Provence Moulage Flying Lizard Porsche 2005 911 GT3 RSR 1:43

[Red_Firecracker]

Long time lurker but minimal poster, but as I'm laid up for a bit I thought I post a first WIP. Slight cheat as the model is now complete, but I'll spread out the work in progress pictures.

The car portrayed is the 2005 Flying Lizard 911 GT3 RSR as raced at Le Mans by Johannes van Overbee, Lonnie Pechnik and Lizard regular Seth Neiman. The car came home third in GT2, completing 323 laps. Here's how the real thing looked;



The model is traditional Provence fare, a nicely cast resin bodyshell and baseplate, very little flash and nice and crisp detailing.



Included are some whitemetal and photo etch parts as well.

One slight issue is that the body is slightly warped, as can be seen from the picture below, the screw holes don't quite match up.



This is easy enough to fix, just leave the body screwed to the baseplate whenever possible.

The baseplate has some detail cast in, which is okay, but could be better.



This I will remove and replace with more pleasing wires and cables.

To jump on a bit, here is the body after wing mirror attachment, initial cleaning and a session of priming and rubbing down;



it is now nice and smooth and ready for a coat of white inside. The same process on the baseplate has seen the cast cables and hoses removed, primer and sand.



A couple of interior items have also seen some attention, the seat has had the moulded in belts removed and the dashboard has been cleaned up and the significant dent in the binnacle filled and sanded.



They will see further work.

[Red_Firecracker]

Firstly, the wheels. Provence Moulage very kindly provide a resin press so that you can form the etched wheel centres into the correct shape, which is a form of 's'. I say very kindly, but they really shouldn't have bothered as it doesn't work. So after modifying it somewhat and then using a plastic screwdriver to press the etches into shape, you get these;



The etches have been fixed into the wheel hubs and the whitemetal centres have been fixed to the etches.

Elsewhere, lots of little bits have been seeing attention, such as the rear wing, cage components and interior items;



Slightly boring in their current form, but necessary to the end result.

Finally for now, the interior of the body has had some carbon door cards applied and also the webbing straps, made from painted masking tape, that are used to close the doors;



Wheels painted silver and discs painted (bells black, discs titanium over black, callipers black over gold over titanium over black);



I also printed some AP Racing decals for the callipers, the decals being just under 3mm long;



Once altogether, of course, you can't really see any of the detail!



Finally, this is what Provence Moulage consider is the sort of steering wheel that three drivers are going to hang onto for 24 hours flying through the French countryside.



I'm not so sure. To that end, I've printed off a real steering wheel at scale size and will use the rim of the kit wheel and construct a new inner using the print out as a template. I'll probably end up replacing the rim as well.

[dozman]

Thanks for the run down on your build, looks like you put in a bit extra.

Looking forward to how you went with the roll cage - have a few of the PMA kits in the to do pile.....

[Red_Firecracker]

Bit more work on the interior. The cast in lines have been removed and replaced with a combination of looming cord (the thicker black bits) and also fibre optic cable (the thinner black bits). The blue gear change rodding is copper cable sheathing.



In this view you can see the fire extinguisher which has had silver strapping applied and also a decal created from a real image. Also visible is the gearstick which replaces the needlework pin (!) supplied by Provence Moulage, which is a shaped piece of plastic rod.



The cage has started to go in as well, which has needed quite a bit of adjustment. I'll not put the final piece in until the seat has been done, including the belts, as it would be extremely tricky otherwise. The cage also locates the dash unit.

The seat has had a carbon decal applied to the back and sides and the 'Recaro' decals. I have also added belts (not included in the kit) from painted tape. The centre buckle is an adapted Ferrari 250 GTO wheel hub spinner! The shoulder belts go back to an addition to the rear section of the cage.





The new steering wheel is also complete, just awaiting a couple of decals. Here it is on installed on the completed dash;

[Baxter!]

Very cool looking so far, Nice job!

[Greg23]

I've finally got you 1:43 guys sussed. I want to see a picture of the builder because I think you are really all little people, using little tools, to model in that scale. There have been some very impressive builds posted in the last few weeks.

[Shunter]

Very nice work so far.....very cool car.

[Red_Firecracker]

Thank you all for your kind words.

The body is now in colour, which are all Zero products. Not totally happy with it, the interior now needs some remedial work, but considering how long it sat with masking tape on it, not too bad.



and here's a couple to show how little of the interior work is now visible.





I just need to sand back the clear coat, apply the decals and then start final clear coating.

The roll cage has proven its strength though, I dropped it and no damage done.

[Shunter]

Good to see the cage did it's job...Looking good now in colour, bring on the decals.

[Red_Firecracker]

The car is now stickered up, what a wonderful job made easy with such fine decals/transfers... A few more to apply after the clear coating.





Now begins the long slow process of clear coating and also a small paint repair on the nearside rear wheelarch.

The body has now been clear coated and polished out. Before the final clear coat I lightly sanded with Micromesh and after the final clear had a good chance to dry (about a week) I polished it back with Tamiya Compounds, course, fine and finish. After that it got a coat of carnauba wax.

A couple of quick pictures;





Quite happy with it, it has the depth of shine that is popular nowadays but it doesn't have the thickness of clear coat that is often seen that dulls and obscures details, like a model that has been dipped in resin.

[Baxter!]

Looks spot on! Agree with you about the depth of clear coat, these cars barely have a shine compared with showroom production cars. BTW did this kit come with those fiddly generic roll cage pieces PM expect us to construct?

[Shunter]

Almost there now, clear looks like it went down well.

[Red_Firecracker]

Originally Posted by Baxter!

Looks spot on! Agree with you about the depth of clear coat, these cars barely have a shine compared with showroom production cars. BTW did this kit come with those fiddly generic roll cage pieces PM expect us to construct?

The cage is as supplied, so four white metal castings that need bending into shape to be able to get the body on (and so that they actually touch each other). The only addition to the cage is the horizontal bar that the belts wrap around.

Bit of a leap now as I lost some pictures due to a laptop issue. The windows are now in, secured with Klear, as well as the rear windscreen bars. Additionally, the characteristic from radiator grills are fitted.

The main item for this update is the headlight treatment. Firstly I should add that I hate, absolutely detest, headlamp lenses.

The lenses come as a clear plastic moulding, taken straight from the body, so they have the marker lines that you need to cut to. I have painted the plastic moulding with Zero yellow candy paint, effectively a clear paint. I used it for no other reason than I had it to hand.



Here the headlight 'jewels' have been fitted.



Lense one trimmed and dry fitted. No tricks, it's just a case of file and test, file and test.



Finally both fitted and secured with Klear, which is still wet hence the effect on the lense. This will disappear once dry.

[lovegt40]

real wonderful little one. Too bad nothing or few in 1/24 for this nice 996 gt.

[Red_Firecracker]

And the final installment.

First job was to put the wheel parts together, namely discs/callipers, backing block and outer;



(yes, really worth the time and effort on shading the discs and detailing the callipers)

Them throw it all up in the air and watch the pieces fall together. The bodyshell required a bit of trimming behind the wheels to get them to fit inside the arches rather than being a scale foot outside, but there was enough meat not to require filling back in again. The roof aerial is a strand of copper wire blackened with a Sharpie and all the little photo etch parts are attached with Klear.