Le Mans Contest Entry: 2001 Corvette C5-R

[GT-Alex]

The engine looks nice, i especially like the timing belts.

[Vric]

look very good so far.

bit slow progress, but look good

[StephenDeli]

Looks good so far. As for the CF decals for the airboxes are kinda dodgy. They dont cover the airboxes as good as they should. But it doesn't look all that bad.

[Murray Kish]

Thanks for your comments!!

NME NVADR - hopefully you'll post some pics of your build too! I haven't found to many build-ups of this kit on the net...

Ales - Those wheels do look quite a bit nicer. However, unless someone is going to offer me a set for sale, I think I'm just gonna cut my losses and go with the ones from the Porsche kit. I think the thing I didn't like about the wheels in the C5-R kit is that the spokes didn't go right to the edge of the wheel (as you identified). Makes the rim look too wide, and the spokes too small. The alternate wheels I have do a good enough job (for me) of fixing that.

Vric - yes, progress is far too slow on this kit. Winter is coming soon though, so that will mean more time indoors, and more time at the bench...

StephenDeli - I don't really like the kit decals for the airboxes either. I didn't really like the CF pattern as it seemed too big/harsh for me. I tried putting some SMS carbon fibre decal on one of the airboxes, but it was my first time making a decal pattern, so it didn't turn out that great.

Another progress item to come soon - I've started gluing the frame to the chassis and a major glitch has occured. I'll need advice from the crew here before I proceed further.... pics and description to follow later tonight...

Murray

[NME NVADR]

Yeah I'll post pics!
Today I used my metal files to remove the molded in seat belt and painted most of the roll cage.
I really like how you cut out the stock vents slats and custom did them. If I feel brave enough I might try to do that. You have done a great job so far, I hope mine turns out atleast half as good. lol

[Murray Kish]

NME NVADR - I highly suggest you look at Bill's (bvia) build of the same model. He exposed the vents too, but after looking at his, I wish I'd have done it his way. Essentially, he ground away all of the plastic beneith and around the molded in vents!! It's the kit vents, just with all of the surrounding plastic cut away (this would be a big job because the plastic in this area seems to be pretty thick!!!). Here's the link to the post with his C5-R:
http://www.automotiveforums.com/vbul...ighlight=c5%2A

On to my problem. If you look in the pic below, you'll see that I've started assembling the chassis and frame, etc. Notice that the front of the car sort of lifts up!! When the suspension and all of the various stuff is connected together, it pulls the front of the car up. I don't know if this is something unique to my build or not, but a test fit of the body and hood showed that nothing is gonna fit right if I leave it like this. I tried to cut the frame tubing (circled) to see if I could just bend it into place, but I think that'll be a hard road. I considered putting it in hot water to bend it, but there's a lot of glue joints here and I'm sure to break something if I try it.



My alternative is to do a little surgery. I've marked a little 'V' on the main frame on the pic below. I figure if I cut through most of the frame (from the top), I should be able to bend it into the correct position. I'd fill the gap with styrene and superglue to solidify it again. I would likely replace the round tubing (already cut) with brass tubing.



Well, what do you think? Will it work? Can anyone offer a better alternative??

Murray

[NME NVADR]

hmmmm... That's wierd. I guess just go ahead with the surgery...
BTW I noticed you removed the battery and wires from the right side of the center console. I am thinking about cutting off that whole area and custom building it with wires, styrene and putty.
Good luck with the surgery.

[GvEman]

Looks good! That is strange about that frame of yours. But I think you can manage to fix it!
I had one of these kits... but i cutted it in to peaces and used the stuf fore other projects :P Keep it up!

[Fkouch]

I Love scratchbuilding projects like this. I hope you get the chance to work on it because I love this car and I love seeing how some of the guys on here create from scratch.

By the way, I thought you might like to check this out. Its probably old news to this board but I came across it on a Japenese web site. It must be 1:12 but if it is 1:24 then its bloody awesome. Hopefully it'll help you to build yours.








Cheers

Farrokh

[Murray Kish]

Well, I've made a bit of progress, and realized a few things. Firstly, my skills aren't up to snuff to finish this project off like I was originally hoping. Second, I know very little about the mechanicals of cars, and this makes it very hard to add hose/wiring details. I do have lots of good ref. photos, but even with that, I find myself guessing alot. So, hopefully you'll all understand that what you are about to see is becoming less and less 'accurate', and more and more 'representative.'

So on to the pics.

This is just a pic of some bottles/containers in the car. The small one goes in the front, the larger one in the back (the plastic kit version is on the far left)


Here's a pic of the frame/chassis before paint went on it. I attached the rear diffuser and made a few other additions from thin metal (fuel cell tops)


Here's some paint. Generally, the whole thing was sprayed flat black first. Then I masked off the chassis and various other items and sprayed an unknown paint color on the frame pieces. The paint was originally a Model Masters color of some kind, but the label came off and I never kept track of what it was. It sorta looks like a steel-grey color, which seemed to match the pics I had pretty close.


Here's my attempt at doing some SMS CF decals on the airboxes. Not the greatest, but they'll do. The SMS decals are very nice to work with and have a nice pattern. I cut out the 'Corvette C5-R' portion from the kit decal and put it on top of the SMS decals. Some of you may notice that the weave of the CF decal on the kit decal goes the opposite way of the SMS decal --- oops. Should have fixed that, but it's done now and it's not too noticeable unless you really look hard. I'll do more touch-ups on the engine when I start working on the engine compartment.


This is the 'bottle' that goes in the rear of the car. It's painted gloss black, and then some aluminum powder was rubbed in to give it a metalic look. I'll add some more aluminum powder before it's installed because it's a bit delicate for handling. A couple of the hoses will go in/out of this item.


Here's a few of the electronic boxes that will go into the interior of the car. I had absolutely no ref. pics of these items, so I just replicated what was originally molded into the interior of the car. Wires will go in/out of them once they get installed. The masking tape around the boxes is intended to look like straps that would hold down the boxes.


Well, here's the rear of the car with most of the wiring installed. I tried to follow ref. pics, but it gets hard to really know where everything goes. Much of this is just wires that start and end in random places. The metallic 'bottle' from the earlier pic will go in the back and a couple of the hoses will feed in/out of it. There's a 'tube' that joins the two fuel cells (top of the pic) that was scratch built from some heavy wire that I had. In the ref. pics I have this looks more like a black hose than the metallic pipe the way I've represented it. I may end up painting it black, but I kinda like the metallic look to break up the monotony of the black. Not in the pic is two similar metallic tubes that will run from the fuel cells back to the rear of the car (where the fuel filler connection is). Lots of pics I have actually show the fuel filler on the right side of the rear window, but it's hard to tell what year/config of car this is on. I decided to just leave it on the rear of the car instead of try to change it. Future updates will show the filler tubes better.


OK, that's it for now. I'm trying to get the interior done, and then on to the engine area. I'm really beginning to realize how awesome a lathe or mill would be to do some stuff. That won't happen soon, but if I start saving now, perhaps it could be a reality someday!! (if anyone has any links or reasonable suggestoins about lathes/mills, feel free to include them here, or PM, or email). Thanks for your previous encouragement.

Murray

[freakray]

Dayum, that's looking good!

[WeaPoN [X]]

Youre doing a stellar job on such an ambitious project.

JeFF

[DJ_Merle]

That is looking Beautiful so far!! Keep up the good work!

[RallyRaider]

Fantastic work Murray! I think your skills are coping just fine. Could that mystery paint be gunmetal?

[Murray Kish]

Thanks guys. No progress to report since the pics. Hoping to get a bit of work done this week since 99% of the people I work with are American (I'm Canadian), and most of them will be celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. Should give me a few days of down time too!!

Farrokh - I think I forgot to thank you for the pics of that car. It looks bloody awesome! I don't think it was built from the same kit as I'm using... If it was, the guy did a ton of scratchbuilding. The pics have given me some good ideas for details to add to my build.

Phil - Thanks for your comments. I wish I knew a bit more of the technical aspect of these cars...it would make it a lot easier. The paint very well could be gunmetal, but I'm not absolutely positive. I don't even have another bottle of gunmetal to compare with.

Hopefully more pics later this week!!

Cheers

Murray