[911 Tribute] Arri/Otaki 1/24 911 Turbo

[hirofkd]

So many great kits to build...


But I ended up choosing this crude Arii 911 Turbo kit !


The body seems descent, and my goal is not to get carried away by trying to fix every imperfections, but to focus on finishing the kit.


Doors and engine lid are separate, which I like.


Sprue A contains door panels, engine lid and a set of rear view mirror parts (driver side only).


Sprue B has some chassis and interior parts. The floor part in the top right corner shows the kit's origin as a motorized kit.
Front suspension look descent (for the kit's age). The bottom of the engine is included, but it sits a little too low to the ground. The seats look accurate according to my reference photos.


Sprue C has some additional interior parts and two-piece dashboard, which features fairly descent details (again for the age).


Sprue D contains all the window parts, headlight lenses and backup light lenses. Chrome-plated sprue E contains headlight brackets, shifter, mirror face, and exhaust tip. It also contains door handles, which don't have to be plated, but at least they are separate.
Sprue F are turning indicators, and here's another problem: they are all clear-red. I'll eventually have to make my own clear orange parts. Another problem is that the rear window has brackets for the engine lid hinges. I'll either have to carefully sand and smooth the brackets, or vacuum-form the entire rear window.


Sprue G is for chrome plated wheels, whose diameter is 19.5 mm, which translates to the correct 17 inch. On the other hand, the tires don't look realistic because the edge is not rounded enough.
(Correction) I totally screwed up the wheel assessment above. The kit' wheel is approximately 13 inch (visible diameter of 15.5 mm) Early Turbo had 15 in wheels, so the visible diameter in 1/24 scale is 17.4 mm. The difference is almost 2 mm, and that's a little too much to fix when using the kit part. I'll probably use a sheet styrene to increase the flange thickness by 0.5 mm or so.


I don't know how long the kit was sitting in the store shelf, but the decals are stained by the rubber tires.


Surprisingly, the body has rubber moldings as shown below. The kit was originally designed to be a motorized toy. Maybe the kit designer was a detail freak.


But here is another problem. The turning indicators should be a little closer to the center, but they are too far apart. Also the bumper doesn't protrude enough.


The kit uses a typical over-sized and unrealistic hinge design for strength, which is unavoidable because the kit was designed to be a toy.
Fix shouldn't be too difficult, though...


Wipers are molded in, so they have to be shaved off and replaced with aftermarket parts. The air intake will have to be opened, as well.


Here are some additional detail photos. The rear seat area looks descent, but the engine is... Yeah, what do you expect from a motorized kit?!


Checking the ride height. The rear seems fine, but the front will have to be lowered by about 1 mm.


Given the kit's age, the model looks fairly good, which surprised me, even though I knew Otaki was one of the better manufacturers back then. I thank the original kit designer for getting the basics right, and Arii for maintaining the molds all these years, which doesn't come cheap.



So, what do you think about this old kit? It was on sale last year at HLJ for only 1020 yen! (MSRP is 1500 yen)
The kit is so basic that I think I'll have a lot of fun with it.

[rallymaster]

Very original model, seems good as it has engine details and opened doors.
Will follow it, I have a Otaki 930 turbo kit but it's way less detailed as yours is.

[corvettekid_7684]

I just aquired a 1/16 Otaki Lamborghini Miura, which is very similar to this kit in details & opening doors etc. Also motorized with working lights (headlights even pop up!) I think the tires are the same as this kit. Dunlop?
Maybe not bad for its age, but the 1/12 Countach is worlds better while also being old. Interesting none the less. I'll follow this build

[lovegt40]

ahah Hiroaki, what a great collection of 911 kits there !
This Otaki looks real good, I am waiting to make something similar with the terrible carrera rs from revell, not looking nice at all as this one.

keep on postin !

[hirofkd]

I've been working slowly on this model, and now I have some updates I can share.

The front was lowed by just a bit, and I also made sure all four tires touched the ground.


While adjusting the ride height, I noticed that the a part of the chassis was
interfering the motion of the tie-rod, so I shaved off the excess plastic,
and replaced the kit's tie-rod with a thinner strip of plastic.


Position of the engine needed to be raised, but that would require cutting
a part of the chassis that hold the rear wheel shaft, so I glued a piece of
plastic washer to the trailing-arm looking detail on the chassis. I also filled
a large hole, which was meant for an electric motor and gears.


Once the shaft mounting point was relocated, I was able to cut the chassis.


Exhaust pipe and the bottom of the engine was visible from the rear,
but now it's nicely tacked away.


Front bumper will have to be moved forward, so I used epoxy putty to
determine the gap between the chassis and the body. I also extended the
rear end of the chassis to fill the gap in the engine room.


Challenge to myself in this build is to use as much kit parts as possible.
I started building the missing components of the engine by starting with the engine shroud.


Then I fabricated the intake parts with various pieces of styrene.


When the throttle body was made, the height of the engine turned out too tall,
so I had to shorten the intake flanges.


Engine room is sparse, so you can see the metal shaft. I'm going to have to
fabricate the missing chassis member with the rear shock posts.


Still a long way to go.

[ridefast]

It is already really impressive. Great job! =)

[ianc911]

Hideous wheels!

Looking good so far, I like your engine work. You've got a little ways to go though...

ianc

[hirofkd]

My Otaki/Arii 911 kit required moving of the rear window, because it was
too far back by about 2.5mm, so I decided to add the roof vent details
while working on the body.

< First try>
The vents are indented from the back end of the roof, so I cut out and
glued a curved plastic sheet, and used it as a guide when punching holes at
the constant spacing of 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm. (This measurement is only
good for the inaccurately narrow roof of the Otaki/Arii 911 kit.)
Then I made the vents deeper with a scriber, and cleaned each vent with
the back end of 0.2mm drill bit. After that, I trimmed the unwanted area away.


Despite the use of a drill bit, the height of the vents didn't turn out even.
But while cleaning the part, I noticed that the backside looked much more
even and cleaner, so I made the second attempt.

< Second try >
Instead of applying a curved plastic, I scribed a curve, and used it as a
guide when punching holes. Then I cleaned each vent with a drill bit as
before, and then I glued a piece of curved plastic on the cleaner side.


A strip of vent details was cut out from the plastic sheet, and glued to the body.


However, the vents are so narrow in height that it's almost unnoticeable!!
(just like on the real car) No wonder why most kit manufacturers omit this.

< Third Try >
So, I used a 0.3 mm drill bit for clean up, and the vents turned out much
more noticeable. This will be grafted to another project (most likely Tamiya's 934 kit).


So, if you are going to add this detail, 0.2 mm is no good.

[24hrs]

Wow! Those vents are exactly what I needed for my 959! Good tutorial!

[JeremyJon]

Nice work Hiroaki, looking forward to seeing more! bravo!

[ChristopheB]

Very interesting thread! Thank you for posting.

[lovegt40]

very interesting trial to make the vents not so easy detail to add.

still suspicius 959 dont has theme, but mayb I am wrong (i mean I still didnt find a clear photo of such part),even if yes...also probably 961 had it.Or maybe not being a racer?

[24hrs]

Originally Posted by lovegt40

very interesting trial to make the vents not so easy detail to add.

still suspicius 959 dont has theme, but mayb I am wrong (i mean I still didnt find a clear photo of such part),even if yes...also probably 961 had it.Or maybe not being a racer?

Hello lovegt40! Check out www.canepacollection.com. They have photos of 3 959's. Lots of photos of the rear part of the 959 showing the vents.

[24hrs]

Btw, they also have a vasek polak 934 there with lots of detail pics! Might help somebody who's building a 934.