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1/8 E Type Jaguar lightweight race car


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This is a conversion of the Revell 1/8 kit into a model of an actual race car.

It will involve a new bonnet, a roadster tail, hard top, conversion to RHD, Dunlop wheels, decal making and a lot of alterations in the engine bay and interior.

Attached are a few pics of the real car - my model is 'supposedly' going to be the same car.

Fingers crossed...

 

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Edited by roymattblack
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Many thanks for the kind (optimistic) comments chaps.

 

First task - cut the front scuttle away from the coupe roof. For the body, the only kit parts I need is the floor pan, boot floor, door skins and scuttle.
The bonnet and rear end I'll make myself. Resin cast tail, vac-form front.

 

To get the positioning of my own roadster tail, the scuttle part and door skins need taping to the floor pan. That way, my body rear should be in the correct place.

At this point, the interior floor also needs hacking about as the trans tunnel is completely wrong for the race car.
The lower boot floor has had the bumper fixings cut off and a thin layer of plastic sheet added to create the weld ridge around the body.

 

Away we go...

 

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The next part - at the same time really - was to make the transmission tunnel more accurate for the car I'm modelling.

Basically just bits of plastic tube, curved sheet plastic and the whole caboodle covered with tumble dryer sheets stuck down with glue.
Once painted, tumble dryer sheets make an amazing 'fake' fibre-glass.

Some strips of plastic fixed to the floor to represent the strengthening panels and box section across then, painted matt black. More detailing needed on the floors still needed.

 

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Tumbledryer sheets, who would have guessed that. You always have lots of ordinary household stuff for which you find use in modelling.

Another idea to note.

 

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10 minutes ago, Pouln said:

Tumbledryer sheets, who would have guessed that. You always have lots of ordinary household stuff for which you find use in modelling.

Another idea to note.

 

Tumble dryer sheets are great.
Here's a fuel tank in another E Type build I did some time ago...

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4 hours ago, roymattblack said:

the whole caboodle covered with tumble dryer sheets stuck down with glue.
Once painted, tumble dryer sheets make an amazing 'fake' fibre-glass.

Okay....! 

I know the stuff you mean. So what sort of glue are you using? PVA or something a bit more specialised? 

You're right, it does look the business 

 

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35 minutes ago, rob Lyttle said:

Okay....! 

I know the stuff you mean. So what sort of glue are you using? PVA or something a bit more specialised? 

You're right, it does look the business 

 

Good old simple PVA - nothing fancy.

Just  stay with it for a little while and dab the tumble sheets into place with a stiff dry brush until they finally take up the shape.

About 5 minutes.

I'm a fuss-pot and I cut my bits of fabric to shape before I use them.

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The next ask was to fix the floor in place on the body and also attach the firewall.

Long experience with building a good few of these kits has taught me how imperative it is to get the firewall down really tight on the inner floor panel and the body floor.

The mating areas need to be totally flat, flash and mould-line free or the front upper windscreen scuttle section just WON'T meet the body floor at the bottom, which means adding filler.
This will then cause big gaps under the front of the doors and a bonnet that doesn't sit properly at the lower edges.

 

I made up new footwell end panels as the kit parts are missing the cross-brace pattern as well as the whole angled plate on each side.

Once all these parts were firmly glued in, it was all lashed together with masking tape to keep the joins tight until they were dry.

 

After that, the doors were taped in place to get the position of the rear body which was attached with plenty of epoxy glue and an added strengthening panel at the rear of the floor, the width of the car.

 

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That looks most promising, Roy. of course, you must be an Olympic standard expert at building this kit by now.

There's a jiffy bag in the post for you, with thanks. And now I'm off to the utility room, while her indoors is busy elsewhere. Ahem.

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