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Porsche 961


Spiny

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After the detailed (and it must be said enjoyable) build which was the Fiesta, time for something a little simpler. Or a lot simpler to be exact - as I understand it Tamiya's Porsche 961 started life as a radio-controlled car before becoming this snap-fit model. Probably simpler that I would buy nowadays, but this one left the shop and was originally built by my younger self somewhere in the very early '90s or possibly very late '80s. The car itself is the one which ran at Le Mans in (if memory serves correctly) 1986, and has one of the simplest racing liveries you're likely to come across on a modern racing car. So it's another restoration job which I can just relax with before going onto the next new-build. If I'm honest, I wasn't planning to do this one just yet, but I came across a set of decals in Switzerland on ebay during the depths of lockdown and that gave me the impetus to get it started.

 

This is what I started with:

 

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As you can see, it's a bit grubby and the decals are past their best (actually, the decals are much worse than the photo implies).

 

So, into some water and the ultrasonic bath went the body, and before long the old decals were removed. Of course, that revealed just how much the plastic has yellowed where it was exposed to the sun when I displayed it all those years ago.

 

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One thing which gives away it's R/C heritage is that the windows are firmly attached to the body in the factory, so I've had to mask them over to (hopefully!) avoid overspray. Running a scalpel around the edge of the windows allowed me to shape the window masks, fingers crossed I didn't dig into the plastic.

 

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Having cleaned up the mould lines and fitted the clips to the inside of the body (not sure why they needed to have separate clips to connect to the chassis, but I presume it was for added robusteness when used as an R/C car), it got a layer of Halfords White primer.

 

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This time around, I tried putting the panel wash on after the primer rather than the colour coat:

 

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The panel lines don't look as obvious after the colour coat (Halfords Nissan Arctic White) is added, but I don't feel that they're as consistent this way. It's not that they look bad, more that I prefer the look when the panel lines have gone on after the colour.

 

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Obviously, it's not just the body which needs painting, so does the chassis. And this one has the potential to be a pain since it's black on the underside and white on top. First of all I painted the chassis Halfords Satin Black, then masked off the underside ready for the white.

 

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Having sprayed that, I was pleased to see that there wasn't much in the way of overspray, and nothing of any importance. And then I noticed I'd completely missed a strip on the front left wheel well :doh: Yesterday, that white was sanded off and had the first brush coat applied (not bothering about spraying as it's not going to be noticeable when finished, just need to get near).

 

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So that's where I got in the pre-build preparation for this one. Going to be quite simple, and relatively quick one for me, but hope someone likes it.

 

 

 

 

 

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Ahhh, just a BIT of an improvement. Will be watching and looking forward to the final product.  Be sure to include the "before" pics with the final reveal.  

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This will be interesting to follow

Looks totally different already :) 

I made loads of kits years ago but binned most of them when we got our first house, would have loved to have revisited some of them to give a refurb now I have a little more idea what I'm doing, but hindsight is a wonderful thing  :)

 

Ian

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1 hour ago, Andy J said:

I'm a fan of quick builds so I'm in 👍

In that case... there's a Blitz Build coming up, starting the 29th... Join up, should be fun 🙂 

 

I'm sure you could build a 1/24 scale vehicle in 24 hours 😎

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1 hour ago, JeroenS said:

In that case... there's a Blitz Build coming up, starting the 29th... Join up, should be fun 🙂 

 

I'm sure you could build a 1/24 scale vehicle in 24 hours 😎

Ha ha I'm up to my neck with the Porsche nice thought though 👍 

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15 minutes ago, Andy J said:

Ha ha I'm up to my neck with the Porsche nice thought though 👍 

Wellll... are you on a deadline or something? 😉 

 

Always room for a fun "in between" build is what I say 

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13 hours ago, Redstaff said:

This will be interesting to follow

Looks totally different already :) 

I made loads of kits years ago but binned most of them when we got our first house, would have loved to have revisited some of them to give a refurb now I have a little more idea what I'm doing, but hindsight is a wonderful thing  :)

 

Ian

I think I've been lucky to have had them survive so far. There's three which I just gave a polish and minimal rebuilding (not on here, but one was a Ferrari F189 like yours, but to a lower standard), plus the Lancia Stratos and '82 Charger already on here. Five more waiting to be restored after this one, although the 956 will be a bigger undertaking.

10 hours ago, Andy J said:

Interesting project mate and I'm a fan of quick builds so I'm in 👍

I think I should warn you that this will only be 'quick' by my glacial standards :) - best guess for completion at the moment is somewhere around the end of October... :sleep_1:

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2 minutes ago, Spiny said:

I think I've been lucky to have had them survive so far. There's three which I just gave a polish and minimal rebuilding (not on here, but one was a Ferrari F189 like yours, but to a lower standard), plus the Lancia Stratos and '82 Charger already on here. Five more waiting to be restored after this one, although the 956 will be a bigger undertaking.

I think I should warn you that this will only be 'quick' by my glacial standards :) - best guess for completion at the moment is somewhere around the end of October... :sleep_1:

You best crack on then 😂

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Quite an old one too, the date stamp inside says 1987 and given I got it about 1989 I'd say I got this on its original release. As for potential, unfortunately I think you would have to do quite a bit of scratchbuilding to make something exceptional of it - it's a motorised kit so no engine to it, the suspension is just solid metal axles, parts count is probably about 30-40, headlights are decals etc... it won't hold close attention for long with none of what the marketing bods call 'surprise and delight' items (🤮). However, I'm hoping it will end up as a nice looking model for the shelf - that should be where it's potential lies.

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Got a start on the 'proper' build of this car this weekend (i.e. not just the spray work), although for most of you this wouldn't be considered much progress.

 

The most obvious job which needs doing on this one is adding the decals. For such a simple design, I'm not sure how the kit has about 60 decals, although quite a few are for the interior. It seems that the decals I bought were for the 2011 re-release of this kit, which traded the motor for an improved decal sheet. I'm not complaining - I have the motor already so the new decals will help add a little bit more to what was there before. I'm only about half way through the body though; the sides are completed and I have some decals on the front and top, but they still need more adding on and I haven't started on the back of the car yet. But this is where the shell is:

 

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As for the build, the first step is assembling the wheels and I'm afraid that's as far as I've got. The rims had already been sprayed in Halfords Satin Black, so it was a case of adding the silver paint for the centre of the wheel, then the red for the wheel nut. The time consuming bit through was the tyres. First time around it had never occurred to me to sand them down. It always seems to take quite a bit of sanding to get rid of the seams (I could do to find a suitable way of fixing the tyres onto the Dremel!), but after a bit of work with 60-grit to get rid of the seam, I had a second run over the tyres with some 280-grit wet-and-dry. Quite a bit of work, but I'm happy enough with the results:

 

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One plus of this car is that being 4-wheel drive the wheels aren't offset like most racing cars of the era - the tyres are the same front and rear despite the deeper dishing of the rears.

 

Thanks for looking.

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Hi Spiny,

I feel your pain.

I had to do this recently for two Monogram Kits in my stash. (Only one has a build thread - yet...)

They were Vinyl tyres as well. Much tougher than the synthetic rubber of Tamiya tyres.

I have just restarted a Tamiya Tyrrell P34 and the front tyres need this treatment!

I have some very coarse sanding sticks that are ideal for the job.

 

Yours is looking good. Keep up the good work.

 

Cheers,

Alan.

 

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Well, I did say it was a simple kit. Had a count up yesterday and it looks as though it only has about 20 parts excluding the motor... and 10 of those are wheels, tyres or axles. Still, at least there will be a little painting inside, but I suspect what will slow me up most is getting the clear coat on and waiting for it to cure.

 

Made a big chunk of progress on it by getting all the decals on the outside of the body (some others will go on other bits as I progress). Just want to wait a little to make sure the decals are fully dry before clearing, but this should give an idea of what it will look like, cheesy headlight decals and all.

 

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The main other work was fitting the motor and wheels (solid axles all round so no suspension on this one). As the instructions are for the 2011 release, no mention of the motor in there so it was up to me to work it our, fortunately not too difficult. I doubt you'll be able to see the motor cover when it's done, but I painted it anyway. Also a little bit of paint to the chassis with a little bit of gunmetal, then aluminium and flat black for the exhausts. Unfortunately, although everything is wired and connected ok, the motor doesn't run - I can only guess it's packed up in the intervening years, but not an issue if it's going to go on display.

 

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And believe it or not, that's all there is to chassis. This may turn into an even quicker build than I was expecting...

 

Thanks for looking.

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With the weather having been decent this weekend, I've spent most of my modelling time trying to get other bodyshells advanced before winter hits (I can never decide whether the best way to present these to is to start a thread when I start on the body, or when I start the build - gone with the build so far). So not a huge amount of work has gone into the 961, which probably isn't a bad thing as with it being so simple it's easy to make good progress.

 

For example, this photo shows all the parts which make up the interior. Not surprisingly, most of the work in here is detailing up the paint (I probably should have thought to take the pic before starting painting):

 

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Basically, I got all the non-dashboard bits done and fixed together, but have barely made a start on the dash. This is where the tub stands now. Seatbelts are just the kit decals - once I have the window decals fitted in place I expect it won't be obvious that that's all they are.

 

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The other work from the weekend was getting a clearcoat on the body. Obviously it still wants a polish, but unless I mess up and burn through, this is the end of the spraying. I still need to get paint onto the roof of the interior.

 

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If anyone is wondering why the windscreen is stil masked up, it's because this window needs the rubbers painting and I figured I might as well leave the masking tape there to give me a decent inside edge.

 

Thanks for looking.

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The briefest of brief updates today I'm afraid. Today has been a weekend with lots of DIY due to the good weather, and most of the limited modelling time I did have was spent polishing up the body for the next build. Even worse, this is the week where I hit the dashboard which is the one which needs more detail painting than any other part of this kit. So that's all I have to show you this week:

 

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Mostly paint and decals, no real problems with the decals, although it took a bit of teasing those silver decals on the right hand side of the dash into place due to the excess carrier film - at one stage I thought I might have to trim them down but I got them on in the end.

 

Should be more to see next week.

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Very kind of you both to say that about the dashboard, but to be honest apart from the manettino (don't know what Porsche call it?) dial and the three lights above the lower set of dials being painted, everything on there is just kit decals. It looks as though when this kit was rereleased in 2011 Tamiya ditched the motor (which I have) and gave buyers a bigger, better set of decals. So in many ways I have the best of both worlds here... or at least I would if the motor hadn't given up the ghost.

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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 :)

 

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Thanks for looking.

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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Thanks for looking, I fully expect the next one to be back to my usual 4-month or so timescale.

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