Porsche 962/81
Few years ago, a visitor to my page gave me three body shells for scratchbuilding. One of them was the whole body and chassis of the Superslot Porsche 962 (reference C188) in Takefuji livery which participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1988 with Brian Redman, Axis Elgh and Jean-Pierre Jarier at the whell, who finished in tenth position. Superslot made a quite good reproduction, much more for beain mid-80s slot car, where the technology applied to the slot can not be compared to what is currently. Undoubtedly it is far from the Slot.it reproduction of the same car, but in itself is pretty decent.
Here you can see a photo of the original car extracted from this website: www.lemans-models.nl
This is the body I got. It included the chassis and engine, but nothing more. The status of it was pretty good, and very complete but in absence of mechanics.
Because this is a car that has been on sale for a few years, the list of decorations we can find in the market for this car is very extensive, but I did not want to make a real car decoration. With the intention to use parts from other works that have been accumulated over time decided to make an interpretation of the model with reference to his brother, the Porsche 936. I´ve always loved the sport prototypes from the 70s with its large raised air intakes, so taking as a starting point my tastes, the body shell and it matched chassis and a air intake from a Spirit Porsche 936 I embarked on the work that I introduce you.
Instead of inmerse it in alcohol to remove the paint, I took it off with a very soft waterproof sandpaper. Also, I remove few burrs from mold. After cleaning with sandpaper, shorten the height at the top to prepare it for the raised air intake.
With a piece of plastic, I modified slightly the shape inside the vehicle, to smooth their shape.
To the Spirit Porsche 936 air intake pasted a plastic pieces on the bottom in order to strengthen the attach with the bodywork.
And after make a hole in the body, I stuck with bicomponent glue to ensure a strong bond between them.
In the rear, there wasn´t a piece for the tail lighgts, so pasted a plastic strip with a holes to mark the position of the lights.
With all the hard work on the bodyshell made, I started to build the interior. A graph paper help me to define the interior shape. Then, over a plastic credit card pasted Nural 34 putty to form the dashboard.
The rest of the interior is made with the plastic of a credit card too, instead of using a comercial plastic sheets. The plastic of a credit card is little more resistent than styrene, making a stronger interior.
Here is the interior with the rest of the pieces. A polyurethane resing driver and a seat from the box of pieces.
With the work in the body parked, I started with the chassis, but only focussed in two poinst, the front and the rear.
In the rear, I made a piece to hide the screw who attach the chassis and body. With a pieces of plastic and putty gave the piece the appropiate shape.
And with other two pieces of plastic made a diffuser.
Once glued looked like this:
In the front, with plastic tripes and putty made a support for the headlamps.
The headlamps are extracted from a Scalexctric 911. To place them exactly in its place, pasted a pieces of graph paper as reference of their position. Then, made a hole to attach de headlamp.
Once glued, the headlamps looked like this. Iám very happy with the result.
To finish the hard work, I cut the glass for the cockpit who initially was a dome,
...to leave only a small deflector.
Finally, a coat of primer to match the color a highlight failures. Once dry, applied putty and the sand all the body with waterproof sandpaper before the coats of paint.
The pain scheme choosed was a combination of metalized grey with a white stripe on the sides. A decoration inspired on other Porsche models, like the Le Mans 1973 908, among others.
After letting the paint dry completely, apply a coat of automotive varnish to protect the paint. With the varnish completely dry placed the waterslide decals. The livery was my invention, using a originaly printed decals for the 1973 Le Mans 911 RSR Protoyp who was in wrong size. With the decals in Martini livery, the usual sponsor logos (Dunlop, Bosch, Shell and Bilstein) and a few numbers, this was the result:
After the drying of the decals, applied another coat of automotive varnish to left the bodyshell shiny and well protecter.
To give some life to the dashboard, I built a hood for the clocks.
The resin made driver was decorated in a very simple way, with a seat belts made from insulating tape.
And here is the interior with all its pieces and a coat o "Bosque Verde" varnish.
I must recognise I wasn´t very inspired in its decoration but is a decent result.
To finish, made the rims. Using a rims from the drawer placed into a resin insert cloned from a five spoke whell rims, typical for the 70´s Porsche. Fisrt pasted the inserts and painted the wheel in metallized gray, the same tone as the body shell.
The exhaust pipes were made from electric terminals and the tailights are 3 mm. diameter red. After the assemble, this was the scale model:
I´m satisfied with the result, the livery suits very well, but above all, I´m very happy of been making the most out of leftover pieces of another works. As you can see, with a little bit of imagination and work can be build a very decent cars, like this Porche 962.
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