Monogram Porsche 904 GTS 1/24

[Ruston]

My next 1/24 build is the Monogram Porsche 904 GTS. This is the 1960's kit (mine's 1990's rebox) that includes parts to build the kit as either a slot car or curbside kit.

 

My intention is to build a loose representation of this car (mainly because I was just outbid at the  Bonhams auction, I was only £1,634,000 short of taking home the full size one!): https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/23945/lot/88/

 

There are a few options for 904 kits, other options I considered being the ARII kit (which looks out of proportion, being too wide to my eyes), the Wills/South Eastern Finecast kit (in whitemetal) or the Aurora/Hasegawa/Monogram/Revell kit (listed as 1/25 but including engine details, etc.).   

 

This one is a simple kit with very few parts:

 

 

The Good

 

The body scales out very well with main dimensions spot on at 1/24, based on various reference plans/dimensions I could find.

The general shape is also very good, capturing well the compact lines of the full size car.

The mouldings are generally very good with some nice fine details, given the age of the kit.

Tyre mouldings are quite nice, with some fine tread pattern and lettering on the side wall.

 

The Bad

 

Some details are completely missing. The most obvious being the front of the bonnet where there should be a cut out running the full with of the bonnet and partially under each headlight. The cut out behind the doors (where you'd put your fingers to open the door) is also missing.

The rear deck behind the rear window is made up of three separate pieces which will need smoothing out once assembled, made difficult by the restricted access due to the roof overhang and the engine bay grille.

The wheels are terrible, moulded in two halves with the front half in horrible chromed plastic and including hub caps (which most/all 904s didn't have). The rest of the chromed parts need some refinement and refinishing before they will be acceptable.

The glass is moulded in one piece and includes a moulded in representation of the wiper blade/arm.

The 'PORSCHE' and 'Carrera GTS' badges are moulded into the body, meaning they will either need some very delicate painting to pick out in Chrome/Gold, or sanding off and replacing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2021 by Ruston
Correcting typos

[Ruston]

Comparing the full size car to the kit body shows the problem with the front end, where the line between the upper and lower parts of the body should raise up around the indicator/side lights:

 

 

 

A session with a homemade sanding jig and some scraps of plastic sheet resulted in something a little more represetative:

 

 

[keefr22]

This looks interesting!

 

 at the ready!

 

keith

[Spiny]

2 hours ago, Ruston said:

The 'PORSCHE' and 'Carrera GTS' badges are moulded into the body, meaning they will either need some very delicate painting to pick out in Chrome/Gold, or sanding off and replacing.

 

 

I've not tried it myself so can't vouch for the results, but I have seen it done where you paint over the badges before spraying the body, then you can sand back the colour coat until you expose the silver/chrome on the high points (i.e. badges).

[Ruston]

I've made some progress with replacement wheels.

 

Here's the kit wheel next to one taken from the Fujimi 356B/C 2000GS that I have in my stash, showing the difference in 1960s and 1980s moulding quality and detail!

 

 

The easiest thing to do would be to just use the Fujimi wheels on the 904 but that gives me two problems. The first being I want to keep the Fujimi wheels for when I build the 356 (although the 356 kit does come with two sets of wheels representing the drum and disk braked fitment respectively, I don't want to commit now to having to build the 356 with drum brakes). The second issue is the Fujimi wheels don't fit the 904 kit's tyres, the wheels being a little larger in diameter. The Monogram 904 tyres are moulded from a relatively hard vinyl which won't comfortably stretch around the Fujimi wheels.

 

I decided to try and solve these problems by creating my own resin copies of the Fujimi wheels, which I would resize to the slightly smaller diameter needed to fit the 904 kit tyres using the 'mineral spirit silicon mould shrinking technique' I had picked up from a video on YouTube (link at the bottom of this post, I make no excuse for the presentation style but the video is actually quite informative!). The technique works by adding mineral spirit (or white spirt to Brits) to the wet silicon when making the mould. After the silicon has set, the white spirit evaporates over a period of days which causes the silicon to shrink, so reducing the size of the mould. As a side note, white spirt can also be used to grow a silicon mould. This is done by submerging the cured silicon mould in white spirt, the silicon then absorbs the white spirit and grows in size. It is possible to shrink or grow the silicon moulds by around 50% but I guess the bigger the % change, the more distortion may be introduced. I only needed to reduce the wheel diameter by around 1mm (around 5%) to make it the size needed to fit the tyres, so I wasn't too worried about distortion.

 

Here are the various stages in the process. At the top is the Fujimi wheel and my single sided mould taken from it - no white spirit at this stage so the mould is the same size as the master. In the middle I have added some plastic hexagons to represent the wheel nuts and taken another mould, again no white spirt. The bottom row shows the final mould where I added about 10% white spirit (by volume) to the wet silicon resulting in a mould that (luckily) dried out after a couple of days to the smaller diameter I needed.

 

 

Here you can see a comparison of the original Fujimi wheel and the resulting smaller cast copy.

 

 

Finally, four cast wheels that fit the Monogram tyres snugly and, after painting and shading, will look a whole load better than what came with the kit. I've started drilling out the centre of the two rear wheels to add in a representation of the hub nut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2021 by Ruston

[bigbadbadge]

Lovely,  your work on the front of the bonnet looks great and makes so much difference to the model. The casting and shrinking is very interesting,  great job  on  those wheels. 

 

Chris

[Ruston]

52 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

The casting and shrinking is very interesting,  great job  on  those wheels. 

Thanks Chris

It’s a technique that has some useful potential applications. I can see it being used to create cast copies of not just wheels but also things like engines and other detailed parts in different scales. Resizing from 1/24 to 1/25 (and vice versa) for instance would be relatively straight forward but 1/18 to 1/24 or 1/24 to 1/32 could also be possible, although distortion will start to become an issue with larger changes in scale.

Edited May 26, 2021 by Ruston

[bigbadbadge]

It's like magic !!!

[johnlambert]

That's a brilliant idea for making copies and re-sizing parts.

[keefr22]

I agree, not something I'd ever heard of and could be a really useful technique. Your new wheels look great and will be a vast improvement to the finished model!

 

Keith

[Ruston]

Progress has been made on the body that I have been working on in parallel to the wheels, but failed to take many photos until the paint was on, doh!

 

The intakes over the rear wheels were opened up, finger recesses added behind the doors, rear deck remodelled and plastic sheet firewall added with rear window cut out. The grill on the rear deck has been cut out, to be replaced by a scratch built grille later. I also removed the bars on the side window openings, to be replaced with something finer when I add the glazing.

 

The body was primed in Tamiya White Fine Surface Primer. White stripe was sprayed with Mr Color GX1 and then masked before spraying Zero paints Porsche Albert Blue (custom mixed). Pinstriping added with Xtradecal red lining decals, put on over white decals to ensure the red stands on on the dark blue.

 

I ended up taking off the 'Porsche' and 'Carrera GTS' badges that were moulded in to the body, mainly because they were causing issues trying to avoid them whilst sanding and prepping for paint. I've ordered Porsche chrome badges from Globaltoy on eBay and will have to search through various decals sheets for kits in my stash to see if I have a suitable Carrera decal that I can rob.

 

Photo of the body whilst applying the decals and before clear coating:

 

 

The clear coat was done with Mr Super Clear UV Cut Gloss. Some orange peel evident, that will need flatting and polishing. I really need to summon up the courage to try the Gravity 2k clear I have but not yet tried, as it should give a better finish. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Marco F.]

This paint job is MAGIC,, the striping just leaves me speechless 

I fell on my knees 

Congratulations 

Marco F 

[keefr22]

Lovely paint and stripes, she's looking gorgeous

 

While 2K would likely give a better finish, I think when you polish out the clear it will give a finish much more in keeping with the age of the car - just IMO of course!

 

Keith

[Toftdale]

10 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

Lovely paint and stripes, she's looking gorgeous

 

While 2K would likely give a better finish, I think when you polish out the clear it will give a finish much more in keeping with the age of the car - just IMO of course!

 

Keith

The body work looks fantastic and for what it's worth,  I agree with Keith the clearcoat you have used is more suited to a vehicle of this vintage - Andy 

[bigbadbadge]

Wow  looks bloomin handsome with your paintwork.  Great job, 

Chris

[Ruston]

Thanks for the comments all. Based on the consensus of opinion, I’ll save the 2k to try on a more modern vehicle!

 

A little more progress today. I’ve replaced the steering wheel rim with one I’ve made myself from some 30 thou plastic rod. The kit rim was both too large in diameter and too thick.

 

 

I’ve also sanded off the moulded in windscreen wiper, separated the front screen and polished out the sanding marks. I’ll be adding a wiper arm from some  leftover bits of other kits. I’ll also be cutting out new side and rear windows from transparent plastic sheet.

 

 

This was meant to be a quick and easy build, I have just worked out that of the 30 odd parts in the kit, there are only two that I won’t be modifying or replacing (the axles).

[keefr22]

Great work on removing that awful moulded on wiper!

 

Keith

[FunkyChiken]

Fantastic paint work, and the windscreen came out amazing confiding you had to sand off the wiper... 

[Toftdale]

On 30/05/2021 at 15:50, Ruston said:

 I’ve replaced the steering wheel rim with one I’ve made myself from some 30 thou plastic rod. 

Great result,  just one question how did you get the perfect circle?  Also your far braver than me to remove the wiper, but your result looks great. - Andy 

[Ruston]

1 hour ago, Toftdale said:

Great result,  just one question how did you get the perfect circle?  Also your far braver than me to remove the wiper, but your result looks great. - Andy 

Thanks Andy

I wrapped an over length piece of rod around a suitably sized aluminium tube, tapped it in place and then dunked it in some hot water (just off the boil) which set the shape. I then trimmed off the two ends with a scalpel blade, cutting both ends together so the ends met and could be glued together.

Removing the moulded wiper blade was a bit daunting but actually worked out fine. I took my time and was careful not to use sanders that were too coarse to avoid deep scratches. With the naked eye, I can just make out a faint imperfection in the moulding where the wiper was, but as the new wiper will sit over the top, it will be mostly hidden.

[Toftdale]

17 hours ago, Ruston said:

I wrapped an over length piece of rod around a suitably sized aluminium tube, tapped it in place and then dunked it in some hot water (just off the boil) which set the shape. I then trimmed off the two ends with a scalpel blade, cutting both ends together so the ends met and could be glued together.

Simple when you know how....thank you.  I have often seen this kit on ebay, but have always dismissed it as I thought it was too crude to bother with.  You're definitely proving me wrong on that front - Andy 

[Ruston]

6 hours ago, Toftdale said:

 I have often seen this kit on ebay, but have always dismissed it as I thought it was too crude to bother with.  You're definitely proving me wrong on that front - Andy 

I had the same reservations about the kit Andy. It was finding the photos of two completed models on this link that convinced me that the kit had potential http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/660-24-hour-build-during-the-race-2-porsche-904s/

[keefr22]

The builds in the link do look nice so I had a quick look on e-bay to see what the kits are going for - I think I have enough other stuff to be going on with....!!

 

I was interested when he said he's used the wheels out of Fujimi 911 enthusiast kits - I don't recall any of my 911's having wheels like that in - shall have to go and have a delve in the boxes later!

 

Keith

[Marco F.]

Hi Keith! 

You can't find these rims in the 911 kits. They are included in the 356 kits. 

In real life I guess these rims were used on the first 912 series, do you remember the 4 cylinder version of the 911? 

Marco F 

[keefr22]

2 hours ago, Marco F. said:

You can't find these rims in the 911 kits. They are included in the 356 kits. 

 

 

Hi Marco, yes I knew the wheels are in the 356 kits, but in the thread Ruston linked to the builder said he'd used the rims from Fujimi 911 EM kits as his club had plenty spare as they were building the IROC cars - I presume they'd have been using the 74 RS 3.0 kit as I think they would be the closest to the IROC racecars. I've got two of those in stock so shall go for a look now. Only thing I'm thinking is if they are in the kit as spare wheels?

 

2 hours ago, Marco F. said:

In real life I guess these rims were used on the first 912 series, do you remember the 4 cylinder version of the 911? 

 

I do indeed, 1600cc engine and now very sought after - about 2010 somebody I worked with offered me a rally prepared 912 for £5000 - it would probably be worth about 10 times that now, wish I'd bought it !!! 

 

Keith

edit - just been rooting through the stash, and as I thought it might be, all the EM kits I have have the 'steel' type wheel next to the Fuchs on the sprue for spare wheels. They aren't shown as not for use but the instructions only show the Fuchs being used. They aren't full wheels either, just the face and about 3mm of the rim and are intended to fit in the spare wheel well. They are also in the recently reboxed 911R which isn't now listed as an EM kit but is exactly the same plastic as the earlier kit.