Auster racer project

[86_SR5]

no turbo, go all motor. Seen this on a mid 90's civic hb the car is gold, looks clean, 2'' lowering, 16'' rims, very nice car. The sticker on the back said: All Motor Baby!

[ratdat]

Originally Posted by 86_SR5

no turbo, go all motor. Seen this on a mid 90's civic hb the car is gold, looks clean, 2'' lowering, 16'' rims, very nice car. The sticker on the back said: All Motor Baby!

Hehe, I do track days in my Datsun 510 and that's non-turbo but will kick the ass of a lot of modern turbo stuff... and it's even better that it'll do it without a turbo Torque + light weight is a winner every time

The only reason I'd kind of like to stay turbo on the Auster is the Group 5 race cars of that era were. Those Silhouette cars like the Silvia and Skyline were 2.0L but put out nearly 570bhp...Awesome for the early eighties, especially when the engine is based on a 1967 dessign

[86_SR5]

then make you a turbo out of the stuff I used to make my exhaust pipe, 12 gage 20 amp house wire, It should be sheathed 2 x's with 2 wires in single sheaths, then wraped with another sheath, peel the first sheet and make that turbo.

SENSATIONAL!!! cant believe that i missed this thread, the attention to detail and engineering is brilliant, its great to see something unique and way off left field,this give me a good inside on how to plan a major project, have you logged how many hours so far that you have poured into this model??keep up the good work!

[86_SR5]

Hey, RATDAT, btw, what color is this car gona be when it's ready for paint, or have you decided on that paint scheme??

[ratdat]

The main colour will be black with greenish-gold bits like the Nissan March in the background here..



I have got a bit of an update. I put priming the body on hold for a while as I fugured I still have to handle it quite a bit until the chassis and suspension are done. I started work on the suspension today. The first thing I did, which is rather a major change at this stage.... was i mover the front wheel arches up the body by about 4mm. This allows me to get the front much lower to the ground and keeps the angles of the lower suspension arms correct (I'm getting carried away with the accuracy maybe? )
This mod meant I had to find some narrower rims for the front as they touched the inner wing in front of the strut tower. This wasn't much of a bother as I needed to have slicks on it anyway and didn't have any to fit the old rims. I now have some nice fat RS Watanabes, only painted silver rather than the usual black. I added some valve stems to them as well. The front sits nice and low now. I think I'll build some kind of diffuser under the rear end.



A rummage through the parts bin found me everything i need for building the suspension. A C10 Skyline crossmember and swaybar for the front and the same car donates it's diff and suspension arms for the rear. The front struts are from a Fujimi R33 Skyline. I'll replace the brakes with the Brembos shown in the pic below. I'm cutting off the strut legs and making my own from aluminium tubing. the spring in the pic is 20A fuse wire. I'll make the rear springs too. I also have to make the rear crossmember and some suspension mounting brackets so it's off to my LHS tomorrow (not very local unfortunately..a 35 mile round trip ) for some supplies

[86_SR5]

You know that'll look damn good on that car. I bought a ford probe (don't laff) that I wanted Rs wantanabes on, my LHS had them, so I bought them. Come to find out, 2 rims had the deepest dish I've seen, put it this way, imagine a 1/24 scale 15'' wide rim with the offset in the front. That's how they were, so I converted it to rwd. Long story short, those deep rear wheels will look better than the ones you have on now, just my

Here's a pic, sorry so blurry, no macro-mode on my cam



But as you can tell, it's a pretty deep dish.

[bah humbug]

It's so AWESOME! I love it!

It looks beautiful. WOW!

[willimo]

Originally Posted by ratdat

The main colour will be black with greenish-gold bits like the Nissan March in the background here..

HOORAY! That's going to look awesome. But with all the incredible detail work you're throwing into it, you could paint it absolutely any color and it would look great. I'm really impressed with how well it's coming along, I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical after your first couple posts. Like snk33y said it's very interesting to see this thing go through all these stages of buildup. It doesn't look like you planned it a lot at the start, but you're planning the hell out of it now!

Oh, and it just occured to me, letting the exhaust out the sideskirt shouldn't be too hard. You'd have to cut the undercarriage a lot, but you could run it in a recesses portion of the floorboard, taking a cue from the R34 Skylines they race these days. I don't know much about the racers in the '80's but I can't imagine them doing something much different. And running the exhaust out that would continue with your incredible attention to detail and the racing heritage this car is being birthed from.

Keep it up! I can't wait to see this car finished.

[86_SR5]

Originally Posted by willimo

Oh, and it just occured to me, letting the exhaust out the sideskirt shouldn't be too hard. You'd have to cut the undercarriage a lot, but you could run it in a recesses portion of the floorboard, taking a cue from the R34 Skylines they race these days. Keep it up! I can't wait to see this car finished.

I did that with a probe RWD drift car, before I trashed it.

[supramike420]

wow now that its all one color it looks great that takes a lotta time to do sumthin like that, very fine work

[ratdat]

Hi again I haven't been able to get on here and read the new posts for a few days as I've been too busy but I figured before I dive into catching up on everything I'd post an update.

Progress is fairly slow but steady. I've been working on the front suspension. I started with the front crossmember and lower arm assembly from the Tamiya KPGC10 Skyline. I didn't like the way it was moulded ...in particular the junction between the suspension arm and the crossmember itself. So I carefully carved away the plastic and I think the result looks much more realistic...here you can see one side done for comparison...



Next I started on the struts. I've done one side so far. I started with struts from a Fujimi 180SX kit. I sanded the rotor and caliper away and then cut away the rest of the back plate. The strut leg was replaced with some aluminium tube with a little collar of slightly larger tube slipped over for a spring seat. The spring is 20A fuse wire as is the shock absorber piston rod. The top mount is made from different diameter bits of aluminium tube glued inside each other.

I used the PE rotors from SAS (very nice!) but wanted to use the nice Brembo calipers that come moulded onto the drilled rotor set that comes with Fujimi wheel sets. This was an absolute nightmare to do as I had to cut two of them away from the moulded rotors and join them together to make one caliper. The hard bit was carving the backs of them to form a slot for the rotor to run in as before glueing the halves together. They are really hard to hold as they are so small but with plenty of fresh scalpel blades and care it worked. Amazingly I didn't slice any fingers! The result is the rotors ...rotate! All that's left to do is trim the steering arm joint down to a realistic size! I might do a how-to on the rotating rotors when I do the other side if anyone is interested as it used common easy to get parts and is based on the very common Fujimi struts. It's not painted yet but here's the results so far...



Oh yeah, and before anyone says anything... I know the rotor is on the wrong side ... I was so busy working on getting it to go together and work I never noticed until I was done. Luckily as I haven't painted it the rotor isn't glued to the center pin yet!
Now, I better go and get reading the rest of the posts

[jgmodelcars]

Wow great work. This is coming along well and keeps looking more amazing!

[86_SR5]

nice rotor, looks so realistic.

[bigfrit]

It's always a great pleasure to read up on your awesome, and meticulous progress.

I love al the mods you r doing and as an extra which is commonly forgot while doing modifications to modelcars, yu DO respect the authenticity and accuracy!
This is just a stunning piece of (I shall not call it modeling , because that might be a diminuitive in this case) Engineering.

And about the rotating rotors, I would love to see a how-to about it, but first make sure you finish this baby!

It's gorgeous!

Olivier
(and thanks for the elaborate updates! I love them)