Volkswagen Beetle Hot Rod
To "detox" myself from complex and long projects nothing better that to do a simple work without the need to match the work to one specific model, with all that that implies, to achieve maximum similarity with the real model, match the dimensions between the real and the scale model, get all the necessary documentation ... In contrast, the invented models, the limit is what we put ourshelves... if we detail the car more or less, if you want to do a spoiler or not, the interior that we want, wheels of one kind or another... In this sense, these works leave us a lot of freedom, and sometimes enjoy them much more than the work of reproduction of a particular car, besides allowing us to use parts of our scrapping box and so lighten some weight .., we take a body, wheels, axles .... etc .. and above all enjoyed the route, so, what else could we want?
The following work is therefore a completely invented car. I had saved a body of resin and its corresponding chassis of a Team Slot Volkswagen Beetle one visitor of the page sent me, the same person gave me along with other things the body and chassis from that made the Porsche 962/81 you can see in this link, to whom I give thanks. The Volkswagen Beetle doesn´t excites me a lot but I recognize that occupies a very imporant place in automotive history and was also designed by my admired Ferdinand Porsche.
This is the starting body shell as I received it.
I was not sure what to do with it at first, and as I was working on other projects did not think much about it and left it stored. Anyway, time passed and decided to change it to leave the car with a Hot Rod style, more or less. In principle I do not have a clear idea of where I'm going with the car so I will improvise on the fly.
The body came with its corresponding chassis and was in need of some cares. I removed the stickers who decorate the car and instead remove completely the paint sand the surface with waterproof sandpaper. I don´t know what kind of paint that was it was very well attached to the body and considered unnecessary to strip paint completely.
One of the fastening lugs of the chassis to the body was broken, and one of them was in poor condition, so took them off and rebuild it with evergreen plastic rod, as always, glued with bicomponent glue. At its base it can be seen reinforcements made of plastic credit card pieces, together with the bicomponent glue and get a very resistant assembly.
The chassis of the original model incorporates a tilting guide and RX type Scalextric motor with suitable supports .. For my taste the chassis was a bit soft and the engine does not fit correctly even with its supports, and was left with some slack. To avoid this gap I hit plastic pieces in the front motor support (arrow # 1), and to reinforce the chassis at the rear axle hit two other plastic parts (arrow # 2), all taken from a credit card because it is a very resistant type of plastic.
With the previous work I got reinforce the chassis, the motor well adjusted and the body remained slightly lifted from behind to front, with the intention of leaving the car in a dragster style.
I am unable to do a quick work, and I always find room for improvement in cars. In this case, the body had a slight asymmetry in the wheelarchs, which was very evident in the rear when the chassis was coupled. In addition, the wheel arches were outrageously big for my taste, so I made them smaller sticking plastic strips on the inside, as seen in the photos below.
I also covered the holes in the rear lights, because I did not like its size and location.
I don´t wanted to do many changes to the body, but the rear looked very simple and I didn´t like the holes int the boot lid so I pasted a resing wing cloned from a Ninco Porsche 911 Turbo.
I filled the gap between the wing and the body with putty shaped with sandpaper.
For the placement of the tailights did a smaller holes bellow the original ones, to accommodate two three milimeters diameter led on each side, following the bottom line of the body.
At the front, I covered two of the three holes that had the body on each side, leaving only two to simulate the brakes air inlets. In addition I practiced another hole in the center of the hood to place the fuel cap.
The openings of the windows seemed a bit simple, as shown in the following picture./p>
To detail them a little, I hit inside its contour a thin evergreen plastic profile half-round shape to simulate the crystals rubber.
And as you can see, this detail enhanced very much the body.
But the intention was not only to improve the aesthetics the car. The resin body was quite thick and crystals were made of a piece of lexan attached to the ceiling. When removed the car crystals I left them useless, but will not been used because I did not like its aspect. The intention was to make individual crystals for each window, and as the thickness of the body allowed me, sticked plastic strips as a fence to paste inside crystals lexan, plastics removed from the blister.
First I made a cardboard template of each glass, to trim later.
To finish, a coat of primer to match the surface and enhance the defects. Basically the failures were reduced to few scratches on the surface and the small holes that left the putty in the rear wing. To fix this, I used a mixture of Tamiya Putty and acetone applied with a brush, as a thick paint. Once the mixture thoroughly dry over the bodywork, sanded with a very fine waterproof sandpaper and the body was ready for painting.
And so are the crystals put in place.
In the photo above you can see too the holes made in the place where the headlights were, made with a 6 mm. diameter HSS drill and two small holes of 1 mm. to place on the door handles.
The wheels of the car are of two different measures. The front is two narrow aluminum wheels with 20 x 9 mm. tires and for the rear I used two plastic wheels with wider tires of 20 x 11 mm. In both cases, with a Fuchs resin insert glued inside.
Once painted gray and black and placed on the chassis once they were as follows:
The interior also did it with scrapyard pieces. The driver tray was made with a plastic card which hit a resin dashboard reproduction of the Porsche 911 dashboard, two seats from a Scalextric Subaru, the roll cage and the driver from a Scalextric Porsche Carrera and the extinguisher made of polyurethane resin.
With all the pieces finished and adjusted the car was ready for the painting and decoration process. Continuing with the guideline that I marked at the beginning of this work, the intention was to reuse all the possible material that I had stored in the drawers, in that sense I had a rest of metallic green acrylic paint resulting from the color tests that I did to get the color of the Seat Leon II that you can see in this link, so I painted the car with the color that discarded for the Seat Leon. The rest of the details were painted with Vallejo acrylic paint, black for the background of the headlights and details of the rear spoiler, and silver color for the rubber seal of the windows.
Regarding the windows, say that I wanted to build a classic car with the rims of the windows silver, simulating the chrome profiles of the cars, and thus check the result of the Vallejo silver color and the resulting effect. About the painting itself, it is a little difficult to apply because it is very thick and if we apply it as it comes from the can, we´ll get a thick and pasty coat, but if diluted in water covers quite a bit, so I had to search for the balance between painting and water untill achieve a satisfactory result. Even so, in some points I had to paint and undo several times until I get the result that you can see in the following image..
With all the details of the body painted and dried, I placed some decals because the decoration was too simple. Following the general style of the car, placed a few white round 43 numbers and some logos, all of them from the remains of decals other decorations.
With the decals well dried, I applied a generous coat of automotive varnish to the whole body to protect the decoration well. This varnish gives the body a spectacular shine although in the photos is not appreciated as much as live.
The interior was painted gray (Tamiya acrylic applied with the airbrush) and the dashboard, seats and anti-roll bars painted with black Vallejo paint. The driver, the gear lever (made with the bristle of a comb) and a fire extinguisher completed the details.
Once the varnish dry, place the windows, cut out from an acetate sheet and glued on the inside with "Formula 560" a glue special for canopies, which once dried is practically transparent and leaves the windows tightly attached to the body. After gluing the glass, I pasted the inside to the body. In addition, with a staple I made the door handles and the car was like that.
Finally, I painted with gray Humbrol enamel a simulated resin exhaust pipes, cloned from a Scalextric Porsche 917, and the gas cap, also made of polyurethane resin.
Pasted the simulated exhaust pipes to the chasis and a couple of electrical terminals to the body, because they simulate exhaust pipes perfectly. In addition, a led of 3 mm. stuck in the holes I had left to simulate the lights, two yellow as indicators and two red as taillights. With everything finished, I proceeded to mount the car completely, thus:
To be a work done to pieces the result is satisfactory. In some aspects (the rear wing, the LEDs to simulate the lights) I have been more inspired than others (the interior, for example) but overall I am satisfied with the result although I would have liked to give it a more hot rod appearance. But what I´m happy about is that I took advantage of pieces that I had left over from other works, which was the intention I had when I started the car.
| Chassis | Slot car original |
| Wheelbase | 76,5 mm. |
| Dimensions (L x W x H) | 133 x 59 x 49 mm. |
| Weight | 103 grs. |
| Engine | SCX RX-41 |
| Front tires | Ninco 20 x 7 mm. |
| Rear tires | Ninco 20 x 11 mm. |
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