Hello everyone! The kit I’ll be building for the LeMans build is the Revell 2001 C5-R pictured below. The kit has decals for the #63 car of Fellows/O’Connel/Pruett that finished 1st in the GTS Class at LeMans in 2001. The real car is also pictured below
I actually started on this kit about mid-June, so some of this progress is being ‘back-dated' a bit. The kit itself is fairly complex, and has quite a good amount of engine/chassis/suspension/interior details. I believe it would build into a fairly decent kit if built box-stock, however I’ve chosen to *challenge* myself with several changes to the kit. I’ve never undertaken this level of modification, so who knows how it’s going to turn out!
1. Cut out the hood. The body is molded in one solid piece. Why they did this, I don’t know, but there is all kinds of decent engine detail that needs to be seen. The hood will have to be removed. I considered removing the rear section as well, but ruled it out for now.
2. Lower the ride height. A quick mock-up shows that the whole thing will sit way too high (particularly the front). A ‘lowering’ job is in order.
3. After looking at various reference pics (thanks to AF members for some site suggestions!!), I realized that there are several body/panel lines on the kit that will need to be filled/removed.
4. Side vents behind the wheels need to be widened. After looking at ref. pics, I believe the side vents in the kit are too small/narrow.
5. The hood vents need to be opened/rebuilt. The kit’s hood vents are molded in, and very thick. I don’t like ‘em.
6. Other vents around the car will be opened
7. The side window frames need to be shaved down/redone
8. The rear diffuser at the back of the car seems to thick (and warped) to me. I’ll build a better one from brass/styrene
9. The rear wing in the kit looks pretty good, but I may replace the end pieces with thinner brass sheet (trying to find a good ref. picture of this.)
10. The interior seat has the seatbelts molded in. These will need to be removed and replaced with something else (scratch? Aftermarket?)
11. The interior has some molded in wiring and electrical boxes. These will be removed and scratch-built
12. Engine headers will be scratch-built (plastic kit version is pretty poor)
13. Suspension (shocks) need to be scratch-built)
14. Various wiring/engine plumbing/etc will be attempted. Just how far I’ll go is yet to be determined (and will likely depend on how well everything else goes…)
15. I’m not sure about the windows/glass yet. I’d like to put in some replacement (thinner) windows, but this model is molded so that the windows go on from the *outside* of the body, rather than the inside. This could make it a bit more challenging to get the new *glass* flush with the surrounding window edges…
16. The wheels/tires are a bit of an unknown right now. I’m not sure what it is, but they just don’t really look right to me. Maybe they’ll be better once they’re painted and the tires sanded…
So here’s an early build-up of the kit pieces to see how everything would fit. I’ve already cut the hood free and started on re-building the hood-vents in this picture. I’ve also fudged the ride height a bit to lower the front end for the pics. It probably needs to go even lower…
The hood was removed using the ‘sewing thread’ method. This was the first time I tried this and it worked very well. I was amazed how well the hood fit after I had removed it. Here’s a pic of the section that was removed (again, you can see that I’ve started some work on the hood vents…)
As already shown, the hood vents were a bit of a challenge. I removed them with a dremel and realized very quickly that the plastic around these areas is very thick. I cleaned up the edges (and repaired a few nicks!), filled in the incorrect panel lines, and started to install thin strips of styrene cut to size. I CA glued them in place as best I could. They’re not really a perfect representation of the real thing, but in my eyes they’re a LOT better than what was in the kit. I still need to figure out how to put the 'center support strip' into the vent in the middle of the hood. Here’s a pic of the real thing compared to my almost completed hood.
Here’s a before and after photo of the expanded side vents:
The rear diffuser was built from thin brass sheet and some styrene strip:
Here's a few other misc. pics of various things:
