Renault Alpine A310 V6, Le Mans 24 hours 1977
In the 45th edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, on 11 and 12 June 1977, an Alpine A310 participated in the race with Bernard Decure, Jacky Cauchy and Jean-Luc Therien at the wheel, framed within the category of prototypes (GTP). At least a curious thing becase one might think the car sould compete on GT class.
Originally the car had a 4-cylinder engine that was modified to fit a V6 engine and had a few "minor" changes in the bodywork, front spoiler, rear wing and flared wheel arches. The car did not finish the race and left after 17 hours and 137 laps due to a water leak. Those who already finished the race, and in first position, were Jürgen Barth, Hurley Haywood and Jacky Ickx onboard a Martini Racing Team Porsche 936/77.
This is the car I´m talkig about. Photos are taken from the forum-auto.com forum
To make the model I start form a resin bodyshell that the hobbyaescala people had in his catalog, although I bought it to Carlos, the author of this very good reproduction. The model the kit reproduces doesn´t correspond with which I´m going to build, but the "Calberson" Gr.4 model which droven by Guy Frequelin and Jacques Delaval won the French championship in 1977.
This is a picture of complete kit:
I didn´t want to make the model kit because I didn´t get the waterslide decals for it´s decoration and as I had to manufacture them I prefer to do a less shown decoration, and if in addition to being less known it is a Le Mans decoration better. But I must recognize that "Calberson" decoration is very beautiful and suits fine to the car.
The body that came with the kit had many resin burrs, mainly the bottom, a large number of pores, which while not very big, they forced me to give putty to the entire body to fix those imperfections. So before start anything serious, I sand the body to remove some bugs from the mold and leave it more decent. Then I adapted the chassis.
The recommended chassis for this kit was the Ninco 307 one, it had almost the same wheelbase as the Alpine, but I had one Spirit Ferrari 512 chassis at home hanging around and luckily has a similar wheelbase measure. In addition, having transverse rear engine allowed me to do a more detailed interior tray that a simply flat drivers tray who comed with the kit.
The wheelbase was an inch shorter so I must to change the front axle support. Besides the support of the rear axle was a little high and had to lower it to gain a little distance from the chassis to the track and to place right the rear axle.
The joint to the body was made with two evergreen lugs attached with bicomponent glue.
Because the arrangement of the engine (rear transversal) leave much room I decided to do a complete interior of the car. First, mark the interior limits over the body with a pencil.
With approximate dimensions, I built a paper prototype, I wanted to see if the measurements were correct and the fit of the piece to the body and chassis were fine.
After confirming that the interior fit properly I remade it from a 0.75 mm thick plastic sheet.
Once made the box that would be the base for the interior, pasted the rear tray and the base piece for the dashboard.
In the firs steps of the building, pasted the pieces each other with cyanocrilate to later reinforce with bicomponent glue and thus made a compact and reinforced piece. The nerves pasted below the tray serve as reinforcement.
The same way made the transmission tunnel with a 0,5 mm. thick plastic sheet, to not add so much weight to the interior.
From a Fly Car Model Car cloned the driver bucket seat with polyurethane resin.
Thus I made the basic structure for the car interior.
...to be continued...
Go to topFortnightly updates, new cars and more in www.erneslot.es
