, with two weeks off at Christmas. The career, however, is already taking up 2000+ hours a year, so clearly this will only get going for real once I retire.

Not that I am complaining; the career brings in cash that allows me to buy obscure stuff, not to mention new IKEA shelves to put it all on. If my boss is reading: Hooray for the career!

Abarth OT 1300 and other recent acquisitions

As noted in previous posts, I should probably stop buying new kits while I catch up on the backlog of incomplete or unbuilt kits.

Yeah, right.

Two packages turned up in the mail yesterday. The most interesting one was Model Factory Hiro's Abarth OT 1300, in the version commonly known as the 'Periscopio', due to the funny little scoop mounted on the roof to feed cool air to the cabin (or the carbs, as some web sites claim, but the photographic evidence supporting this assertion is a little thin).

Now faithful readers will recall my struggles with MFH's Porsche 908/03. This has proved to be a major challenge, with a huge number of white metal bits, such as chassis tubes, that are easily bent out of shape, and that have miniscule little dowels that are way too easy to shear off when you try to fit them into equally small sockets, and which are thus very difficult to get right. In fact the last post on this kit was November 2, 2014 (here) when I mistakenly concluded that Mr Carpet had eaten one of the warning lights on the dashboard; as a result I set the 908/03 aside in order to actually finish something. I also have MFH's 917, which I have not started but which looks to be equally challenging. So buying the Abarth was a bit risky.

No worries, however; at first glance the body and chassis consist of two very nice molds, complemented by front and rear opening body pieces that fit very well indeed at this early stage. There are a lot of white metal bits but most are engine or suspension related; it looks to be a much easier build (although still not for the faint of heart).

Why the Abarth, you ask? Like the Alpines, it is an obscure, very attractive little car, and obviously channels the singular passion and vision of the founder (Carlos Abarth in this case). It is iconoclastic, uncompromising and unique. As with a lot of Abarth creations, it is loosely based on cheap Fiat or Simca sedans of the late '50s and early '60s. In particular it has a water-cooled 4-cylinder motor hanging out the back, a short-stroke, twin-cam, twin-plug 1290 cc little bomb making an estimated 145 horsepower, all of it probably available in a sudden onslaught between 4500 and 6000 rpm.

Note 145 hp from 1290 cc is 112 hp/litre, or a whopping 1.84 hp/cu.in. Without a turbo. Like I said, a little bomb. A 327 cu.in. Chevy small block would need make 600 hp to match this specific output.

Supercars.net has a few photos but clearly they are of at least 5 different cars. I assume there is an official Abarth history out there somewhere, complete with serial numbers, but I am fully expecting the production numbers for this car were low (50 units to meet homologation requirements, according to Supercar.net) and that no two cars were alike. Going on the instruction sheet (which includes colour photos of one particular 1:1 car taken in a yard somewhere in 1993), I would assume the kit attempts to replicate this car.

At the same time, I ordered a kit of the gorgeous Aston Martin DB4 Zagato, but this unfortunately is out of stock. I've enquired as to the availability of the Cobra Daytona Coupe, but no reply yet. These two cars, along with the Jaguar D-Type and Ferrari 250 GTO, are rightfully the sexiest cars on the planet.

The other package included an out-of-production Monogram model of a 1985 Mustang IMSA GTP car with a turbocharged 4 cylinder motor, a resin 1955 Chevy Suburban body from Jimmy Flintstone that needs a '55 through '57 Chevy pickup kit to complete, and finally the well-known and very detailed Accurate Miniatures McLaren M8B in Lothar Motschenbacher trim. The 36-page instruction book (this is definitely not a 'booklet' or a 'sheet') includes such items as 'Now let it dry and just stare at it'... Model Car Garage offers a photo-etched sheet with added detail bits which I will try to track down.

Excluding the assortment of Jimmy Flintstone bodies, most of which are lacking a conventional kit to supply chassis bits, the completed models are now out-numbered by the incomplete ones by 69 to 53.

Renault 40 Record: opening up the left-side door

As noted previously, the Record came with the left side door molded with the body, but is also supplied with a separate door. Using the new door means cutting out and discarding the old one. With the narrow windows and the tall slab body sides, this is really the only way to show off the interior. (Pictures here; the text is in French but the picture portfolio speaks for itself).

Given the thickness of the mold, this was not going to be a case of gently carving out the seam with the back of a No. 11 blade, as the blade would eventually get jammed in the cut. So I got brave (given the price of the kit) and used the cut-off tool on my Dremel to carve off the old door.

The result is not at all bad, even if the window frame in the old door had to be sacrificed.

Next will be to build hinges as in the article by Ken Hamilton in the April 2015 issue of Scale Auto. Most of that article focuses on hidden hinges (the case study is AMT's 1962 Thunderbird convertible), but he provides a quick overview of 'barn-door' hinges with a 1934 Ford as the example, and this is the approach I'll take with the three hinges used on the Renault.

That being said, an initial attempt using 1/32" brass rod and 0.003" shim stock has only been moderately successful. The 0.005" stock seemed excessively stiff at first look, but it is possible that this is a good thing; experimentation continues. Hamilton recommends 'shim stock' but doesn't specify thickness. (The picture also shows clearly the cleanup needed around the door and opening).

2015 Nissan GT-R Le Mans

Unlike F1, Le Mans has a very liberal policy around race car engineering.

They're not quite there yet, but I think the model where you run what you want as long as you can finish the race on a set number of BTUs is the way to go. We’d see Pratt & Whitney helicopter gas turbines fueled with Jet A, 27 litre Allison V12 aircraft motors redlined at 1500 RPM and running on 105 octane avgas, 1 litre H16s screaming along at 30,000 RPM on a mix of methanol, nitrous oxide and toluene, 7 litre 2-stroke V-twin turbo Diesels running on home heating oil, whatever. You run out of BTUs, you’re out. Energy recovery suddenly becomes very important; photos of ceramic disc brakes glowing a dull orange as the driver desperately tries to dump precious BTUs heading into a corner are a thing of the past.

The bicycle racing arena is at least as rigid as F1. The rules for the Tour de France are extremely restrictive; I recently bought a road bike with hydraulic disc brakes which will outperform a TdF bike, but which the TdF riders can’t have because they stop too well. The argument is that if the guy in front of the peloton has hydraulic discs, and gets on them hard, he’ll be crushed by the pack behind him relying on Victorian-era cable-operated rim brakes that haven’t been improved since Tullio Campagnolo patented the quick-release hub in 1930. The string of Jaguar wins at Le Mans in the '50s were due entirely to two factors: Jaguar's adoption of disc brakes, and the refusal of some Italian guy named Enzo to do the same. Ferrari's high-revving, short stroke motors were decades ahead of the long-stroke Jaguar motor that were inspired by pre-war GP engines, but being able to brake later and harder was the trump card for wins by a string of C- and D-Types.

I once drove a car with cable brakes. It was a ~1950 Dellow trials car, and probably weighed about 600 kg. With a Ford Prefect 1172 cc (yes, that's 71.5 cubic inches) flathead motor augmented with a custom high compression head (I am going to guess 6.8:1 versus the standard 6.3:1) from one of those British ‘hot rod’ shops whose name escapes me now (Speedwell?), it probably made about 31 hp, and the three speed non-synchro box was geared for a top speed of well under 40 mph. Even in these circumstances the brakes were well and truly frightening, the inadequacies only matched by the thermo-siphon cooling system that could not handle repeated 0-30 mph sprints away from lights without boiling, which prevented me from further stressing the brakes as I had to pull over for a rest on my way back to the shop. A good thing too as I was probably additionally stressing the splash lubrication system, said splash lubrication system probably being the inspiration for the Briggs & Stratton 8 hp lawn mower engine, which is where it belongs. I would not have wanted to run the big ends on a customer car.

 

But I digress. Getting back to Le Mans: Porsche is running a V4 Diesel, everyone in LMP1 has hybrid systems, it’s getting very weird. But wait, it's about to get a lot weirder, to wit: Nissan is preparing a 3.0 litre turbo V6 making 625 hp for this year’s race. Pretty conventional so far; however it will be front engined (!) and FWD (!!) which is wild and crazy indeed. The advantage, they hope, is massively improved aero: air gets pulled in from underneath the front splitter, is routed through the forward engine compartment for heat management, and flows through large tunnels either side of the cockpit to the rear of the car, where it exits through what looks like an HVAC hot air vent off a downtown high-rise. The car has none of the usual vents, ducts, scoops, tabs and other drag-inducing stuff you find on the surface of the usual rear-engine cars; skinny little rear tires complete the picture, and the lack of an engine and transaxle  in the rear means the airflow is not constrained by mere mechanical bits. It will be interesting to see how many aero add-ons get pop-riveted onto it as they get the car ready for Le Mans, it’s all pretty sleek now.

According to Road and Track, Nissan will store power in a pair of flywheels under the drivers’ seat. Initial planning was for an added 1375 hp from the flywheels in 3-second bursts for a total of 2000 hp (!!) on tap at the exit of a corner. For reasons of reliability, they now have settled on only 625 hp from the flywheels, so a mere 1250 hp at peak (!). Yoiks. Let’s hope it all holds together.

Meanwhile F1 is back to 2.4 litre V6 turbos limited to 15,000 RPM, and NASCAR requires a pushrod (pushrod!) 368 cu. in. Chevy small block derivative with a restrictor plate under the carburetor (carburetor!). Seems to me the Chevy small block, while an excellent design, dates to about 1957, while the carburetor is a 19th century invention. Where's the innovations, guys?

 

So anyway Profil 24 has wasted no time in preparing a 1:24 model (possibly curbside) of the Nissan. I'm not sure how they do it but they do seem to have figured out what I need in my collection ... They are also preparing a model of the Aston Martin DB2 that ran in 1951 which I will tackle just as soon as I complete the DBR1 that Shelby used to win in 1959.

 

Miller 91

One last back-ordered item turned up earlier this week: the lovely little Miller 91 from Historic Racing Miniatures. It's tiny next to the leviathan Renault from the same period; more on the scale of the little Honda RA272E of 1965.

It illustrates that there is nothing new under the sun: the Miller 91 had a 1500 cc, DOHC supercharged motor making up to 250 hp, in a front-wheel-drive chassis. Honda Civic hot-rods, anyone? The name relates to the displacement; 91 cubic inches is just about 1500 cc. I'll build it up to mimic the Packard Cable Special as found in the Smithsonian collection; this is the car Ralph Hepburn ran in the 1929 Indianapolis 500, and which later set speed records of 143 mph (230 k/h) in Europe. Contrast this with the Renault's 9 litres and 130 hp, which was the last gasp of the Edwardian automobile era.

Unlike today’s blown motors, it only had two valves per cylinder, probably at least partly due to the fact it was an inline 8 cylinder with a bore of only 55.5 mm, limiting valve area. (It was a typical long stroke prewar motor, with a stroke of 76.2 mm). Also it had a centrifugal blower as the metallurgy for turbos wasn’t there yet, even though GE put a turbo on an airplane engine in 1919 in a bid for a new record of 28,500 feet. Nonetheless over 200 hp from a 1.5 litre motor, in 1928, is incredible.

 

The kit is gorgeous, with lovely pre-wired wheels and very high-quality resin bits. The instruction 'manual' is a little thin on pictorial detail but this is what you get from a one-man operation. The box has the handwritten notice 47/100, so I am assuming the current run is at least half sold by now; I ordered it in late December (from www.stradasports.com) and was told it would ship as kits got made. Get your order in now! 

 

With this delivery, there is nothing left on backorder. The count now stands at about 53 kits complete, 55 unstarted, and as many as 10 in progress. Time to start building and stop buying.

 

OK, OK, who am I kidding. I'll continue buying as oddball stuff crops up. I just added a Lancia Delta S4 from the 1986 Monte Carlo, recently reissued by Profil 24; I've got 9 or 10 of their kits with only two (DBR1 and Renault 40) even remotely started.

 

Renault 40 Record: cleanup

Summer is coming and I will be out on the bicycle a lot more frequently, not hanging around the workshop. As a last modeling gasp, I cleaned up the Renault resin bits with the required isopropanol bath, and spent some time filing and sanding to get the upper and lower halves of the body to fit together as intended.

The kit includes an extra left-hand door which requires cutting out the existing one. This will be time consuming given the thickness of the mold. What a long, thin vehicle ... part of the issue is the typical Renault approach at the time, of mounting the radiator behind the motor. I am not sure where the heat got dumped -- into the cockpit? -- but it sure does make for a long, narrow hood, along with the tall, narrow, low-revving, long-stroke motor. Period photos show the rear of the streamlined body was filled mainly by the gas tank, illustrating what the fuel consumption of a 9-litre engine making only 130 hp must have been.

Primer and paint followed. Tamiya AS19, Intermediate US Navy Blue, seems to be a good approximation of the matte fabric panels aft of the cowl, especially with a coat of dullcote. The hood and chassis will be the same colour but with a coat of gloss. This went over a coat of DupliColor primer and another of Tamiya primer.

All this prior to heading out this morning to visit The Granddaughter on my bike, an 80 km loop. What a cutie, even if she is in full Two-Year-Old Tantrum Mode. Work beckons Monday so progress will be slow.

Shelf improvement

IKEA Canada has these cabinets: http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/products/00282250/. With 3 shelves, roughly 27" wide by 7" deep by 9" high, there should be room for the Mitsubishi car carrier and up to 4 shorter trucks. Of course I've got 6 shorter trucks, plus the Freightliner which doesn't have a trailer yet, so clearly I was going to need two.

So I went out and battled the Easter Monday shopping crowd and picked up two. They go together well and they look good in solid pine. Shelf depth inside the doors is 6-1/2", shelf height varies from just under 8-1/2" to almost 9", but the inside length is only 26-3/8", likely almost an inch short if I want to fit the Mitsubishi tractor in there on the same shelf as the carrier. Presumably the Freightliner with the upcoming Revell car carrier will be even worse. However it is better than what I had, and opens up space to buy and build more stuff. Most cabinets, at IKEA or elsewhere, are made for showing off Grandma's serving dishes and are therefore too deep. These are a very nice solution if you've got lots to display; with a bit of handiwork you could add three more shelves and get 13 feet of linear display space suitable for vehicles under 4" high.

As I keep telling the kids, I could be spending their inheritance drinking, gambling, smoking and chasing women in bars, but I'm not, so they shouldn't complain about the occasional kit and associated impedimenta such as cabinets.