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1965 Historic rally 911....


keefr22

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Evening all,

Well, to add to my list of failed Group Build models, I'm afraid I'm going to have to add the Roger Clark Cossack RS1800 that I said I'd build for this one.However I do have (I hope) a valid excuse for this one!

Back in May,on a full size Porsche forum that I frequent, one of the members announced that he was going to put up for auction on the board a 1965 Porsche 911 that had been used for Historic tarmac rallying in Ireland & which he'd now stripped down for restoration. The auction was in honour of a friend he'd just lost to cancer & all the proceeds from the auction were going to go to Macmillan Cancer Support. This exceedingly generous gesture led to Macmillan getting about £10000 !!

In it's prime, it was a gorgeous little car, one of my favourite models of my all time favourite car, being one of the 'pure' narrow arched versions of this iconic sports car. I showed the picture of it to my son saying how much I liked it & wished I could bid on it. Well, he replied 'You can't afford it, so why not do the next best thing, make a model of it & put it up for auction for Macmillan as well?!' So, after thinking about it & not coming up with a good idea not too, I PM'd the chap auctioning the real one & asked what he thought of the idea. He agreed it was a good one & wondered whether I could get it done by the time his real car's auction finished - in 3 weeks! Well, I said I'd give it a go, knowing at my build speed it would be more than unlikely!! And sure enough I overrun the deadline by 3-4 weeks, but a total build time of less than 2 months was a first for me since I've been modelling 'seriously'!!

So the model went up for auction finishing last Friday. And to say I'm chuffed with the final result is an understatement! Although it didn't reach the giddy heights of the real car, the winning bid was £160 - I thought it might struggle to thirty!! I've been building models for over 40 years now & I have to say that this one has given me, by far, the most satisfaction of any of the hundreds I've built in that time :) It was all the more poignant for me, as an added incentive to the build was that a family friend that my wife has known since schooldays was transferred to a terminal care cancer hospice the night the 'real' car went up for auction. :(

Anyways, enough rambling, I didn't really have time to do a proper 'build diary' so these are some pics I took as I went along;

Ready to go;

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The 'real' car was an original 'narrow body' car, so some body mods needed doing, as per this high-tech illustration;

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Body after the above mods & a coat of zero paints Porsche Gacier White;

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And after the main body colour of Guards/Indian red (also Zero paints) & a couple of coats of Gunze Mr Super top coat (or whatever it's called!) glosscoat,

straight from the rattle can, before any polishing;

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After a bit of polishing (that's my son's billious green Ibiza Cupra rally car you can see reflecting in it!);

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And the roof after polishing (using just Autoglym paint renovator followed by Tamiya Fine & finish compounds, finishing with Zero swirl remover);

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Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately!!) there were no photos of the interior available, so from a written description from the previous owner of the real car, together with pics of other historic rally 911's I have, I scratchbuild the interior. The belts are from Verlinden lead foil (my new favourite belt material - it's easy to cut, drapes well & keeps it's shape, is relatively easy to thread through PE buckles (in this case from Crazy Modeler) & takes paint & superglue well), the tripmeter & extinquisher pull handle on the dash are from plastic strip, Navigators footrest & the door pulls from 'sheet aluminium' (from a sheba cat food tray!!), window winders from plastic strip & rod. The roll cage was made from plastic tube & rod with the padding on the door bars from Tamiya tape. The fire extinquisher, seats & steering wheel came from a Tamiya 911 GT2 kit ;

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I did build the engine, but as I knew it was going to be completely hidden (& the car stuck to a base inside a display case, so not even the bottom would be really visible), I just painted it with citadel miniatures mithral silver mixed with white & then gave it a quick was with citadel black. Unfortunately one of the problems I knew about with the Fujimi Enthusiast model 911 range is that as built from the box the wheels don't fit into the centre of the arches. So I had to trim 5-6mm off the back of the chassis to centre them. This of course meant the engine was too far back & so I had to remove the top of the intake trumpets (?) to get it to fit under the engine cover. This pic is pre- surgery!;

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And that's about it. Only other real 'problems' with the build were that when I was building it I felt that there was something wrong with the instructions for the front suspension/brakes (but I still can't really see what - it was just a feeling!) & this turned out to be right as the wheels were far too far inside the arch so I had to rebuild the front hubs with aluminium tube & plastic rod. However by far the biggest pain was the 'brand new' pack of bare-metal foil I bought just for this kit. It must have been brand new about 20 years ago, as I had major problems getting it to stick & in the end used about 80% of the whole sheet just on this 'ickle model!! (and even then I had to do major touching up with silver paint & rub n buff & it's the one part of the model I wasn't really happy with.

The finished article;

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And in her display case ready to go to her new home (where she thankfully arrived in one piece today & equally thankfully her new owner seems to like her!!)

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Thanks for looking!! :D

Keef

PS

The reasons I can't finish the escort are that a) I'm suffering car modellers burnout (!!) & B) I may have 'orders' for 2 more 911's to be built with donations to go to the Mcmillan charity !!

Edited by keefr22
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This is a lovely model of one of my favourite cars of all time. The original 'S was just so clean and simple, perfect on the outside, perfect on the inside- bit like me I suppose..

I have just received an enquiry for an engine for the "Classic Safari" rally, and the potential entrant from ZA sent me a lovely indigenous CD with a beautiful film of the rally and Africa etc, sooo much nicer that the Barry Hinchcliffe poo-poo. And of course- there are lots of early plain pure and simple 911's.. x x x mwah x x yes please

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