Solido 1/18 Porsche 935/78 Moby Dick : FINISHED

[Pascal]

Another "blitz-project". I was very happy when I saw that Solido made this car, for €45 I think it's great value for money.

Foto's from CK-modelcars were I bought the model :

 

The last 2 photos show the wheelcovers that look more like clogwheels from a clock. I used a bolt and nut to hold the wheelcovers and removed the teeth with my lathe, I also made the cover a lot thinner. After a coat of primer and Tamiya X7, the covers were attached to the painted wheels (done with a Tamiya paint marker) :





The cockpit will get most of the work. I removed a big piece of plastic to make room for the drivers feet :



But I ran into these big blocks. They are part of the front suspension and have to be removed to make room for the extended floorboard. Out came the Dremel :





Had to go all the way thru the bottom to clear enough space :



First Idea was to improve this part :



Drilled some holes to remove the part between the tubes :



But then I decided to make everything from scratch, that will allow me to add the missing tubes. The roll cage needs some mods too. The upper tubes in this picture dont look like this on the real car :



This plastic tube is also part of the roll cage on the real car. It will be sanded down and replaced with alu tubing :

The front tubes of the roll cage are supposed to be the same size (like the one on the right). I have no idea why Solido made them like this. Will be fixed with alu tubing :



These tubes on the floorboard will be removed :



This was my first attempt to modify the area behind the seats. Reference photos of this area are hard to find :



Then I found the WIP by Scratchbuilt. He made this car in 1/8 scale from scratch, his build log has some very nice pics :







The big hump is being reshaped :



And slowly the firewall is taking shape :



There's a lot more work then I thought, but I 'm still very happy with this model.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal





 

Edited September 8, 2022 by Pascal

[Pascal]

Done a lot of work on this project the last couple of days. Endless measuring, sanding, dryfitting, sanding, etc. The modified firewall is finally glued in place :



Quite complicated angles to make, the shiny spots are leftover from the Tamiya ultra thin glue :



Looks very dirty with all the dust from the sanding. After a wash tonight, primer will go on tomorrow :



Dryfit of the aluminium  tubes going from the radiator to the engine. The right side will get 2 of these as well :



The floorboard was sanded. Reference photo's show none of the details that Solido made on the floorboard. I will add aluiminium tubes to the floorboard to form the chassis :

Before :



After :



Lowered the front of the model by sanding 2 mm from the plastic tubes that are part of the front suspension :

Before :



After :



There's still a couple of mm's of space between the tire and the mudguard in case the front needs to be lowered a bit more.

Sincerely

Pascal

[Sabrejet]

Oh Like the look of this: duly watching!

[Vesa Jussila]

Definitely following!

[Pascal]

Thx guys !

 

Spend a couple of hours fiddling with 2mm alu tubes. Just need to add all the smaller ones. Dryfit :

Where the 2 tubes cross, I filed halfway thru each tube, when they will be glued together the join should be good :



Added the 2 diagonal tubes, these will hold the gearshifter :





I will sand the yellow coating from the tubes and make some adjustments so that they fit better. Will use JB Cold Weld to glue them, that will - hopefully - allow me to form some weldspots between the tubes while the glue is drying.

 

Sincerely

Pascal

[klubman01]

Like the work so far.  The 935/78 was one of Porsche's more outrageous interpretations of the rule book.  I will follow this with interest.

Trevor

[Pouln]

Nice work, Pascal. Interesting to see how you upgrade this diecast model. 

[Pascal]

When Murphy strikes, he strikes hard !

 

If you put a primed piece of plastic (in this case the interior in an oven, you get a nice hard painted finish.

 

BUT, if your oven turns out to be a grill (heating tubes bottom and top side), you get a completely deformed piece of plastic :

 

 

 

 

I asked Solido if I could buy a replacement part, guess what the answer was...

 

It's a shame that so many diecast companies refuse to help their customers. I can buy nearly every single sprue from Tamiya, even if they have to ship it from Japan.

 

Ah well, If there's 1 thing that I have, it's patience. So I will painstakingly rebuild the interior from scratch and use a couple of deformed parts that can be salvaged.

 

Before it gets better, it needs to get worse. After some breaking and cutting apart, this is what I have to start with :

 

 

Stay tuned, things will get better soon...

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[silver911]

Ooopsie 

 

But...if anyone can re-build it you can Pascal...I have total faith in your skills.

 

Ron

[Codger]

30 minutes ago, silver911 said:

Ooopsie 

 

But...if anyone can re-build it you can Pascal...I have total faith in your skills.

 

Ron

100% agreement here. Just a question before the mishap Pascal; why JB Weld and not solder on the 2mm brass tubes? Certainly the JB is fine but solder can also give the weld-bead look too.

 

[Sabrejet]

Wow. Harsh, but at least the only way is UP!

[klubman01]

That must be heart-breaking for you.  Never mind, I'm sure you'll end up with a better looking final result.

Trevor

[Pascal]

@ Codger : The tubes are not brass, they are aluminium wires bought in a flower shop. The way that I've build the tube/wire frame, doesn't allow soldering because each tube/wire needs to be inserted from the sides or the back of the plastic floorboard. On second thought, I'm gonna use CA glue in stead of JB weld, because virtually none of the joints will be visible.

 

So, friday was a total disaster...

 

But I've worked a lot of hours during the past 3 days, this is the result sofar :

 

 

 

Strange how this photo makes it all look bent and crooked  :

 

 

 

 

 

Started making the fire extinguishers  :

 

 

Used some self-adhesive bandage to wrap around the seat  :

 

 

When the bandage will be painted black it will look just like the rough surface on the seat of the real car :

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

Edited March 8, 2021 by Pascal

[Malc2]

Whoa, just found this, its not a Spitfire and its not a Ferrari, but love what you are doing!

You are making some serious mods, even before it melted like cheese on toast!

Great work, looking forward to the next update.

 

Malc.

[Pascal]

Small update ,but a major leap towards saving this model from last friday's tragedy.

 

In order to fit the new interior, I had to remove almost 5 mm of plastic from the inside of the wheel wells :

 

 

The tubes (aluminium wire from the flower shop) have had their yellow coating removed. Dryfit in the new interior :

 

 

Dryfit with some of the scratchbuild / modified parts :

 

 

 

 

I used self adhesive felt to cover the inside of the seat :

 

 

Colored the selfadhesive bandage black, looks a bit rough on this macro photo, with the naked eye it looks just fine  :

 

 

[alteregoni]

Amazing job, and after all that owen disaster. I salute you sir!

[klubman01]

Looking good!

Trevor

[Frah2o]

aboslutely top work! 

[Pascal]

Thx mates !

 

Something was way off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. With the help of some reference photos, I finally found the problem and it's a big one.

 

The sides of the interior are way to wide :

 

 

I used the Solido parts as a guide, but those are about double as wide as on the real car :

 

 

If I paint these sides black, it will give the model a wrong look. The outer part of the sides need to be white like the body :

 

 

This will require some major surgery by cutting the sides in half :

 

 

The outer part will be glued to the inside of the body. I hope I can get the right shade of white :

 

 

It still won't be perfect, but it will look at look better - fingers crossed - when done.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Pascal]

Update :

 

I used Humbrol 106 Ocean Grey applied with a sponge and a black spraycan. The grey was sanded to remove the gloss, the black received a matt coat and was then polished to give it a satin look. I was going for a "used" interior, quite happy with the result. The tubes for the radiators are dryfitted :

 

 

 

 

 

Last photo shows that I need to touch up the black on the left side. Next step will be the fitting of the tubes that form the frame.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Pascal]

Update.

 

I forgot to show the photo's that i took right before the floorboard got it's colors. These show the result of lots of sanding :

 

 

 

 

The frame has been glued to the floorboard. The 2 diagonal tubes are from a different type of aluminium because they are a lot shinier on the real car :

 

 

 

The seat has been gleud to it's frame, then the frame was glued to the rails. I had to remove about 4 mm on each side of the seat, so that it will fit in the cockpit :

 

 

 

The pedalbox was completely rebuild. The part on the left was scratchbuild and has 11 parts :

 

 

The rectangular strip with the diagonal part was also scratchbuild :

 

 

 

Dryfit. The pedalbox sits to high, will be fixed before it's glued to the floorboard  :

 

 

 

 

The gauges on the dashboard received a tiny circles of transparent plastic, these were sealed with Parket + :

 

 

The part with the 5 gauges will be sanded flat from the rear and the grey decal will be removed :

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Sabrejet]

Yay! Nice to see this one progressing

[Toftdale]

Great work, especially convincing seats- Andy 

[Pascal]

This model keeps fighting me all the way, but here's a little progress :

 

The dashboard looked like this :

 

 

Solido added sidewalls to the center console these were removed and some circles were added to the back of the dials :

 

 

 

A lot of work goes into the modification of the body. Before :

 

 

And after. I will need to add a couple more layers of white paint, then polish it :

 

 

Big difference between the modified and the un-modified side :

 

 

Solido put a grey circle around the number on the doors. This was not on the 1/1 car, so these were removed with a knife and a toothpick. The photo shows that I started on the right side  :

 

 

The glass covers for the headlights were glued badly to the body. The covers also have some very ugly square pegs :

 

 

 

I removed the pegs and the CA-glue with sandpaper, the one on the left has been polished :

 

 

The glass cover fit very poorly because the inner parts are to big. The one on the left has been sanded to the correct size, quite a bit of plastic has been removed ;

 

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Pascal]

Wheel covers, part 2.

 

Wasn't happy with the first modification, so I went a bit further. These are the covers for the rear wheels. Used the bolt to fix them in the chuck of my drill, about 1 mm of plastic was scraped off. (didn't use the lathe cause I don't want to put my fingers that close to the lathe chuck) :

 

 

The ring was removed from the backside :

 

 

Before :

 

 

And after. Not there yet, still have to remove some plastic from the inside of the wheel, so that the cover can sit deeper inside the wheel :

 

 

These are the covers for the front wheels. The modified cover is a lot thinner and the diameter is smaller  :

 

 

 

To get the cover to sit deeper inside the wheels, I removed some plastic and filed the spokes one-by-one to about half the original size. A VERY therapeutic job ! (later on I'll add a new wheelnut and a ring with the bolts) :

 

 

Before :

 

 

Afer :

 

 

Hope to do the other 2 tomorrow. It took about 3 hours to modify the first 2.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal