Porsche 924 GTS, 1981 German Rally Championship
In the early 70's Porsche situation wasn't good, the oil crisis, how could it be otherwise, greatly affected the automotive industie. Moreover, the Porsche company went from being managed by the family Porsche/Piech to be led by outsiders with a different point of view on the company and of course less tied to the Porsche tradition. The 911, accused the years in its design. Mechanics, air cooled placed after the rear axle could be considered prehistoric so that began to work on models with a more modern (water-cooled front engines) looking for a replacement for 911. In this context they developed the 924 and 928 models.
Originally, the Porsche 924 was a project that the Audi/VW group commissioned to Porsche for the manufacture of a sports model. Among other things, the draft specified that should be used mechanical and parts for existing models in the range of Audi/Wv. When it was very advanced, Audi abandoned the project but Porsche agreed to go ahead with it, even manufactured in the Audi plant in Neckarsulm, using VAG parts, including the 2000 cc engine block that came from the LT Transporter van. Although much of Porsche customers consider this car as a "thing" that did not deserve to be a Porsche (neither engine hanging behind the rear axle, nor 4-cylinder inline water-cooled ...) to the manufacturer was a major cash income at a time when they was in need of revenues after the oil crisis.
As for the rest of their models, Porsche developed a special version for use in competitions, both circuit and rally. The first evolution of the model was the 924 GT, of which 406 units were built with a turbo engine evolved to 210 hp. A step further was the GTS model, which was built only 59 units in red color. Increasing boost pressure to 1.0 BAR the engine achieved 245 hp for the 1.121 kg. who weighed the car.
The GTS model had significant aesthetic and mechanical changes on the starting model. The wheel arches were modified, widenen, and lightened the car by using aluminum doors and hood, plexiglass windows and eliminating any superfluous equipment inside the car. The headlights were left fixed by what were able to increase the size of the intercooler to improve engine performance. Logically, the car also suffered changes in suspensions and brakes (taken from the 911 Turbo) to adapt to the power increase.
The rally version of the 924 was developed from late 1978, but for many problems weren't able to present a final version in the first rally of the season, Monte Carlo, so in that race enrolled a car with normal mechanics ( 125 hp) as a test.
The car won its first victory in its category in the 1979 Rally of Australia, with turbocharged engine, and had good results with Jürgen Barth at the wheel in the German rally championship.
For the 1981 season the version of the 924 Carrera GT was developed for both competitions and rally circuit. That same year, the world champion Walter Rhörl, was out a car because Mercedes left the competition. Porsche was attentive and offered to participate with their cars at various competitions, both on track and on rally. With a 911 SC ran the San Remo rally that didn't finished due to a gearbox damaged. Won with a 935 6 hours of Silverstone and finished seventh in the 1000 km of Nurburgring. And with a 924 participated with great success in the German rally championship, and is the car shown in the picture below:
The previous model is the one I pretend to reproduce. At 1/32 scale, the model has been reproduced in resin kit by some artisans manufacturers. I have the kit sell by Hobby a escala on their website which I believe is discontinued. The kit is of very good quality and comes complete with decal sheet included.
I Followed in first-person the development of the kit by Carlos, its author, and it's amazing the work that led its development, starting, if I remember correctly, from a Porsche 928 resin bodykit converted to the extreme. Of course, the result of both, and such a good job, is obvious. By the way, very wise of the author's blog where you can see their work. This is the link.
I proceed to adjust the car mechanics. The kit comes with a lexan drivers tray that I don't like at all. For other hand, I had parked a front engine Fly chassis and as I allways like the mechanical layout of my car were the same as in the real model (if possible) I decided to put a front engine and a self-made complete interior according to the real car.
The chassis is the Fly Car Model Lister Storm one, with the place of the axles to the chassis modified to fit well to the bottom of the body. To do this I had to cut the axles supports, reduce their height and re-glued with two component glue. In addition, I had to retract the position of front axle to adjust the wheelbase to the body.
The front-engined chassis allowed me to do a complete interior. I admit that I like the complete interiors, lengthen the process of building the car but allow a level of detail that does not allow a simple drivers tray. Logically I could make a tray, it is simpler and faster, but a complete interior is mandatory if there is enough space.
First, I put some plastic parts in the chassis that would serve to support the interior.
With the plastic credit card did the basic shape of the interior. Instead of cutting and pasting pieces each, I made notches with the cutter and made some folds on the card. Then hit some reinforcements in the corners.
Another piece taken from a credit card, folded the same way, define the transmission tunnel.
Placed the interior in its basic shape over the chassis to see if the dimensions were correct.
And once the measures were well-tested, held it with four M-2 screws just below the pieces that stuck in the chassis.
With the interior well attached to the chassis with the screws, I stuck the rear tray.
I built a paper template to do the sides. Because to achieve the right shape is a long work, with few changes, is is preferable to do a template on paper, who is much easier to manipulate. Next, pass the paper template to two pieces of plastic sheet. To ensure that both pieces had the same shape, I hit one to another and gave them shape. Once finished, separate the parts and got two virtually identical pieces..
I pasted the two side pieces in its place
With the basic structure ready to improve and detail it. First of all, to paste the piece who simulate the dashboard.
For the anti-roll cage I used one I´ve got save from a SCX Lancia Delta...
...splitted in two separte pieces for each side.
This pieces were attached to the interior by a short rods acting as a supports.
To improve the detailt a little bit, built a instrument pannel with evergreen plastic.
With the same type of plastic made piece who simulate the center control panel.
A coat of primer helped me to fix the pails and got ready the surface for the painting process.
As the primer dried, painter the seats and the door panels with black acrilic paint by brush.
And to finish the interior, anda after paint it the color as de body, placed the rest of the typical elements of this works, a couple of drivers, in this case who coplete body drivers from the spanish manufacturer Cartrix, the steering wheel and the fire extinguisher, both of polyurethane resin, and the seat belts, made with red isulating tape. I don´t want to leave the rear tray naked, so pasted a resin made wheel with its tyre. All painted and pasted looks this way:
To finish the body, I followed the usual process. To the naked body applied putty and some plastic pieces, specially in the front, to modify few details of the body. As in every resin body, is necessary to remove burs and sand gently all the surface with fine sandpaper and much care.
After fix, apply putty and sand again, applied a coat of grey primer and fix the failures shown.
With the body ready, applied a generous coat of acrilyc paint. The chosen color was the Tamiya gold X12 reference, applied by airbrush. As the resto of Tamiya metaliced colors, is very easy to apply and covers very well. I love this kind of paint.
After letting dry the paint, olny detail the body paint and place the decals was pending.
Car paint had a two-color scheme. Virtually the entire car was painted gold but the front and rear bumpers and the bottom of the front and rear fins were painted black. The scale model paintin process had any difficult but the masking process was very laborious to get a good result, especially for not smudge of black parts of the body that should be gold.
Moreover, I had to paint black the window gums. To get a good result, I masked the windows and the windshield with thin strips of masking tape.
Once the areas masked, I painted the gums with Vallejo acrylic black paint, as always do.
Once the gums painted, and before the paint was dry, I removed the masking tape and got what I was looking for, a perfectly defined lines. This detail may seem simple, but it gives a very good aspect to the work, although the masking process is very laborious.
With all the details of the body painted, including the black background of the headlamps and taillamps proceeded to place the waterslide decal. The kit was sold with a set of waterslide decals reproducing the livery of the car droven by Walter Rhorlin the 1981 German Rally Championship. This set of decals was of exceptional quality, very detailed, printed on a very fine and resistant paper. Although the had been saved many years I had no problem placing them but two fine lines that ran the car longitudinally due to its fineness and who broked and coudn´t place them. They should have been cut into two or three pieces to work with them more easily, but the rest of the decals were very easy to apply. After placing all the decals applied a coat of automotive varnish to the whole body to protect the decoration.
While the varnish was drying, I finished to fit the mechanical parts to the chassis that had previously painted black and screwed the interior of the scale model to the chassis, as planned, instead of attaching it to the body. I had the wheels already prepared, as it were plastic wheels which emptied the inside and pasted an polyurethane resin reproduction of the typical Porsche five spoke Fuchs wheels, as I did with the Porsche 962/81.
With the varnish completely dry, I put the windows. The crystals were independent parts for windshield, rear window, the domes of the headlights and side windows. The front and rear windows were vacuformed, and were stuck with double sided tape to the roof and base. The double-sided tape I use is one of TESA TAPE, transparent and very fine who leaves a very strong union. For the side windows and domes of the headlights I used a glue that is used in aircraft modeling, called "Formula 560". It is a special white glue for bonding of the domes of the airplanes, which is completely transparent when dry, and also the union is very strong. Thus I got glue crystals safely and without unwanted stains. As the glue is very fluid I wiped the excess with paper little moistened with water. Thus the windows were well attached without excess glue and perfectly transparent.
And with the windows well glued only I had to screw the body to the chassis to finish the car, which was as follows:
The delay in finishing projects makes work to be proud, like this, end up being "heavy obligations", even though the result has been very good. Start many projects to let them stand half built sometimes happens that ending a car like this leave a feeling of indifference and "take a load off" that has nothing to do with the objective of this hobby, enjoy building a kit of exceptional quality of a beautiful and relatively unknown car. I will continue fighting against it.
| Chassis | Lister Strom Fly Car Model, adapted |
| Wheelbase | 75 mm. |
| Dimensions (L x W x H) | 132 x 64 x 37 mm. |
| Weight | 93 gr. |
| Motor | Mabuchi short box |
| Front tires | Cartrix |
| Rear tires | Cartrix |
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