View Single Post
Old 11-17-2008, 09:16 PM   #1
Tamar
AF Newbie
 
Join Date: Nov 2003
Posts: 75
Thanks: 0
Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post
1/24 Ferrari 365 GT4 BB

Hello Guys

here are some pictures of the Ferrari 365 GT4 BB we raced at last weekend's "Big Wheels @ Spa" event in Germany.

It was a slotrace event for teams with 1/24 modelscars and the theme was Gr5 - IMSA GT/GTU/GTX period 1974-1984.
Rules specified production chassis with an inline motor configuration.

Starting point for this project was an old airfix kit of the #75 N.A.R.T 1978 Le Mans version that one of my team
mates picked up 2nd hand on ebay.

At first I did not think much of my team mates choice, which was obviously motivated by the fact that the car was about
as low and wide as the rules allowed. But boy was it ugly....

It's a bit crude kit, wall thickness off ± 3mm, has but the most basic formed interior. And as it was a "motorised" kit,
it also had no motor detail what so ever.
Further more when we inspected the box contents we also found that it contained windows for a Porsche 935 and some really ugly wheels.

First research I did on the car did not improve my liking of it...


Photo by: Jacques Ubags Jacky-Ickx-Fan.net



Photo by: Arnaud Sigg / racingsportscars.com

God it looked so ugly...the ride hight was so high it looked like they were going to do Paris Dakar instead of Le Mans and Daytona.
Most cars run as good as they look and the F365 GT4 BB was no exeption. With its boxer 12 mounted on top of the gearbox
it handled like a dog and lacked some 200bhp compared to the Porsche 935's. Not a very inspiring subject.
An other added problem was that as only one version of each livery was allowed, and the #75 NART car was already taken by an other team.
So we would have to make our own decals.


Clothes make the man and wheels make the car, so the first things I did was grind out the wheel arches to give the car a
better stance and go through my bit & parts box in search of some suitable wheels to make the wheel inserts.
The wheels above are aftermarket wheels for a IMSA Camaro, I liked them but thought they were too fine, to turn the 365 into
a mean machine it would need some bad ass wheels.

So in the end I went for these, they are from a Hasegawa Nissan GRC. They had the right offset, and with some alclad chrome on
the rims and gold centers....

Then I stumbled on to this feature of sn/ 18139 on conceptcarz.com.
One look at the open rear end and yes there was the challenge and the inspiration to create a interesting car


And then I found this video on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS0jD20AQz0
It offered me what all modells and slotcars miss, and what makes every Ferrari so special...the sound of 12 blarting intakes,
whining gears and short stacked exhaust.....and I fell in love with the car..
..the only problem was...that the kit still looked like this.


Here I already started with drilling the holes in the rear fender and the cut out in the rear deck for the carburettor intakes.

By now we had decided to model the car as it had raced in 1978. here's a picture of the car at Watkins Glenn.
The main differences the 77 Airfix kit was that when the car returned to Le Mans in 78 the car was raced with a type of "long tail" bodywork.
Also it ran without the carburettor covers.


Photo by: Jan Hettler/ racingsportscars.com

Normally when I do such a car I make all the neccesary modifications on the kit to create a new master.
This way I only have to concern myself with the outer shape of which I make a silicone mold.
The copy is then laminated inside this mold in GRP/Carbon making it light and strong. ( see this post on how that is done)

However with just one week before the race...time was not on our side. No matter how many late, long nights we would do...
..there just was not enough
So I had to do all the modifications on the kit..but as we would also race it, it meant that I could not use any filler
or putty as these would crack and chip of the body the first time it would hit the boarding or an other car !!!

After more headbanging and trying to avoid the subject in the end I just had to take a deep breath and cut off the rear spoiler.
Then I took the Dremel and milled ± 1mm of the rear fenders. This to create a reccesed area to which I could glue
1mm thick lexan sheet that I bent to shape with the aid of a hair dryer.
Here the absurd thickness of the body actually helped as there was still 2mm of material left to glue the lexan to.

The secret of performing this job without any filler is to test fit both the lexan and milled recess over and over again
so you get an almost seemless fit. There were needed I filled the remaining gaps with Zapp thick CA or the thin CA in combination
with glassbubbles.


Above the result after a lot off sanding and two shots of paint. This process would repeat it self many more times during the build.
With that hurdle taken it was time to concentrate on what would be the main focus of the car.
That Swiss cheese like rear panel and everything that was visible behind it.

Some 20 years ago long before my slotracing day's I wasn't into cars but into Airplanes and in a Parisian modell shop I
picked up a Punch & Dye set. Aircraft modellers use it to punch holes in the cockpit panels so they can fit the dails of the instruments.
I've used it many time to do the same on a 1/24 dashboard, but boy did it come in handy for this job.
I made a template of the rear panel and tranfered it onto a 0,3 mm thick lexan sheet. Drew 3 lines on which to centre the holes
and just started punching. I started by punching the left upper and lower holes, and then puched the diagonal rows left to right.
As it turned out, the punch I used was a bit to big, I only managed to get 10 holes in a row....
...but then again who would count them and compare them with the original... ( I did there's 15 holes in a row)
For the Tail lights I cannibalised a 1/28 Kyosho F40 body (sometimes you have to make sacrefices).
I screwed up one of the extra holes in the top right corner, but there was no use in trying to fix a small detail like that without using any filler.


By now it was Thursday afternoon, 3 days before the race and besides a swiss cheese, I still had no windows, no wheels,
no interior and no motor detail. I was getting a bit desparate
But then the postman rang twice and delivered my order from Germany. A couple of 20mm alu wheels and most important....
.. a Fujimi F512bb kit.
From the moment I inspected the kit contents, all my problems were solved. also clear was the close family ties between
the 365 and the 512 Ferrari, even in kit form. The Fuijimi floorpan and windows fitted the Airfix body almost perfectly.
And finally I had what I needed most...that big fat Boxer 12


Another good find was that the boxer12 was about just as wide as the inline motorbracket, so it would cover it completely.
Sorry but as we started to run out of time there are gaps in the pictures we took.
No pic's of the masters for the vacformed interior and motor detail, maybe I can post those later.

Next item on the list were the intake trumpets. We actually made these form cable end caps, their dead cheap and a lot lighter than
the machined sakatsu parts. It was still a racecar and every gram would count.
The Fujimi kit had some nice open grills and besides the top covers for the intakes also the undelaying trumpet covers.
I glued the top covers upside down on to the undersides of the grill. Milled the trumpet covers so I just had the rim left
and drilled 2 x 6 holes for the trumpets. I had to do a bit of guesswork here as detailed photo's of this area could not be found.



This is what the car looked like late thursday night..or more honest early friday morning. The body had been repainted
for the 3rd time every time trying to get that right shade of old Ferrari red with Tamiya spray cans.
In the end I used Dull red covered with a light coat of Italian red.
Is it the correct color...don't know but it had to do.....
and it had to dry....as Thursday night was also the last moment I could reinforce the body with some GRP lamination in
the rear and some carbon strand's at the front and in those very fragile wheelarches.

While that was hardening I finally found the time to finished casting, cleaning and painting the 2 inserts for the frontwheels
and the 3 sets for the rear wheels. I just love that Aclad, their chrome is so cool, and with those gold centers...dammm
we finally had them bad ass wheels we needed


Ok...fast forward 24hrs and the car looked like this, can't describe what its like to build and modell a car under stress,
when actually its supposed to be a relaxing hobby But then again were crazy anyhow because after all this work...
...we were going to race this car and we would undoubtably crash into something or someone.

To get the car to this point all team members put in their effort regardless of their modelling skills.
We left for the race with a box full off parts and but the thinnest layer of clear coat over the decals, hoping that they would
dry during the 2 hrs drive to the track.


We arrived at the track an ran the car for a couple off laps, all seemed to be working, it drove very well straight out of the box.
The tires we still needed to improve but first we needed to finish the car.... and that's when I f****d up big time.

Because of the wide mix of decals that were used on the body (some very old some new) I had sprayed the first coat
of clear with Gunze mr Hobby Acrylic (the blue can) This because it contains less solvent and is there for less agressive on the decals.
But it has two major setbacks. 1st it dries slowly, 2nd it's not petrol resistant. For this reason I usually use the Grey
canned Mr Hobby ( more agressive but dries quick and petrol resisitant)


Now with the gloss clear you can use both over each other, but apparently not with the semi gloss. The last thing I did on
friday night was to give the body a last shot of semigloss clear, and as it needed to dry quick I used the grey clear.
Big mistake, instead of flowing evenly, immidiately the wet clear started to attack the underlying semigloss.
The whole body looked like an orange


Luckily enough we had also brought some spare cans of the Acrylic clear and rushed off to the toilet quick dried the body
under the handryer and applied several thicker coats of acrylic to see if I could regain some form of smooth surface.
At first this seamed to work, so i left the body to dry overnight, but as I returned the next morning @ 8...
..the same orange skin had reappeared. But at least the clear was now thick enough to wet sand it with some 2000 grid
that I had brought along. So back to the toilet, sanding wet under the tap, drying under the hand dryer, again and again.
After some time most of the orange skin had been polished to a matte but semi smooth surface.
I then used Revell modellwax and buffed the surface to a sort of semigloss shine. (as seen above)


By now the tech guys were screaming for us to offer the car for technical inspection, wich we passed just in time to
make the line up off all the cars on the grid. Even with all the details that were obviously missing..and the messy clear job
The car managed to score some good concourse points.


And then it was time to start the race, or first qualifying, and when the flag drops...the bullshit stops.
On new fresh tyres the little Ferrari drove like a dream, claimed pole position and at the start took off...
...showed the whole grid her pretty ass and never looked back.

She may not have been completely correct, but at least in 1/24 scale s/n 18139 did what it had never been able to do in real life......
.....it beat the crap out of the Porsches 935 and won the race.
__________________
Tamar


Last edited by Tamar; 11-17-2008 at 10:25 PM.
Tamar is offline   Reply With Quote