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Lotus 25 (1:20) 1963 F1 WDC Jim Clark


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Whilst the digital modelling of the McLaren M23 and others is trundling along in the background, I needed some traditional modelling to balance out all that new fangled CAD and 3D stuff and whilst I wait for the new resin printer to arrive.

I have a fair few subjects to choose from but figured I would start with one as close to OOB as possible (it won't be 100% OOB as I'm pathologically incapable of building something OOB without adding or tweaking details!)

 

Picked up this Lotus 25 on ebay for a good price.

ebay_1.jpg

 

As this is part of my World Drivers Champion winning cars serries I'll be building it as the 1963 setup for Jim Clark who clinched the championship at round 7 of 10 at Monza.

 

Lights out and away we go with some cleanup on the main monocoque. Bit of (tamiya fine surface) primer and some polishing before a bit of dry fit of smaller parts:

20220514_090019.jpg

 

I'm painting the outside in the recommended Tamiya spray TS-43 but after trying it on a test piece I don't like the thickness of paint the spray can gives so I decanted some, added some lacquer thinners and I've been using my airbrush which lets me do lots of thin controlled coats of paint.

The main monocoque and rear cover have had three and two coats respectively at this point and the top cover is primed and ready for it's first coat at lunchtime today.

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Surprisingly for my first car model in 35 years it even looks like the Lotus 25 it's supposed to be!

The fit of the rear cover isn't perfect. I could spend weeks fettling it to perfect fit (and there will certainly be plenty of obsessive perfectionist nonsense in the rest of this series of builds), but this one is supposed to be a quick build to get me off the start line. Decided to not worry about the gaps as I'll be displaying it with the covers off to the side with the added advantage you will be able to see the engine and gubbins.

 

Removed all the small parts from the sprues and cleaned up the mould part lines and some minor flash then got them all primed. I like to leave a bit of sprue attached to a part where it won't show if possible to give me something to hold or get the spring tweezers to grip whilst painting and drying but thats not always possible so I also use the bits of cardboard and double sided tape method (and the occasional cocktail stick through a suitable hole method):

20220524_084457.jpg

 

Tamiya included a large sprue of chrome plated parts in this kit but they are all far too shiny and uniform for my liking so I decided to strip the chrome off. Forgot to take a photo of the shiny parts before stripping however I also forgot to strip the engine inlet trumpets so here they are alongside the still shiny sprue to give you an idea of the problem:

20220524_085145.jpg

The main problem is the underlying plastic is black (as gloss black gives any metallic the best background colour) and when you remove them from the sprue you end up with unsightly black areas around the sprue gates making the chrome plating rather pointless.

 

Stripping the chrome is easy... 5 min coated in Mr Muscle oven cleaner spray, followed by a good rinse in plenty of water and all that shiny chrome is gone, simples!

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The first set of parts I already did only got 5 min in the foam and I didn't give them a stir part way through so where a part was against the side of the plastic takeaway tub it was a little less exposed to the foam and thus left a tiny bit of chrome:

20220524_085535.jpg

another 5 min in new foam sorted that easily though and I know from now on to stir them around a bit to get all the surfaces treated equally.

 

And now I have lovely clean parts ready to be primed and then sprayed with a range of Alclad II metallic colours so that they have a bit more variation and nuance than the single colour bright chrome Tamiya provide (and no unsightly sprue gate scars!)

20220524_084657.jpg20220524_091005.jpg

The main exhaust part I primed still had some part lines and flash I had missed and after cleaning those up and sanding it had a mix of primed and not-primed areas. Time to see if Mr Muscle will strip Tamiya fine surface primer too. After 5 min it hadn't done much:

20220524_090646.jpg

Giving it a half hour to see if that works.

 

Watch this space for more exciting adventures in plastic! 😉

 

Edited by Flying Badger
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And the answer is...

 

Nope!

20220524_103159.jpg

After an hour or so in the spray it's not done much to it. The primer is softer and I can scratch it off with a fingernail. At least it's not a really fiddly part to manually clean..... bugger!

 

Anyone any suggestions? I used to use Fairy Power Spray for this but finding it hard to find these days and the Tesco floor cleaner just isn't as strong or effective on primer.

 

Edited by Flying Badger
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Looking good, I've got one of these on the shelf for some point :) 

In the past I've had success in removing paint with brake fluid, don't leave it in too long though as I found out when I left a manta bodyshell in over the weekend as I forgot 🤔

My go to now is 99% IPA, fetches all the paints off that I have found up to yet and doesn't soften the plastic :) 

I know the camera/displays etc can be misleading, but that green looks a bit light from my monitor, maybe it's different in the flesh so to speak

Will follow along with you on this one

 

Ian :) 

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Oo, I'd love to build one of these. Or a 49, even more so!

 

I agree, it annoys me a little those chrome plated pieces; they always look very plasticy, and the ones I've seen are not clean enough, leaving the choice of  having flash/mould lines showing or revealing plastic where they've been cleaned. 

 

I was just wondering about the relative merits of TS-43 vs TS-9 (t'interweb suggests the former is more lotus racing green as you've said, the latter more BRMmy). It always seems strange to me that the 'car' ts paints only come in cans.

 

Rubbing gently with an IPA soaked towel works for me with tamiya primer, or a soak won't do it any harm.


Great start, looking forward to following along with this one.

 

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Thanks both of you for the suggestion

I have plenty of IPA as it's my go to for cleaning the airbrush, degreasing machine parts, wiping off permanent ink etc.

I'll get that part in the stuff over lunch and see if it shifts the primer.

 

Ngantek, Yes I'm also wanting to build a Lotus 49B at some point (Graham Hill's 1968 championship winning drive at Mexico) along with several other Lotus cars that took a driver to a world drivers championship win.....

A Lotus 33 on my list as well since Jim Clark clinched the 1965 championship in a Lotus 33 at the Nurburgring that year.  If I don't find a kit I will have to create one with the 3D modelling / resin 3D printer. One of the most time-consuming parts of the 3D design process for these cars is definately the engine, however the lotus 33 had the same Coventry Climax FWMV V8 engine as the '25 so I took the opportunity to make some two part silicone putty moulds of the engine parts and I can cast a resin copy for the '33 

20220524_084838.jpg

 

Not perfect but should give me a good base to work from.

 

I already have Tamiya's fairly recent kit of the Lotus 79 (Mario Andretti's 1978 championship win clinched at Monza) in my stash ready to build along with some aftermarket addons to make it an extra interesting build.

 

Finally I need to build two Lotus 72's (1970 for Jochen Rindt and 1972 for Emerson Fittipaldi) but those are a bit of a problem as I will have to decide how to do the 1970 World Drivers Championship win for Jochen Rindt.... Rindt was killed driving the practice session at Monza (round 10 of 13), however, he had amassed a lot of points before Monza. By round 12 of 13 at Watkin's Glen in the USA it was mathematically impossible for any of the other drivers to score enough points to overtake the late Rindt's points total and so the championship was awarded to Rindt postumously.

My normal rules I set myself for this series was to depict the car as it was driven at the race that the championship result was decided. But Rindt was dead by Watkin's Glen and depicting the car as it was at Monza seems a bit weird given his death in it. Thus I'm uncertain how to approach this one. 

 

I have a choice I guess:

I could depict the car as he won his last victory (round 8 at Hockenheim, Germany) which would also be his last points finish so is sort of when he won the championship; OR

I could depict it as the car was at the start of the Monza weekend, possibly with a thin black cloth draped over it in the final display of all the cars*.

 

Not sure yet - I can put it off for a while as I don't have a 3D model / kit for the Lotus 72 yet and there are plenty of other subjects I can work on first. 

 

*The final display case is going to be my home office desk - the cars are all going to be in a shallow box forming my desk top under a piece of toughened glass all lined up on a grid with year, name and some other blurb next to each car (leaving room at one end for future champions too). 

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Good forward thinking about the cast. Having a cast for the Climax and I guess a DFV if you find one will no doubt cover a lot of potential builds given their popularity.

 

There was a 33 on sale posted just yesterday, but looks like it's sold out. I've seen a few around in model shops, it being a relatively recent tool, so hopefully one will turn up for a good price. As you say it's not much changed from the 25 anyway.

 

It's a difficult one re: Rindt's car. I think both options are good ones; personally I don't find the Monza one too macabre or disrespectful, but I can readily understand the discomfort. Addition of a wreath or similar is another option I suppose.

 

Are you building all winners or just the Lotuses? 

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Ngantek,

 

I'm building every winner since 1950 when the driver championship was started. Although I'm not 100% sure I will build the two Ferrari tipo 500 that Ascari drove in 1952 and 53 as those seasons were run to formula 2 standards not formula 1.

 

Where there isn't a kit available in 1:20 (or where I just fancy it) I'm designing them in 3D and I'll 3D resin print them and probably create kits for sale for some of them.

 

I started with the M23 McLaren as whilst I have a 1976 Tamiya kit for James Hunt, there are some inaccuracies and I need another M23 with altered bodywork, gearbox and suspension for Fittipaldi in 1974 anyway. As that is a Ford Cosworth DFV powered car I am 3D designing the DFV as well so that I can adapt it for the 10 other DFV powered cars that were driven to a championship win. The Coventry Climax FWMV only has 2 wins (the Lotus 25 and 33) so a cast makes more sense than 3D modelling it in CAD.

 

So far I have reverse engineered the few drawings I can get for the DFV to get this:

DFV_BlockEndMarch.png

 

The rest of the McLaren M23 thread is here (although I haven't done much on the 3D modelling in the last three weeks due to work pressure).

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It's looking great, thanks for the link, I'll follow with interest. I'll also be watching for pointers on cleaning up 3D print lines, which I've struggled with.

 

Sorry to derail the discussion, where's the BRM P57 on the todo list? I'd love to build a P261 one day, but there being (virtually) no kits, I imagine it will be a print job as well. That said the engine block at least is largely enclosed, and the visible bits will be entirely dissimilar.

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5 minutes ago, Ngantek said:

Sorry to derail the discussion, where's the BRM P57 on the todo list? I'd love to build a P261 one day, but there being (virtually) no kits, I imagine it will be a print job as well. That said the engine block at least is largely enclosed, and the visible bits will be entirely dissimilar.

 

Graham Hill's 1962 car? That one I see referred to by several names: The BRM P578, P57 or P48/57 (I need to read up on that one to work out what is what). It's on the list. As a one off winner with an engine not used anywhere else it will be a bit lower priority. Although as you say the engine is enclosed and the upper half of the engine is almost totally invisible so I could perhaps create it, modelling only the lower and outer parts of the engine and save on time a bit.....

 

 

Saw this interesting photo from Motosport Magazine of the start of the South African grand prix where the championship was decided between Hill (furthest from the camera) and Clark in the Lotus 25 (nearest the camera)

1962-SA-GP-Hill-Clark-2.jpg

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Soaked the exhaust part in IPA over lunchtime

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30min soak and a bit of scrubbing with a toothbrush.

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Not 100% clean but certainly good enough. A bit of manual cleaning with a cocktail stick or a scalpel blade should sort the remaining bits of primer.

 

Hopefully new primer on tonight along with the other currently raw parts and I can start thinking about Alclad II colours and then on to assembly at last!  🙂 

 

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1 hour ago, Flying Badger said:

Saw this interesting photo from Motosport Magazine of the start of the South African grand prix where the championship was decided between Hill (furthest from the camera) and Clark in the Lotus 25 (nearest the camera)

Thanks that's a great picture! I'm always amazed how small and informal it all seems in this era. I saw a good one of Clark getting talked through the shiny new, much anticipated '49 by Chapman at zandvoort and some kid and his dog are randomly wandering past, heedless.

 

1 hour ago, Flying Badger said:

Graham Hill's 1962 car? That one I see referred to by several names: The BRM P578, P57 or P48/57 (I need to read up on that one to work out what is what). It's on the list. As a one off winner with an engine not used anywhere else it will be a bit lower priority. Although as you say the engine is enclosed and the upper half of the engine is almost totally invisible so I could perhaps create it, modelling only the lower and outer parts of the engine and save on time a bit.....

Yep, you already know more about it than I. BRM's bizarre numbering system was definitely not designed by someone who has to sort through files on a computer! I think 578 is the 'v8 version of the 57' where the 261 is the 2nd version of the 61. barmy. But yeah as you say, there's no compelling reason to do that car in any great rush unless it's a particular favourite.

 

Good save with the IPA. Are you going shiny chrome?

 

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1 hour ago, Ngantek said:

Good save with the IPA. Are you going shiny chrome?

 

It will be a mix of finishes based on lots of reference photos (and a bit of common sense/guessing where there is no other info). E.g. the gearbox and block seems to be a very slightly golden hue of mat aluminium, a lot of the suspension arms and struts appear to be chrome or at least highly polished but there are other bits that aren't likely to be chrome (why would they chrome the drive shafts?). Fortunately I have lots of Alclad II metallic paints and they are mixable to get the finish I want. The exhausts seem to be Chrome pipes at the rear but the curvy ones up toe the receivers are matt exhaust metal with blueing and other heated metal colourings which will be fun to reproduce.

 

I may also try applying some metallic films in places if needed (rear view side mirror glass for instance) - got them but never really used them much on aircraft so might be fun to try them out.

 

Hopefully that will give it a more realistic look than the glaringly shiny chrome that Tamiya provided.

Edited by Flying Badger
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1 hour ago, Mumbly said:

Ebbro released the 33 recently, which I think is based on the Tamiya 25. 

Yes the lotus 33 is essentially just an updated variant of the Lotus 25 and the Ebbro kit is a collaboration with Tamiya and is essentially three of the Tamiya Lotus 25 sprues with some additional/alternative Ebbro sprues, photo etch, some metal parts and some updated tyres.

 

Cheapest I've seen them on ebay and other sites is around £55 to £60 so I'll have to decide if it's worth it or if I want to build my own.

 

 

 

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18 hours ago, Flying Badger said:

 

Cheapest I've seen them on ebay and other sites is around £55 to £60 so I'll have to decide if it's worth it or if I want to build my own.

 

If you're quick, Jadlam have it back in stock on their sale for £43. I've never used them, just someone posted about their sale here the other day.

 

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Cleaned up that part and gave it some primer and a some chrome alclad on the receivers (main pipes still need painting):

 

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Also got a bit more paint on the monocoque (although I think it may need another couple of thin coats):

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Got some Alclad II metallics onto a few parts too:

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The main block of the Coventry Climax FWMV V8 is bright Aluminium but I still have to paint the valve covers black. However I plan to put a few layers of clear coat on it first so that I can gently sand through the black on the raised lettering to expose the shiny alu below (at least thats what I hope will work).

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As you can see I still need to mask off the green areas when I am happy with them and then paint the raw aluminium sheet metal surfaces inside the monocoque etc. However for that I need to work out where the hell I put my masking tape before we moved house 

 

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Super work :)

This car was reproduced by Dinky Toys or Corgy toys at 1/43 scale and I played with it, and others, when I was still a  little boy in the 60's !

For sur I'll flow this build 😎

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18 hours ago, Ngantek said:

If you're quick, Jadlam have it back in stock on their sale for £43. I've never used them, just someone posted about their sale here the other day.

 

Missed it. When you posted that I took a look and they still had them in stock for £42.99

Thought about it over the afternoon but by the time I sat down in the evening to order one they had sold out 😭 

 

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It has popped out and in of stock already so worth monitoring for a few days maybe. But being a newish kit, I suspect alternative opportunities will present themselves. £43 is still a lot of money to spend on a whim.

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Ah OK thanks, will do.

 

However perhaps this isn't a bad thing.... Doing some research and the Ebbro kit isn't accurate for the Lotus 33 I want to build. The 33 was basically a repackaged 25 and the first two chassis (numbers R8 and R9) used the monocoques already built for the Lotus 25 spec including the kinked angle to the internal side of the cockpit (see my Lotus 25 photo above). But other than these first two, the chassis for the Lotus 33 didn't have the kink, but rather having a constant taper from the rear firewall all the way to the front bulkhead which was simple/cheaper to produce and gave more fuel tank and crush structure room along the sides. Because the Ebbro kit is just an adaptation of Tamiya's Lotus 25 kit, it uses the same Monocoque structure and so only represents the first two Lotus 33s produced (R8 and R9, essentially the prototypes). I need to make Chassis number R11 which Jim Clark drove at the Nurburgring (round 7 of 10) in 1965 where he clinched the WDC title and that being the fourth car produced to the Lotus type 33 spec had the updated monocoque.

 

I might still look for a Ebbro kit as they have some other extras that might be nice, or I could just buy another type 25 and then 3D model and print an updated monocoque structure to replace the Tamiya one along with the updated rear engine cover, 13" wheels etc. That might work well as I could separate the oil tank and radiator pipes on the underside which the Tamiya kit has merged into a single piece.

More to think on,

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Nice to see another Lotus 25 being built.

I have always had the idea to make a 33 by converting a 25 and had thought that 'simply'(!) adding flat inner sides to the monocoque from plastic card would be relatively easy.

To this end I bought a set of 33 wheels from Indycals when they first came out:-

https://www.indycals.net/parts/f1parts/64lotus25tires.html

 

Malc.

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Malc2 yeah I thought about that too and looked at indycals wheelset but sadly they are sold out at the moment.

 

Then again by the time I'd have found a Tamiya Lotus 25 kit, plus the wheels, a set of 1965 decals and then scratch built the altered engine cover, lowered suspension etc I'd be over the cost of an Ebbro kit anyway and with probably a lower detail model at the end of it. 😖

 

I think I will likely get the Ebbro kit and correct the monocoque tub as you say.

No rush to do it immediately so I can bide my time and look out for a reduced price kit to take the sting out of the wallet! 

Edited by Flying Badger
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Looks nice. One small point; there was no 'WDC' in 1963. Instead it was the "14th FIA World Championship of Drivers", and the manufacturers' element was the, "International Cup for F1 Manufacturers". Just in case each car will have a plaque. 👌

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