Search the Community

OK, so I decided for my next project to have a go at the legendary 956. Namely though the Jacky Ickx/Derek Bell Rothmans sponsored No 1 car. This one: I used to live near the Rothmans Factory in Spennymoor, Co. Durham as a kid and a couple of times in the 1980's they brought these cars down to the factory ( with the Bikes ) for their open days. They'd close off a bit of the industrial road and run the cars and bikes up and down showing them off. Of course as a youth I was totally in awe of these machines, the noise, the raw power, the smell. I can still hear and feel it like it was yesterday. I even had my own race tuned NS125 in the Rothmans livery which I'd ride around the town in my Rothmans racing jacket thinking I was king. I also raced ( not that successfully I will add ) the bike in a couple of amateur races so it's definitely going to be fun building one of the Porsches. Now I know this has been done in threads before here, but I'm not going for a standard build, I'm going for this: Basically the bodywork off, up on jacks, pit in version of the car. Thing is though the Tamiya kit is very basic so I'm going to have to scratch build a ton of it ( especially the front end frame work which basically doesn't exist in the kit ) I know that this super detail kit exists that was a collaboration between Scale Motorsport and Tamiya ( a more in depth look at the kit here ) and I've managed to track down one ( for a price ) if I want it but I just thought: you know what, where's the fun in that? So I've decided to see if I can scratch-build all the parts I need myself. So I started to do so a month or so ago armed with zero knowledge of working with styrene In at the deep end again. I however have the small photo etch parts kit that is commonly available to add some detail. So armed with some styrene profiles and sheets, the Rothmans decals and the Tamiya Porche 956 Canon kit here's where I'm at: The kit: All pretty basic stuff really. First job was to lop off the front and doors from the main moulding: All good. Then these awful looking moulded into the bodywork exhaust manifolds came off. I'll be replacing them with 1mm solder. Out came the Dremel for some hacking. Then some filler and sanding: Then I turned my attention to the front end frame and bulkhead build: First some paper cutting templates Cut out in styrene and test fitted Then I cut the holes and formed some rivets by pressing on the reverse with my scribe Then made a rough bulk head piece And primed and painted up with some alclad airframe aluminium Added the tiny brake, clutch and water reservoirs to the bulkhead using various bits of styrene and a cut up plastic milk carton for the bottle caps ( needs a bit of cleaning up ) also need to add clear tubing and wiring to complete the piece: Made the front end brake duct inlet frame from styrene. Bit of a headache this one, took ages to get right at this scale and I hummed and harred for hours over an actually design from the original walk-around pictures which don't show enough detail. Plus how it was going to actually fit onto the car, again the walk-around pic revealed no secrets here. I bought some clip on magnifying lenses for my glasses which are really helping with work at this scale. Ms Borez says that I look like a mad professor. I made and scrapped three others before I finally arrived at this design: Added the aluminium top frame and painted it up. I'll be adding some styrene hex bolts to the top for detail and obviously the brake ducting. The original piece on the car: Next up is priming and painting the car undertray and to start work on the actually frame which shouldn't really give me any issues as I have aluminium tubing of this size left over from the C9 build. The front hook is one of the photo etch parts I have too. This bit: Then I'll start fitting all of these pieces together before concentrating on the rest of the front end i.e. suspension and brakes. And that's where I'm at right now. Pretty pleased with my bits so far, all going to plan. Thanks for looking

Here's my 956 build with shunko decals and scale Motorsport detail up set. My first attempt at super detailing the engine. The kit was the original 956 from 1985