LeMans Porsche 911GT1 '98 BBR 1:43

[mrawl]

Yikes! You should be designing/prototyping real cars with work like this. Just amazing.

[ariel]

Simply . I like 1/43 cars have a bunch of them I tought that correcting
panel lines was awesome this build has just raised that level for 1/43. Its one thing to buy a Tameo, Arena, Rens, PMA, Profil etc full detail kit but to put all this work into correcting a 1/43 kit is AMAZING. Please don't stop keeping us posted on your progress. I'm keeeping a close eye on this build opcorn: .
Ariel

[jaykay640]

mrawl.....that's actually what i do :-)

Thanks for the comments all of you. I really appreciate them....although i do think you exagerate a bit:-)
I don't think it's "that" amazing. I've seen wilder things being done on 1:43rds and i'm planning to try more on future builds...
I'll post some more progress on the weekend.


Cheers!

[jaykay640]

O.k….here it goes!

After the work I showed you in the last update the model was ready for a final layer of 2K-primer. All the pieces were wet sanded with 1200 grit paper and then I painted the body with RAL9005 pure white 2Kpaint.





That paint layer may look a bit thick but it was going to get another go with 1200 paper again which turned out nicely. After that I put on another thin but wet final layer of white paint…I thought!
That is because over night disaster stroke big time!
The next morning when I took the part out of the cupboard from drying I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I saw the result. That wasn’t orange peel but rather some kind of bad skin disease in terminal state!

After talking to the painters in my company it seemed that between those two layers of paint the hardener went “bad” and ruined the paint.
Whatever it was I had to re-sand the whole body and in the process I basically had to “dig” out all the little details again. The bad part about 2K-paint is that it is unimpressed by chemical treatment, so sanding it was!
I started doing that ( I have no pictures of that period because I was just too p…..off to take any…) but then decided to cheer myself up and started painting and CF-decaling the small add-ons like wings and stuff .
That worked nicely until I got to cover the parts up with some clear. It was 2K again but a different paint from another manufacturer with another hardener…and it went bad again. Unlike on previous models ( and other stuff afterwards ) the paintjob was very uneven and messy. It just looked like the bloody little thing was cursed or something like that.
In the end I was so annoyed I put it back in its box, moved it to the far end of my table ( very close to the bin in fact ) and went back working on the McLaren.

Then came the summer holidays and I needed something small to take on a family visit and play with, so I took the little sucker along and spent almost 2 days reworking the whole surface of the body and redo the details and edges with files, body filler and sand paper.
Finally I got back to where I was before painting. I actually improved a little bit here and there in the process but also in other areas the result was less good.
Anyway, after that I primed the body again, sanded and then put on white paint. This time I tried Zero-Paints though and was very happy about the result. The pure white covered very well with very thin coats of paint. Definitely recommend it for 1:43.
Next up I had to do the black areas that would later be CF. I didn’t wanna take any risks though as the matt white basecoat is very sensible to dirt and overspray difficult to repair. So before doing the black paint I put on a layer of 2K-clear ( also Zero in this case ) and wet sanded it. Then after some serious masking I sprayed the black parts with Zero Jet black. No problems at all here. The 2K-layer underneath made it very easy to wipe off excess paint and glue from masking tape with a bit of Isopropyl alcohol.
From now on there will be pictures again..sorry for all the blabla :-) Here’s the result after painting:








Looks a bit dull but now finally came the enjoyable part….decals!
I wanted to do the CF first ( just in case something went wrong and I needed another round of painting ( at that point after all the troubles I expected everything…) but I couldn’t resist and started with the livery.
The Cartograf decals were great to work with and had only minimal excess carrier film in some areas. The down part were the graphics themselves. BBR kept to the level of quality they had started with on the resin parts. Everything looks okay’ish but ultimately not a single decal was really right compared to my reference. That is quite remarkable! The Italians and French like to call that artistic license very often…I call it too lazy to make it spot on ( you may disagree but that’s how I see it )! Ultimately if you see the finished model it looks good. Judge for yourself :-)





For the dark CF decals I used Interdecals KE3 decals ( a french manufacturer ) which looked very close to the real Porsche. The pattern is not as bright as the SMS ones.
In the wheel arches I added some SMS 1/43 yellow kevlar and some SMS pewter Kevlar went into the inside of the rear end of the car.











These pictures were taken before adding another layer of 2K-clear on top. After all that stuff could ruin the decals und put a final nail in the model’s coffin :-)
Anyway everything went nicely this time and I wet sanded the clear again and polished it up to 6000 grit with Micromesh. I didn’t go any further because the real cars weren’t polished to Pebble Beach levels either :-)
For the CF areas I had planned to not polish them and keep them to a rougher slightly matt look. That works on even surfaces but is very tricky to impossible on the small and detailed ones I had on the body ( like window frames ) so in the end I decided to airbrush these parts ( and also the wing and other CF bits ) with a misty layer of matt clear Revell enamel paint. That’s the next best thing I can achieve so far.
In this next shot you can kind of make the difference out, but now it was time to get back to some details.





First up were the headlights. The kit comes with photoetched parts with blobs of clear for lenses on them. They were not right but worked as a starting point. I sanded them flat and polished them. Then I made these white rings from styrene rods to get them closer to the originals. They were now looking a bit flat though. So to add some depth I made additional lenses from acrylic glass rods. I think that looks better. Here you see them already mounted:





There are also the small additional lights and the indicators ( hardly visible ) are made from PE pieces with a drop of transparent orange.

This is it for now. More on the progress of the interior in the next update!

Thanks for your attention:-)

[M-Tuning]

Very nice, and very small, but looks like 1:24

[davesans]

The body looks awesome with the decals on you did a great job on the head light too.

[klutz_100]

My flabber is gasted

[360spider]

Top notch work Jay, really raising the bar for small scale builds here. I know first hand working with 1:43 is not easy. Keep it up.

[Big Kahuna]

Hey Jay,
I was reading through the part where you repainted the body and noted you talking in past tense. Is this a retro WIP?

The work you are doing is magnificent. Definitely inspirational.

Regards
Nenad

[gionc]

Fantastic and inspiring. BRAVO!!!

[kanedge]

Excellent painting and decalling skills. CF is top notch.

[mrawl]

Egad! That is amazing. The headlights look fantastic, great work. CF and decals are also fab.

[Spike2933]

truely a work of art, such a beauty, I wish Porsche would come back to Lemans with another Lemans winning car, (hopefuly the Carerra GT rumor is true about being a P1 car)

[jaykay640]

G’day gentlemen! Here’s some more progress.

@BigKahuna…. I don’t know if “retro” is the right description. The model is just ahead of what I show here as you correctly noted. I’m just doing the write up for the build report. Otherwise the updates wouldn’t be so quick ( who ever followed my McLaren so far knows what I mean :-)

I carried on working on the interior. After black paint it was decorated with SMS CF decals. I chose them for the interior because they are a bit brighter and will hopefully be more visible once the interior is mounted.
Everything was covered up with some clear and the top of the dashboard was sprayed with a misty coat of matt black enamel.





From the other side you can see the dashboard part with the switches. These came as a decal in the kit.





Next was the seat. I painted it all semi gloss black, then masked the back to spray the front side with black enamel again. I used a thick mixture at high pressure from a distance with my airbrush again like on the dash. That leads to a rough surface building up that looks a bit like suede or rough leather.
Then I added a Museum Collection Kevlar decal at the back and brushed on some Future to seal it. I didn’t wanna take any chances putting the decal first with clear on top and then mask it to spray the front. Normally that should work but there’s always a chance to rip the decal off with the masking tape. Anyway…most of that work will be hidden inside the cockpit :-(





During handling afterwards the edges of the seat kind of wore off a bit which gives a nice “used” look.

I also put the electronic ”board” together. All parts were painted semi gloss black, several CFed, then glued in place and souped up with wires brass bits and some drops of paint.




In the next picture you see the parts dry mounted in the cockpit piece.



The seat was still missing the belts. I used the material that came in the kit. The PE buckles and self adhesive red belt material gave the choice of showing the belts buckled or unbuckled.
I chose the latter as there’s no driver after all :-)
I didn’t trust the self-sticking abilities of the belt material so I added some drops of superglue for mounting.






The decals came in the kit as well and worked with no problem. For the Recaro one I tried the red ( strong ) Tameo decal fluid for the first time. That stuff is supposed to literally “melt “ decals into tyre surfaces so I decided to see how that works on the seat as the decal was never going to stick on the rough painted surface otherwise.
A big drop of the stuff worked already too much. It more or less dissolved the decal in a matter of seconds. Should work on the tyres too but I’d have to be a bit more careful :-)

The complete seat was then mounted in the cockpit and I added the steering wheel and a gear lever I turned from aluminium.




From the other side you can see the now mounted E-Board and the subframe for the seat I made from leftover nickel silver PE sprues.






With that the interior was ready for installation!

While working on the interior I also carried on with the other bits. The details for the rear end were painted black, some CF’d and the clear coated.
The rear lights were airbrushed with transparent orange and red ( masking wasn’t exactly fun on those ) and then cleared over with 2K clear and polished. You can see they are not perfect but I decided to keep them like that. The surfaces of the glass pieces that are hidden inside the housings were painted silver for added reflectivity but to be honest if they are not directly in the light they’re quite dark. Maybe white would have been better.






So this is getting closer to the finish line:-) More in the next update!

[Spike2933]

holy cow, I hope my Porsche can look like that on the inside, well done