Spiny

Nicely built version of this one. Black's always a brave choice and hard to pull off, but you've done a good job of it and in my opinion it's a colour which suits the car better than the almost-ubiquitous silver. That red interior sets it off well too.

I'm pleased to say that it's all done now, and there's a thread sitting in the RFI section for anyone interested

Didn't take long (by my standards at least) to get this one completed. As suggested by the restoration tag, this one is a restoration of a build first done about 30 years ago back when I was barely a teenager. The kit itself is a snap together (Snap-Loc in Tamiyaspeak), and I understand is based on a radio-controlled model. That would certainly explain the way that it only has about 20 pieces excluding the motor, and half of those are in the wheels and axles! So not a challenge then, perfect for a younger builder building up kits quickly. The real thing ran in this livery at Le Mans in 1986, where it came 7th and won its class. Not that difficult to win its class when it was in the Experimental Class and so the only entrant It came back next year in the Rothmans livery and caught fire. For the build, this was done as a straight out-of-the-box build apart from adding a mesh to the rear to hide the red and blue cables to the motor. Anyway, having bored everyone with the waffle, it's time to bore you all with photos instead... First of all, this was what I started out with. As can be seen, it's showing the full effects of having been on an open shelf near a cornfield for about 10 years ago with dirt and yellowed plastic, not to mention badly applied and degraded decals. Having come across a replacement set of decals from the 2011 rerelease of the kit while in lockdown, I decided this was due a refurbishment. So here's a set of photos from around the car under a variety of lighting conditions. A bit annoying, but I had the side peg holes filled, sanded and smoothed and all was well until they sank a bit with the gloss on. At least they're not black circles as on the original build, but I would much rather they weren't there. The mesh at the rear appears to be doing its job of hiding the battery compartment, motor and cables behind it. Unfortunately reflections stopped me getting a good shot of the interior, but here's a top-down view of the car instead. And finally, here's a couple of shots of it with its road-going cousin which I built 3 years ago. Contrary to what the second picture implies, they do all sit flat - it's the white surface which is a bit uneven and the car does not tripod! Overall verdict? Well if you want a 1/24 Porsche 961 I don't think there's an alternative. There's no getting around that this is a very simple kit, and would take a LOT of work to get a good level of detail on it. But equally, the shape is pretty good, and it's capable of being built up into something which looks good on the shelf. Hope you like it, and thanks for looking.

You've done a good job here. Like John, I'm afraid hotrods leave me quite cold, but this is nicely done and it doesn't give any indication of your battles.

That's incredible detail in that engine, I always feel very humbled when people on here post stuff like that. And the tyres aren't bad either...

With a bit of holiday due, I was able to crack on with the 961 this week. After quite a bit of polishing, I was able to move onto the windows. Quite unusually, the side windows are done by applying decals to the inside. This time it went much easier than first time around 30 years ago, and happily I've ended up with a neater end product. After that, it was a case of adding the body to the chassis, and immediately one thing became clear - the wires for the motor are easily visible through the slots at the rear of the body. Fortunately, as a snap kit it was easy to remove the body, and I cut some of the remaining mesh from the Countach to help hide it. It doesn't fully hide the cables, but now you have to look for them rather than them catching your eye. As usual, I used the UV resin to hold the mesh in place as you can position it then set it once in the right place - no rushing to get it in position before the glue starts to set, then 5 minutes of holding in place while the glue gets strong enough only to find that you've also glued yourself to the body. After that, it was just a case of adding the last of the decals (mostly windscreen area) and detail painting bits like the fog lights, indicators, washer jets (shame there's no wiper) and door handles. So here we are, freshly completed. All that's left if so wax it and get some decent photos ready for the RFI thread. Thanks for looking, I fully expect the next one to be back to my usual 4-month or so timescale.

All sorts of reasons why I choose a colour for a particular kit, but it always boils down to a colour which I think will work with the car. Sometimes I'll have an idea of the colour before I buy a kit, other times the colour will follow the purchase. So far there's only really been one build I'm not 100% sure about after painting, and funnily enough given the pics above, it was the 959 where I saw a pic of one in dark grey on google which I thought looked good and different, but which didn't translate to the model so well. One thing I never do is go looking for a car to match a colour (hence why I haven't built anything in Titanium Gold yet ), it's always getting a colour to suit the car.

No idea either, funnily enough I was about to ask exactly the same question. At least we can console ourselves that we're not being completely thick. (Or as a minimum, that we are equally thick)

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware you're right that there isn't another option. I think the same goes for when the car returned to le Mans in 1987 with the Rothmans livery, as far as I can tell you'd need this one with an aftermarket decal set for that.

Not sure about hobbyphotohost, but with flickr you generate a bb code, copy that and you can paste it into your post. If you end the paragraph before putting in the code for the image it should go in a new line. Hope that works with your photo host too.

Your build speed is plenty fast enough! Loads of completions, and you've done it without knocking back the quality either. This one is looking very good too, looking forward to the next update. But for now, have a good week and enjoy your break.

A tad more progress this weekend. First of all, the steering wheel has been completed and fitted to the dashboard, which in turn has been fitted to the interior tub. After that, it was a case of putting the interior tub onto the chassis. Should have been a simple job as it's just a snap kit, but I had to remove some paint from the front tabs first to get the interior to slide far enough forward to clip into place. Unfortunately, one of the downsides of it being a snap kit is that the chassis interior was painted white, and the tabs are clearly visible, as with that one down and to the right of the steering wheel in the above photo. Fortunately, one of the upsides of it being a snap kit is that disassembly is fairly easy and I was able to take the tub back off to sand back the paint on the tabs a bit more. Once the tub was in place, I gave the tabs a final coat of satin black just to make sure that they wouldn't be visible. After that, it was onto the body. I fully appreciate that it looks as though there has been minimal progress from earlier apart from the windscreen surround, but the whole body has been sanded back with 6000grit Micromesh (I daren't go further as don't want to burn through any decals) and the windows have been polished with Tamiya Fine Compound, Finish compound tomorrow to get them as clear as I can. Then it will just be a case of adding in the decals for the window rubbers and a bit of decal painting. Not far to go before completion Thanks for looking.

I could be completely wrong, but looking at this from an engineering perspective, if you imagine the parts of the moulds coming together there is always likely to be a very small gap between them, and the molten plastic under pressure will find its way into this gap creating the ridge. As for the ditch, if the two parts of the mould aren't perfectly alighned, one would be very slightly lower than the other, and even a fraction of a millimetre would be visible when primered. As you've sanded the high side when you got rid of the ridge, it will be just the low side which is untouched and unless you've sanded the 'high' side down far enough to be level with the 'low' side, the bit of the low side which abuts the ridge will appear as a ditch. As for how to fix it, I can't really add anything to what has already been written, but as John said I tend to consider the first coat of primer as an indicator of which mould lines I've missed.

Very nice build, especially for one at this small scale. If it's any consolation, the Belkits version of the same age Fiesta (and I presume the WRC version is same as the S2000) also has unposeable wheels despite being 1/24, so hats off to you for adding that here.

I'll leave dash conversion to others, but best advice I can give is to start with getting the body sprayed, and if you're planning on building this this year get onto that soon - you really want the temperature to be above 10 degress and humidity not too high so unless you're spraying indoors winter spraying is limited. Chrome is easily removed by soaking in household bleach unless you're really unlucky, leather seats usually turn out well by using satin finish paint. As for the wheels, it depends on the finish you want but I'd suggest spraying with silver or gloss aluminium paint if you want silver wheels.