In progress : Toyota Celica GT4 - 24 uur Ypres 1996 - Loix - Tamiya 1/24

[Sennake]

I still have lots of time to finish my Porsche 917 so I thought : "Let's start a new project". I chose a model that I wanted to start several years ago, but now I really did it. The kit is a street version of the Toyota Celica (Tamiya nr 24133).




It comes with a transkit of Racing43 (Big Tk 08) to transform it into the rallycar of Loix.

Here a pictures of the kit + transkit unpacked :



Since I was at the rally myself I have plenty of outside reference pics. The car looks like this :



What I really need are INSIDE pics, so if you have some Celica 1996 inside pics or you know a link, please let me know...

I already worked a little at the model, and the body (a BLACK body to become a white model, yippee!) looks like this now :



The chassis has been dryfitted as well. The back seat has been cut out and the new metal bottom already fits pretty well against the original plastic bottom. The metal dashboard and the seats look very convincing as well. The rims fit the original Tamiya-tires as well. This looks to be a nice project

[Sennake]

First I concentrated at the back side, to which I made a capital mistake yesterday. I only realised it last night in bed, comparing my reference pics with the pics of the Celica in "Rallyworld 12" by Willy Weyens, where Freddy's Celica is to be seen in Marlboro livery, although most of the pics are in Castrol-Marlboro livery. When looking at the pic of Freddy's Celica in the Ypres 24 hrs in Willy's book, I had an unpleasant surprise : obviously Freddy drove the nr 10 c...ar in this rally, while I thought that was Renaud Verreydt. "This can't be true?" I thought. To be certain and to avoid being awake the whole night I got my own pics and it turned out I was right : Freddy indeed had nr 4 and Renaud had nr 10. So Willy made a little mistake. Sh*t happens, Willy

Then I looked at the back of the Celica. There is no body part to be seen, just the inside of the welding plate, sprayed in red. And I was dumb enough to follow the regular street car plan, gluing the regular body plate in. So I got out of bed and moved the part out again, in doing so damaging the rear of the body.

So this morning I had to start reparing the back. I glued a piece of white plasticard in and cut and shaped it to a normal form again. You will see the white part in the pic, besteen the body and the metal welding plate.



Then I did a test with the white metal, because it's kinda rough. It turns out that it's quite easy to sand and polish.



The blinkers had to removed because the rallycar doesn't have any to the sides.



The left rear gastank cover had to be removed and I had to drill a new hole to fit the rally gastank cover At the same time I removed the hole for the rear wiper and the rear window sprayer.



At last the model has been primed. I think it will need a second primer layer because its not really white yet. That will be a work for tomorrow

[Sennake]

After 2 layers of primer and 2 layers of white paint, plus some "dry fitting" it looks like this now :





Next I can start masking off for the fluo-red paint

[Sennake]

I waited a couple of days, then I started masking off the body. I sprayed 2 layers of fluo-red. How the result will look I will only know after removing the masking tape, but this is how everything looks right now :

(PS : I put black border lines on the pics to show you where the fluo-red should be and where the masking tape is)





The chassis has been sprayed white entirely, top and bottom. I also started dry-fitting the white metal transkit parts.

[Sennake]

This fluo-rood dries very quickly, so as soon as I dared, I removed the masking tape to see if there were parts where things went wrong... After inspection I can only find 1 little spot that needs a little retouching (black arrow). All in all it went pretty well.

[Sennake]

Today I worked at the dashboard. With some CF-decals it looks pretty authentic. The pedals are scratchbuilt. Then the dashboard was painted and drybrushed. Compared to original pics of the real dashboard, they aren't identical (but then again I'm not sure whether the dashboards of the works cars were the same as Freddy's car's in Ypres either) but "it looks right". And that is the most important thing, especially if you're building a closed car. Most of the details won't be visible anyway...



The interior has been done with CF-decals as well, and the footrest has been scratchbuilt as well. The side panels will be detailed some more later on, but are ready to built the dashboard in already.



After some dry-fitting of the dashboard in the interior it looks like this :



Next I will start working at the bottom side, because that will be a lot more difficult once the seats and the rollcage will be mounted. Therefore : from tomorrow on it's only underside-work, once the bottom is ready I can flip the chassis and continue working at the interior again...

[Sennake]

I worked some more at the Celica. The engine parts and exhaust+drive shaft have been painted following the instructions of the street car (I don’t have any reference pics of the bottom of the racecar). Note that the parts, although painted in the right colours, haven’t been "washed" nor "drybrushed" yet. Once that will be done everything will look a lot more realistic. A few pics anyway :







Here the engine parts have been washed and drybrushed, and put in place. Now it’s time to work at the suspension.







Here the suspension has been finished. The only part missing here is a protection plate at the front of the car. I will put that in place tomorrow, and unfortunately it will hide everything beneath. That is why I took lots of pics of it before the part is mounted.

[Sennake]

In the meantime I tested and dry-fitted the transkit wheels...

[Sennake]

After fitting the wheels I sprayed them in the right color and I fitted the tires. The tires were drybrushed, the rims still need to be weathered and are still missing some decals, but at least now they are fitted to the suspension I can put my Celica back on its wheels to continue the upper side.

The first thing I did was finish the engine. I don't plan on showing the model with an open hood, but at least I want something to be there when you look through the openings of the front and the hood of the car...

[Sennake]

The little mistakes I made spraying the car have been rectified and most of the decals are fitted to the body. Only the decals of the roof vent (and the roof vent itself), the rear spoiler, the rims, the mirrors and the interior are missing. But at least you can see were we are heading

[Technoman]

Looks freaking awesome, nice job. This thread will be a perfect reference for me as I have this transkit. I intend to use it as my practice before tackling the ST27 ST165 transkit that I have.

Nice job!

[Hyperkinetic]

Looking great.
I will follow your thread with great interest.

[godfather23]

Amazing, simply amazing. True art. I just love, how this kit goes together. Reading this therad puts a big wow in my face. The dash is just great.
Can you tell me how much you paid for the transkit??? You don´t need to, though!

[SteveK2003]

Awesome work. I can't wait to get home from work and really look over everything.

[Sennake]

Originally Posted by godfather23

Can you tell me how much you paid for the transkit???

Mmm, it's been quite some time since I bought it. Must have been something like 15 euro I think.