Aston Martin DBR9 - Le Mans '05

[lotus_man]

The competition 126C2 has had to take a back seat for a little while, as I finally got my PM Aston Martin DBR9 kits today, and I've been waiting to build this one since I got back from La Sarthe in June. I've followed the Aston's since Prodrive announced the project last year. Whilst at Le Mans this year we were lucky enough to have seats directly opposite the Aston and Corvette pit boxes, so we kept an eye on them especially.

For those that don't know the car, the photo below is one I took of the car as it ran in the Tourist Trophey (FIA GT) race at Silverstone in May this year. The Le Mans car is slightly different, in that the fender louvres were deleted and the sponsorship was a little different.



A few people who followed my F1 McLaren build a while back asked for a step-by-step guide to doing 1:43 resin kits. I don't claim to be any kind of expert at all, but if your interested to follow along, this is a good starter kit. Hopefully I can help and inspire you, so this will be another one of my very detailed explanations of what I do. Let me know what you think.

The kit is a typical PM affair with a resin body and tub, a large sheet of etched detail parts, som vac-form and printed windows and a bag of assorted goodies. The contents of the box are shown below. For those with good eye sight you'll notice that PM supplied completely weong tyres for the car, in that they are treaded road tyres. I beleive they are aware of this and hopefully I'll be getting the correct parts soon. I won't let it hold me up for now though!





The resin body and tub.



Etched metal fret.



Bag of assorted bits (interior detail, wheels etc.)



Decal sheet. Note that all of the black decal is actually carbon composite.

The first stage of the build is to clean up the castings. In general they are very good with just some molding flash and casting plugs to remove. Some files and wet and dry take care of this. However I noticed at this point that there was a small blemish on one of the nose vents, as shown below



To fix this I've ade up a tiny batch of Milliput (epoxy putty) and using some dental probes dropped and sculpted it roughly in place. I'll wait for it to dry completlly and the sand it so it matches the existing body work.



Well, that's all for tonight, stay tuned for more updates.

[RallyFanatic]

OMG this is gonna rock!
I love the DBR9! Will be watching this very closely indeed.
I hope something can be done about the soft edges on the mold though, you'll be in for a lot of work that's for sure!

[RallyRaider]

Fabulous car and looks like an equally fabulous kit. I will be looking forward to seeing it come together.

[blubaja]

Oo. Good luck on this one. That body is super sexy!

[mike@af]

Oh man, oh man, oh man! I love the DBR9's. I am definately following this thread. I cannot wait to see more.


Do you have more pictures yet?



How about now?

[ScaleCentral]

Am I the only one that thinks it looks kind of like a large mouth bass? I do like the color and shape, but it does remind me a lot of the fish.
Nic

[Ghost Dog]

Hi, where can I buy this kit. I live in Belgium, perhaps on the internet?

[modelfun]

yeyeye！

[klutz_100]

Really looking forward to following this - I'm sure it's going to be amazing

[manu80]

Hi there !!! My name is Manu, I'm from F1m.com and mautomobile forum.
I bought the first edition of the DBR9, the presentation one.
I had no nuts for the wheels, had to find a way to make it. Are there any in your box?
Also, I've almost finished it, and the car doesn't look as close to the ground as it should be. I don't think it's due to the tyres, but the front bumper is a bit high. Just my 2 cents.Hope yours will turn out good !!!!
Good luck
MANU

[lotus_man]

Originally Posted by Ghost Dog

Hi, where can I buy this kit. I live in Belgium, perhaps on the internet?

Try www.grandprixmodels.co.uk they are good guys and will ship all over the place. There is a wait for this kit though... I pre-ordered my two from them so I got ahead of the queue!

Originally Posted by Manu80

I bought the first edition of the DBR9, the presentation one.
I had no nuts for the wheels, had to find a way to make it. Are there any in your box?

I didn't know there was a kit of this already. I thought somebody might have done the presentation car, but I never saw it anywhere. Was it a PMA kit?

As for wheel nuts, I didn't see any and they are not shown on the instructions. However the etched wheels look pretty naff, and when combined with the incorrect tyres I may just wind up replacing the lot (hopefully Renaissance will release a set when there DBR9 turns up!).

Originally Posted by ScaleCentral

Am I the only one that thinks it looks kind of like a large mouth bass? I do like the color and shape, but it does remind me a lot of the fish.

It does! I'll find a picture I took a Silversone on Saturday of the Cirtek DBR-9 running in the 1000km LMES race. Their colour scheme seems to make it look even more fish like.

Right, better get off and do some modelling then I guess.

[lotus_man]

First job today is to clean up the filler on the nose of the body work, some 800 and 1200 wet and dry takes care of this. The body is then given a soak in a light detergent and warm water bath to clean off any dust and release agent ahead of priming. I also scuffed up and added the photoetch plate that forms the deviders in he bonnet vents. A light rub with 1200 grit paper gives a good key for the primer to stick to, and the it's CA'd into place. Here's how it looks at this stage



Next up is to start work on the interior. As soon as I looked into this I new some major work would be involved in fixing this. PMA have done a pretty good job with the cage, and you could probably use it as is. But I have a photo from the Festival of Speed this year showing how the rear of the cage should look, and I want to fix it. So out came the cutters and files again!

First job was to fill the exiting rear holes for the cage upright, as they are too close to the rear arches. I did this with some thick CA glue, and put the rear shelf in at the same time. Then the white metal cage was put into a set of new holes drilled just in front of the originals. The door guards were shortened, and the rear diagonal brace moved forward so it all fitted. I also test fitted the body for clearences at this point. Once I was happy it was all CA'd and left to dry for a while.



Next I took some very fine brass tube that matched the cage diameter and began to cut and glue in the missing parts of the rear cage assembly bit by bit.





Looking through the windows I think the cage looks much more like the prototype now, just two more side bars to add, and some small gaps to be filled.



From the side



Prototype rear view through the back screen.



Same view in 1:43.

Next step is to get it all in primer and then assess the situation. More soon!

[D_LaMz]

Is this a 1/43 or a 1/24 kits?
Can't wait to see more progress pics!

[pettercardoso]

It's looking very good! I am building a 1/43rd from PM right now and I must say that I'm having a blast! Those tiny things are so cute =)

I have a question for you: how do you cut those brass tubes without "crushing" them?

[lotus_man]

Originally Posted by D_LaMz

Is this a 1/43 or a 1/24 kits?
Can't wait to see more progress pics!

It's 1:43. If you check a couple of the pictures you can see it sat with my (normal sized!) scalpel and file. Hopefully that gives an idea of the actual size of the model.

Originally Posted by pettercardoso

I have a question for you: how do you cut those brass tubes without "crushing" them?

For the smallest tube I use a small pair of sharp snips to cut the tube over long and then file the end back to shape, the tube is very soft and not much bigger tahn a thick peice of wire. For larger tube I keep a couple of small tube cutters around, but I don't uyse them taht much. Also a small vice and razor saw can be quite handy, or a cutting disk in a motor tool if you're feeling very lazy!!!