Mini Cooper S

[wadny]

So, I've been lurking around the forum and occasionally posting comments for a few years now, and thought I should take a shot at a WIP. I'm building a Mini Cooper S from the Airfix 1/32 kit that came out recently. My son has a 2009 Mini Cooper S, so I decided to try to duplicate his car.

[wadny]

The Airfix kit is very nice, with clean molding and good detail, but there were two problems for me. The first was that the wheels in the kit were a different style than the ones on my son's car, and the second was that the kit is right-hand drive, and I needed left-hand drive. Here's a picture of the desired wheel style.

[wadny]

There were a couple of other problems. The wheels are molded in two pieces - a wheel and tire with a hollow back, and an inner tire sidewall. Because of the molding process, there is no tread detail on the tires. Also, the inner tire sidewall dropped too far into the tire. I fixed that problem by cutting a duplicate of the inner tire sidewall in 0.020" plastic sheet and gluing it to the back of the inner tire sidewall to space it out to the tire edge.

[wadny]

Then I glued strips of 0.010" thick by 0.020" wide plastic to the tire tread area to give a simple tread.

[Ferrari TR]

Great ideas on improving a simple kit!
KUTGW!

[wadny]

For the next step, I used a sprue cutter to remove the spokes from the wheel and cleaned up the inside of the wheel rim. I salvaged the wheel hub, since the inside of the hub where it mounts to the brake disc is a bit complex.

[wadny]

I then took a piece of 0.040" plastic sheet and laid out a circle and radial spokes. Then I rough cut the circle and drilled a hole to mount the disk in my Dremel. I used a file to round off the disk and apply a bevel to match the inside of the wheel rim.

[wadny]

Then I drilled out the center of the disk and beveled it to fit over the wheel hub.

[wadny]

Finally, I used a razor saw to cut out the spokes, and glued the hub and spoke assembly into the wheel rim.

[wadny]

After filing, sanding, puttying and priming, the wheel and tire looked pretty good, so I had a friend make a mold and cast some copies in resin. If anyone is interested in this wheel, you can get resin copies from Section 8 Hobbies in Buffalo, NY.



I cleaned up four resin wheels, primed them, and painted the wheel with Alclad gloss black base. Then I masked the wheel and painted the tire with Model Master Black Chrome mixed with a little flat white. I buffed the sidewalls with a Q-tip to give them a hint of sheen, and they're done.

[wadny]

Next I started working on the conversion to left hand drive. Fortunately, the Mini dashboard is symmetrical, so it only needed to have the steering column moved from the right side to the left.

[wadny]

After lots of filing and sanding, the dashboard looked OK so my friend made another mold and copied it in resin.

[ChristopheB]

Great work on the wheels! Especially with this scale.

Too bad you did not increase the rim diameter and reduce the tire profile to match the actual wheels.

Interesting WIP.

[wadny]

Thanks for the comments! To be honest, the tire profile never even occurred to me. I think my son's car has 17" rims, and I just assumed the wheels in the kit were the same. I'll have to take some measurements just to satisfy my curiosity now.

[ChristopheB]

I would say that your son's car has 17" an that the ones on the model are 16". Again, great work so far.