Audi UR Quattro Pikes Peak
Navigating the Internet back in February 2005 looking for classic rally cars found a website that blew my mind the quantity and quality of information about Audi models and especially the number of photos of the Audi Quattro S1 who participated in the Pikes Peak Hillclimb in 1987 with Walter Rorlh at the wheel. Surely many of you maybe already know, and who does not have visited say it is highly recommended. Its address: www.audipassion.com
The Audi S1 car seems to me exaggerated in every way, like most other group B rally cars, but this car in particular, in its evolution to the Pikes Peak hillclimb is especially exaggerated by power (600 hp) and aesthetics. In general I can not tell which feature of the car was the most I love, it is amazing.
By chance in those days bought a body and chassis of the Altaya Audi Quattro and after seeing the pictures for hours (actually days) of S1 and especially to see the wonders of models seen in the modellers forum I used to visit I decided to make my first scratchbuilding work. So far only had a couple of decorations quite bad, had some resins to begin and a half-finished TT in the absence of the guide but when I saw the S1 I did not think twice, and got down to work.
As I said, I started from an Altaya Scalectric Audi Quattro and the first thing I did was to gather as much information as possible to the real car, dimensions, photos, etc. from both the Altaya model and the S1. Between the two cars there are many differences, the most obvious to the naked eye is the length. Because the model reproduced by SCX is the Audi UR Quattro and that concerns us now is the S1, the first model is a 4-seater coupe and the second is a sporty 2 + 2 (rather bi-seater) as between one model and another there is a difference of about 50 cm length. what about a 1/32 scale model assumes that the scalextric is 1 cm longer than what would be the S1 at scale. I´ve decided to make an interpretation of S1 Pikes Peak on the UR, so my model rather would be the "Audi Pikes Peak UR" and not the S1. The reason for doing that way was that I want the behavior on track was the best possible, and in its factory configuration the scalextric model has a fantastic behaviour on track, among other reasons for his wheelbase.
After gathering all possible information about the car the first thing I did was to dismantle completely the bodywork and remove the paint. That´s no problem because about in 30 minutes submerged in 98° alcohol the paint fade away easily.
Once the body clean proceeded to make the changes for joint it to the chassis with no problems. In the model, the chassis is secured with two retaining flanges at the front and a screw to the drivers tray at the rear. The problem is that some changes must be done in the rear of the car, removing the original spoiler and radiator beneath it and opening a hole in the rear of the car. This changes make the drivers tray move inside the body and fit bad. To fix this, what I did was take the radiator and stuck it to the rear of the tray, which was embedded in the body and by removing the taillights came loose. Thus taking advantage of the remaining piece to made the grid the original car has behind him, and to avoid its movement pasted two small evergreen plastic strips above and below, thus I got the drivers tray fitted without moving the body. In this picture we can see the detail of the radiator attached to the tray and the plastic strips that attach them to the body:
I cutted the retaining flanges in front of the chassis and instead made a hole between the front axle and the engine to place a screw that would be screw to a evergreen rod also attached to the body with bicomponent glue (Araldite transparent). So I got the body tilt on a longitudinal axis made by the back and front screw. In the next photo can see the detail of the chassis and the body:
After adjust chassis and bodywork, I proceeded to mould the enormous wheel arches. Before start feeding putty I got tired of looking at photos of the car to reproduce it as true as possible to the real model, both in form and in the dimensions. To do this, I calculated the width of the wheel arches based on the width of other elements of the body. Then apply the putty (a Pattex stick) in the four wheel arches and gradually give them the desired shape smoothing and sanding. The truth is that it was quite complicated because the putty used hardens very rapidly, it is very hard and because the shape of the wheel arches was not exactly easy to get. The fact is that by lime and more lime and sandpaper and more sandpaper the result was this:
Perhaps, the part that most work took to me was to give the curved shape of the rear wheel arch and the correct width to don´t left them excessively wide. Here you got another picture to see the details:
In this last picture can also be seen how the rear bumper is filed because the original car practically doesn´t have it. The front bumper is also smoothed and shaped to better fit to the S1 shape, which has a much more rounded nose than the UR Quattro.
In the original model, the front wheel arches have a rim that I built from a plastic sheet of 0.50 mm. thick. To do this I made some cardboard templates of the wheel arches retouched until give them the right shape, templates and plastic pieces are these:
The next step was to make the tail with 1 mm. thick plastic evergreen and paste it. Then I started the front spoiler, so far the part of the car that more work has given me not only because of its complication, but because I raised it wrong and then it took me more work than I would have if I would thought things more calmly. What I did was to give the shape of the base with two plastic sheets of 1 mm glued and then fill with putty the gap between the base and the front bumper, the problem is that in the original model the front spoiler has two falls, one it is coming from the front spoiler and another is coming out from under the bumper and which is clamped to the front wing in the middle. Anyway, making it by filling with putty mean me a lot of work with the file until reach the desired shape and has not been quite right but neither had an easy solution and I wouldn´t want to dismantle half a car so I left it.
The front wing is built with 5 pieces of plastic of 1 mm. thick, first cutting the lateral ones and shaping with the file until the shape and size was adequate, then the middle one and then the two wings. To paste the pieces that form the front wing used bicomponent glue (Araldite). The good thing about this structural glue is that if gets heated with a dryer, for example, it becomes very fluid and introduces in the corners of the pieces easily and then when it colds hardens like plastic. We only must take care with the proportions of the two components prior to mixing and applying heat when placed, because once hot forge very quickly and is very difficult to apply (and the results isn´t good).
The above image shows the front wing already mounted and the front wheel housings. You can see the side spoiler that has the car under the door who is made with a 1 mm thick strip of evergreen. You can also see the air intake of the roof of the car, which appeared drawn in some previous pictures above the roof, it doesn´t have much complication, make a hole on the roof and attach a plastic sheets of 0.5 mm thick. Tight pasted with bicomponent glue and putty in some parts and we have air intake. And if you look closely, to disguise a little the length of the car, I left a bit smaller the central pillar of the door, making a little bigger the driver's window. A view from above and the other front shows us the result:
Once finished the roof and front spoiler I started with the most complicated part of the car, the rear wing. The intention was to make it as close as possible to the real car, here I leave some pictures taken from the website which referred at the start:
As can be seen, the wing consists of two parts, the upper more advanced than the lower, and each formed by three planes. The main supports starts from the body side and to finish at the ends two brackets that attach over the flared wheel arches of the car. I started the wing supports drawing them previously on card to prove that the shape and size were adequate, to make then in evergreen plastic, the central supports of 1 mm. thick and 0.5 mm the lateral ones. The lateral supports themselves were not very difficult, because thanks to the amount of photos of the model of one of them could get the exact shape, with measures of the angles and approximate dimensions to scale. So I made sure to do the piece to scale properly at the first try.
Once made, first pasted the body supports and then the side supports, ensuring that the pitch was adequate, when were attached I started to stuck the planes of the two wing parts first the lower and then the top one, made with plastic strips of 0.5 mm. The work was quite heavi because I wanted the wing with the same structure as the real car so I get tired of cutting and pasting plastic strips. The result of the work is this:
The joints of the different parts of the wing were reinforced with superglue and baking soda in some places and with bicomponent glue in others.
The bulge in the hood is done simply by sticking a plastic strip of 1 mm above. The openings in the hood I'm not going to do, and will simulate it with waterslide decals, is a too complicated task and I´m not sure I left it fine.
The "coarse" work was done, so the next step was to give one coat of primer and start polishing the details. Here you can see the result of that coat of primer:
The car is painted with Tamiya white acrylic paint, and the result seems acceptable, but not good. I do not like white paint, it doesn´t cover anything and is applied with an airbrush badly, or do not do well because it is too thick or too diluted and doesn´t cover anything ... The most probably is that I´m don´t doing it well. The case is that the car painted white was like this:
In the pictures you can see some faults but I won´t bother to fix them .. Many of them will be covered up to the amount of decals of the decoration and other ... well, those I will skip... if I can ..
Due to the top air intake the glass did not fit into its hole as I had to made a hole in the upper part of the glass. Also I painted the windows and the rear glass with black enamel (with a fairly bad result, in fact) because the car had tinted the original ones. Seen the result the past with waterproof sandpaper and a second coat of paint are assured ... I don´t going to improve the inside anything, just decorate it a bit so that doesn´t clash much.
In the front grill I fill the holes where were plugged the headlights and I painted in acrylic matt black. I don´t like the result, probably will change it.
And finally the decals. Here they are in their first stages of development:
AUDI S1 PIKES PEAK - PART TWO
Those who are scratchbuilding fans like me know that part of the hobby is to start car models and leave them half made to start another model often easier to do, in fact sometimes it seems that the fun is to start a model to leave it half made... Well, I started this car almost four years ago... The reasons for not finishing it were several, one of which is, as said before, I started other cars easier to made. It is the danger that have the long and complex works, or you really like it to finish them or just get tired and end up abandoned in a drawer. But another reason was that the car don´t convinced me, the result was pretty good but neither I was happy with the result of painting nor with the model itself. The original car was 40 cm. shorter (1 cm. at 1/32 scale), the roof was not well reproduced, well, many things... Anyway, after seeing it a lot of time collecting dust and despite having fairly advanced the decals I decided to put an end to and give it a radical change: shorten the bodyshell the centimeter left and would make the corresponding changes until left it more like the original model.
The original car had a wheelbase of 222 cm., which at 1/32 scale give us 69 mm. I shortened the wheelbase of the SCX Hyundai chassis to leave the wheelbase at 69 mm. and shorten the length of the front axle of the RX81 motor from the same manufacturer to accommodate it to the new wheelbase.
You can see the construction of the chassis explained in the following link to the section "Techniques and tricks"
The next step is to cut the bodywork. I marked the section to cut, using one part where I didn´t made much damage to the rest of the work already done and then cut carefully with the mini drill.
and this are the two parts pasted:
For paste the two halfs of the body, nothing better than the bicomponent adhesive, Araldite in this case, to date the glue of this type that most I like. The only difficulty I have is to square the to don´t let it twsted when paste it and with the same wheelbase on both sides. To do it, I helped me with the glasses and drivers tray cutted at the right distance and with the chassis to leave the body well squared. It is a complicated task but worth putting a little care for get a good result.
The chassis fit well with the bodywork, but it was too close to the track, leaving so many gap between the chassis and bodywork. To reduce it, I cut the bearing supports for placing lower later. The task was very laborious, especially when came the moment to paste it again, because the axes should be parallel to each other, and with the wheels at the same height. First pasted one of the supports and then pasted the other suppport on the same axle trying to left them at the same height. Once the well positioned I pasted them with superglue to strengthen later the assembly with bicomponent glue.
Thus, the chassis was much better adjusted to the body, you can see it by comparing this picture with another from above.
In the previous photo you can also appreciate the strips of evergreen stuck inside the wheel arches to reduce their size, that previously were too large. And also removed all the paint of the car to work better with adhesives and putty. After all would have to repaint the car again, and being acrylic paint, a few minutes dipped in alcohol and rubbing with a toothbrush were enough to leave the body clean.
With the chassis fitted, I started with changes in the body. The bonnet central lifting stretches from the nose of the car to the base of the windshield, but I had left off. To fix this, I hit a piece of evergreen of 0.5 mm. to cover the part I needed. Previously I made the holes to avoid to cover the simulated grills:
...to be continued...
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