Porsche 911 Carrera Cup Japan

[galaxyg]

I saw this on Ebay a few months ago and thought "what an obscure livery". Obscure enough that Scalemates don't have it in the timeline but below it, needing more info. That was enough to get me to commit £15 to the project.  According to some info I found online, this was the Championship winning car in the Japanese 1993 Carrera cup, driven by Koichi Kashiwabara.  Yanoshin I found no info on, Nisseki would be more familiar to model builders of the Trust racing Porsche 962. Nisseki used to be petrol stations in Japan but are now just a memory, a bit like National garages are in the UK.  I found just one completed build of this online, on some Taiwan website, with tiny photos.

 

 

As it goes these images are the only reference images I'll ever get, on the sides of the box.

 

 

It's hard to read on this photo but the price tag has Chinese characters and a dollar symbol, which suggests to me it began life in a Hong Kong model shop before making it's way to the UK. The box is pretty worn. What it's never managed in what surely has to be 25+ years is find someone that cared enough to build it. Until now.

 

 

I knew before I bought it that the pillars are squashed a little, but having tried the glass in place, it's not that bad.

 

 

The kit itself is Fujimi's easy-to-find road-going 911 Carrera, with two extras in the box. A sprue for the rollcage and racing seat, and some decals. What this also means is the kit has rear seats that'll have to be dealt with.

 

 

In the universe of this kit, you paint the car turquoise and then decal the white bits. I don't think I'll be doing it that way.

 

 

Another small issue to deal with later, squashed bits.

 

[keefr22]

Love the colour of that shell! 

 

I have a different livery boxing that I've just started to build as a road going 964 RS Clubsport. One thing I found strange with my kit is that the wheels are the same width front and back - the road cars have wider rear wheels so I'd be pretty sure the Cup cars would too - does your kit have the same size wheels?

 

Keith

[galaxyg]

12 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

One thing I found strange with my kit is that the wheels are the same width front and back - the road cars have wider rear wheels so I'd be pretty sure the Cup cars would too - does your kit have the same size wheels?

All 4 wheels are the same size and width. Disappointing as they also look a little bit too small compared to the photos of the real car on the box / any 911 Carrera cup I find online. They don't fill the arches as much as they should. 

[Vesa Jussila]

There is little racing history in internet about driver: https://www.racingsportscars.com/driver/archive/Kouichi-Kashiwabara-J.html

Somehow I believe this  is not complete listing. I can try find something more. 

Definitely not typical subject.

[Spiny]

Great to see an unusual car being built. It may have had to wait over quarter of a century, but now it's finally getting to do what it's meant to do - be built rather than sitting in a box. Do it proud!

 

[keefr22]

1 hour ago, galaxyg said:

All 4 wheels are the same size and width.

 

It's strange, I'm lucky as I saved the wheels off a Fujimi 964 Turbo I scrapped which to me look just right for an RS or Cup, so they have them available....

 

Keith

[cmatthewbacon]

I’ve grabbed a couple of these obscurities cheap on the ‘bay as 964 underside donors for planned Singer builds. This Fujimi sub-family seem to the only game in town for that particular architecture...

best,

M.

[Sabrejet]

Looks interesting. On a related bit of trivia, I'm just reading Peter Falk's '33' book, where he recalls the struggle he had with Porsche management to get different width tyres on the 2.7 RS. It was definitely the first road-going Porsche to have them but was it also the world's first?

 

Anyway - I'm looking forward to this one.

[galaxyg]

The first task is to clean up the bodywork for the primer layer. The most obvious task is to fill in the sunroof panel lines. Smaller jobs include filling the mounting holes for the number plates, removing the side-repeater indicators and sanding off all the  mould seam lines, of which there are plenty front to back. I've also glued in the headlights, which are moulded in white.

 

 

Remarkably as the suspension of the car is so simple after only a few stages of assembly I'm able to test this:-

 

 

I can see that although the wheels are a little smaller than I'd like, at least the ride height does not need adjusting.

 

 

[keefr22]

Good start!

 

Keith

[galaxyg]

Meanwhile in the interior, I've ground off the most obvious part of the rear seats and filled up the gap. Some more filler over the indented cushions should smooth them out as much as possible without hacking out great chunks of rear plastic. 

 

 

 

On the passenger side, I've added a lot of the ribbing to the floor with strip plastic. There are plenty of reference photos at least, of this model. Most have a fire extinguisher here, but of course not this kit. Some 3rd party metal ones came in the post today so that'll busy up this area nicely.

 

 

[galaxyg]

I've primed and painted the bodyshell now, in Tamiya Pure white and Tamiya TS-41 Coral Blue. I'll give it a good week to dry out now before polishing it. I've used a Staedtler flexi-curve to make and cut the masking sheet to match a photocoy of the decals own curve.

 

[Toftdale]

Very neat paint job 👏 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Toftdale

[galaxyg]

After the body is polished the first decal goes down. Then the rest. There are two sheets of decals with this kit - the colour ones and the white ones. The colour ones were no problem but nearly all of the white ones were very brittle. Some of them came off the sheet like they'd been through a shredder, all broken into 1mm strips. Fortunately with some care and lots of luck, I got them all into place more or less. The Yanoshin on the rear broken into 4 and the one on the front broke into 6 - in both cases several breaks were right down the middle of a letter. Dealing with these 25 year old decals was certainly not a fun part of the build, and it was with relief when they were all settled and in place. There will be more relief when the clearcoat goes on - assuming it doesn't muck them up - and then they're safe and sealed forever.

 

[Spiny]

They may have disintegrated on exposure to water, but there's no indication that the decals fell to pieces from your photos. Good work getting them realigned so well.

[galaxyg]

Some painting on the underneath. Not a complex area.

 

[galaxyg]

It's that point in the build where I can get a good idea of what it'll look like complete:-

 

 

A 3rd party Porsche sticker will work better here and have more clarity than the original decal

 

 

The glass in this car has to do double-duty as both glass and a mechanism to pull the roof back into line as it's a bit squashed. I'm using that "cure with UV light" glue as it's strong and quick. I've learned the hard way on another build that it's lethal to paintwork if you get it on there. Anyway here it does sort all the problems except the slightly bent A-pillar. I can live with that.

 

 

And with window rubbers painted, glass installed, front and rear lights and a polish and wax, the body is nearly done. Anything left will go on once it's been mated with the chassis and interior.

 

[Vesa Jussila]

Now it looks like a race car.

[Paws4thot]

I tend to be very twitchy about tackling anything with this much white decal because of translucency issues. Replacing them with painted graphics wouldn't help given the lettering. I wonder if that has anything to do with multiple people having bottled out of building it?

Edited May 7, 2021 by Paws4thot

[galaxyg]

5 hours ago, Paws4thot said:

I tend to be very twitchy about tackling anything with this much white decal because of translucency issues. Replacing them with painted graphics wouldn't help given the lettering. I wonder if that has anything to do with multiple people having bottles out of building it?

It could be.  I'm glad they did as it's given me a change to build it instead.  Though given that most of the white decals were not used in the end means it was avoidable with painting and masking, I'm just glad the white lettering was a decent level of opacity. I want to get more experience with decals ahead of tacking the Tamiya JACCS Accord.

[kpnuts]

Looks beautiful 

[Paws4thot]

51 minutes ago, galaxyg said:

I want to get more experience with decals ahead of tacking the Tamiya JACCS Accord

Well, if you can find one a BMW 6 series or Mercedes C class "original teile" (original parts) scheme is white with black window trims, and decals to cover the sides, back, bonnet, boot lid and roof, and they all have to line up where they meet each other.

[Sabrejet]

Does indeed look lovely!

[galaxyg]

In all my research of this kind of 911, all of them had some bit of plywood as the drivers "mat". Although it's be almost impossible to see once assembled, I've used a bit of balsa wood to replicate this. In addition I've sourced a new steering wheel from the parts box, as the kit does come with two steering wheels, but they're both road car versions. I've also added (second photo) the red lever onto the 911's dashboard. I think of all the things that seem old fashioned about this 1990's car, the dash is the worst. It can barely be different to a 911 30 years before.

 

 

Another things all the research cars had in common was a box of electrics behind the driver's seat, so I've scratch built one.

 

 

The fire extinguisher isn't part of the kit but there ought to have been one, I've used a metal hobby design one here.

 

 

For a change I decide to put the seatbelts on the roll cage first as opposed to the seat, to see if this is an easier way to do it (it isn't). I've also added quite a bit to the rollcage as the one that comes with the kit is woeful compared to the real thing.

 

 

And finally the interior is completed. The V section of roll cage at the parcel shelf is not common on 911 Carrera cup cars but the photos of this particular car on the kit's box box shows it had them, so I've added some. I'm so glad those photos are there since they're the only online reference of this particular car.

 

 

Another piece of road car to racing car conversion needed - drilling out the wheel centres.

 

 

Now the final underbody, with weathering and the seam line sanded off the slicks.

 

 

Interior, chassis and body united:-

 

 

At this point in the build the following items are left to do:

 

Windscreen Wipers

Decals on the glass

Wing mirrors

PE Bonnet and Boot pins (3rd Party)

PR tow hooks (3rd party)

Tyre decals (Tamiya - from a Le Mans car - *if* they fit)

Rear wing

Electrical shut off lever near windscreen (scratchbuild)

[Windy37]

Nice work . I like adding  , or removing  , bars from roll cages . That's now a pretty substantial cage for a standard looking race car . 

 Gary  .