Air Cooled - Porsche RSR 1994 Le Mans

[mrawl]

The LHS was tossing this Fujimi curbside out for nada, and my Tamiya GT2 needed company, so I thought I'd try it as a sort of companion build. I briefly considered doing a highly detailed build but the kit has a lot of problems as you will see, and I have some more ambitious stuff planned anyway, so it'll be just a nice clean build I think (I hope!)...

Here's the car. It's a 964 RSR. I like those night running lights. First problem - they're not included in the kit. Damn it! I might try to scratch them.


The body is an impressive one-piece/fused molding. Seams are almost invisible. The front fender/light pods are not perfectly curved like I would expect (a bit flattened on top), but that might be the car itself, I need to check on that. (I'm erasing the fuel cap here)


Chassis. Very nice surface detail. Some parts would be easier to paint if separated, but I'm not complaining, it looks pretty good to me.


Interior. Yick! Major loss here - it's a vanilla Carrera, they just did a minimal mod to the street kit. Oh well, it'll still look ok, and I might scratch some mods.


Very poor excuse for a roll bar. I guess you could do it properly without too much fuss. Rip out the back seats, door panels, etc. Whatever...


Nice decals. Err, hang on - shouldn't that be red, not orange??? Sheesh - not sure how to fix this. Should consider alternate decals I guess, or maybe they can be fixed with paint (!)


They included some nice wheels to replace the street variety. But, err, shouldn't they be like the GT2 wheels (BBS cage/spoke style)? Hmm....



Ok, so let's begin! Tamiya fine primer - incredible stuff.


TS-26 pure white. 2 coats straight from the can. The "engine" was soft-masked to prevent hard paint edges..




Some more basic painting. I made the engine part a bit rough for weathering later on, but the rest is super smooth.


More soon opcorn:

[Tibi Keke]

Nice model and good start! I will follow with interest both of your threads!

[godfather23]

Typical Fujimi - nice kit on the box and a big surprise on the inside. How on earth can they sell a kit without the proper wheels being supplied. I´ll never figure that one out.

It seems as you are having a nice decal job coming up. I like that and wish you all the best luck with the decals. Should look killer, when finished.

Cheers


Robert

[godfather23]

Ooops, I forgot to ask my question: Did you already think about how to solve the wheel-problem? Do you have any particular kit source in mind?

Robert

[mrawl]

Originally Posted by godfather23

Ooops, I forgot to ask my question: Did you already think about how to solve the wheel-problem? Do you have any particular kit source in mind?

Robert

Well, actually, I had previously got some Fujimi BBS wheels, but it was another case of looks great on the box, but the actual item was complete rubbish. I might try to mold the wheels from the Tamiya GT2 kit. Have to deal with the different mounting style though. Not sure yet... And you know, there are plenty of RSR examples with the wheel type shown here, but typically not the chrome version! So I have no idea why Fujimi bothered to include them.

[Robi J]

The '94 RSR (with a different livery) is one of my planned project. Since I'm too lazy, I've yet assigned to the Fujimi RSR the BBS wheels and the complete cockpit from the Tamiya GT2. I'm curious to follow your job, for sure you'll turn it out in a gem

Robi

[Sebastian.]

I shall watch your work. I have such complete set but with decals from Cartograf. You represent, they there too orange color, instead of red as should be.!!!! It is full idiocy what to make such foolish mistake. I to tell the truth would tear off hands to the one who selected color decal, in fact to correct it practically not really. I have prepared the complete set of wheels BBS 18 from Fujimi. You consider they will not approach??

[mrawl]

Originally Posted by Robi J

The '94 RSR (with a different livery) is one of my planned project. Since I'm too lazy, I've yet assigned to the Fujimi RSR the BBS wheels and the complete cockpit from the Tamiya GT2. I'm curious to follow your job, for sure you'll turn it out in a gem

Robi

Interesting idea, but is there enough reason to do that - why not just build the Tamy?

[mrawl]

Originally Posted by Sebastian.

I shall watch your work. I have such complete set but with decals from Cartograf. You represent, they there too orange color, instead of red as should be.!!!! It is full idiocy what to make such foolish mistake. I to tell the truth would tear off hands to the one who selected color decal, in fact to correct it practically not really. I have prepared the complete set of wheels BBS 18 from Fujimi. You consider they will not approach??

My decals are way too orange, doesn't mean they all are. Further more you have to paint the bumpers to match, and I can't bring myself to paint them orange, so it's fix/paint the decals red, or get new decals.

For the wheels, here's the ones I have:


Looks promising right? (mind you, I need to check the exact wheel on that car, not even sure if these are the right ones yet)

Inside the box (with Tamiya from the 993 GT2 kit). Yes, it's a different wheel, but still, those deformed spokes look pretty bad to my eye. And yes, they weren't even gold as expected...


And in a slightly more flattering light.

They're also not wide enough, and don't have any dish to them (rear on the left, front on the right). Bottom line, the Tamiya (or similar) kill them for a track car.


So those are my Fujimi wheels. There's a million of them out there, if you know of some better ones, please let me know!

[mrawl]

Not really an update, but I took some snaps of the Fujimi 964 RSR body on the Tamiya 993 GT2 chassis/interior. As you know, the Fujimi is basically a passenger car kit with some modified RSR parts. It has a covered engine and suspension, no transmission, wrong exhaust, wrong steering wheel, woefully wrong roll cage, rear seats which shouldn't be there, wrong door panels, no interior door details, wrong floor, no racing accessories like fire extinguisher, no night running lights, and the wrong wheels. But it has that awesome 964 body. The Tamiya has a fantastic chassis/interior, it's a bit basic too, but it kills the Fujimi.

So the question is, should I abandon the Fujimi interior/chassis and switch in one from a Tamiya 993 GT2? It seems that the Tamiya chassis is accurate enough for the 964 RSR, though I believe the exhaust and rear suspension are slightly wrong - but closer to a real 964 RSR track car than the Fujimi passenger stuff.

I kinda hate to sacrifice two kit halves to make one model, and I like the challenge of making the Fujimi work - I can certainly scratch the interior, but I wouldn't do the half-engine/exhaust like the Tamiya. Thoughts?

The chassis is sitting a little bit too far forward in these pics, but it only needs some minor relieving in the back to make it fit perfectly. The Fujimi one-piece "glass" fits above the Tamiya roll cage. So there's nothing to stop you doing this hybrid.


The BBS racing wheels look fantastic on this body imho.




The rear wheels are too wide. They're also too wide if you try to squeeze the Tamiya wheels into the Fujimi chassis. So you'd have to narrow the rear wheels a bit on the inside I think. Or, extend the rear fender flares. Afaict, the wheels are the correct scale width (10" front, 12" rear). And from RSR pics it looks like the flares are pretty accurate too, so maybe the suspension needs to be tweaked a bit - anyway, plenty of options, it could be done.

[ddtham]

Looks like those two (Tamiya chassis and RSR body) were meant for each other. Did you check whether Tamiya GT2 body will fit on the Fujimi RSR chassis? that way, you won't have to waste two kit halves and make a stock GT2 with street interior

I actually saw some people just smoothened the fenders rivets of the Tamiya GT2 to make it look like wide body 993 only.

[jano11]

Great idea to try to use the Tamiya chassis together with Fujimi's RSR body.
IMO it looks excellent (rear wheels width aside).

Looking forward to see what you decide to do.

[Robi J]

Originally Posted by Robi J

Since I'm too lazy, I've yet assigned to the Fujimi RSR the BBS wheels and the complete cockpit from the Tamiya GT2.

I told you, Mark

Anyway, your latest photos speak for themselves.

Robi

[mrawl]

Originally Posted by Robi J

I told you, Mark

Anyway, your latest photos speak for themselves.

Robi

Damn - I just lost my reply to this (probably get a dup tomorrow).

Yes indeed, full credit for the idea!!! Actually, I had previously found someone on modelersite (I think) who had done this same conversion, but he used the Fujimi Speedline Turbo wheels (which are awesome, but wrong for the Le Mans car).

Btw, as you can see I removed and carved out the door handles (no damage, the originals will go back on - the Tamiya ones are slightly different). Also, got the rear spoiler on, which was a lot of work since the fit was attrocious if you want the correct one-piece look.

As for the chassis, if you put the bottom plate on the Tamiya, then you get suspension covers there too, and guess what? The Fujimi covers are MUCH nicer!!! So the main problem with the Fujimi is the crappy engine cover and the wrong exhaust. And of course all the interior stuff.

Anyway, we'll see, I might switch, not sure yet. Thanks for the idea.

[mrawl]

Bringing this one up to date, not sure if I'll dive back into it yet.

When we left off, I was talking about either scratching out a 964 racing interior, or replacing the whole thing with the interior from the Tamiya 993 GT2 kit. Here's the Fujimi interior again - it's street stock. Totally wrong for the track car.


And here are the Fujimi wheels I got, which turned out to be rather disappointing, though not completely disastrous.


They have no dish though.


So, err, maybe it can work with the Fujimi stuff. Let's explore...

I started hacking into the interior. Ripped out some rear seat stuff and the floor.




Made a new firewall, and finished up the rear seat area.


Here's the initial fit and look. It's not too bad I guess.


And with the Fujimi roll cage, which is just horrible and needs tons of work.


Not happy with that, so I ripped out the wheel arches, the door panels, and built up the chassis details a bit more. Glued all of that to the chassis. Looks much better. This is quite workable now, no problem at all...


From the bottom. The big issue here was still the covered engine, I couldn't stand it so I chopped it out for a potential GT2 transplant.


At this point, I got fed up and decided to go with the GT2 chassis. Like I said, it can be done with the Fujimi kit but it was getting ridiculous. I made some rear mounts for the Tamiya chassis.


And front tabs on the chassis itself.


And it fits like a glove.


I did my research here, the GT2 chassis is *correct* for the 1994 RSR. The front suspension is correct too. Here it is with the very nice Tamiya BBS wheels. I had to make a few tweaks to get the right wheel alignment/stance.


The Fujimi suspension/chassis covers are correct for this car, and look very good - much better than the Tamiya ones, so they were modified to fit too. The rear piece here includes the semi-trailing arm suspension which is correct for this car. The GT2 multi-link design is definitely wrong. So I will use the Fujimi rear suspension. However, the Fujimi design is pretty crappy (the arms, etc), so I will rework the rear suspension to look decent.


Here's the stance so far. The front will end up a touch lower than this. The rear suspension and stance aren't right yet.




Here are the door handles I chopped off. They're not bad, much more correct than the Tamiya ones, so I'll reuse them. They just need a bit of shaping.




All in all, I'm glad I made the switch to the GT2 chassis/interior, it'll save me a lot of headaches with the interior. And I think the final thing will be accurate and could look pretty good. I mean to say, look at that body would ya?! Here's hoping anyway!