Heller Citroen DS3 WRC 2013

[galaxyg]

My plan for 2023's builds is to tackle at least 5 of the many kits I pick up, turn over, look through and put back on the shelf for some reason of difficulty or work - be it masking, decals, kit reworking, amount of detail required/planned or whatever. I'm starting that trend with the Heller DS3, which I picked up last year at some higher-than-I'd-wish price online. From France. At least it came with the extra 2013 decals, a much much nicer livery that the Red Bull version (or Red Blob, according to the box art). That I yesterday discovered Heller are reissuing this kit, so it's price will be normal.. ah well. At least I got decals. Decals being one of the two pain points here, the other being the amount of holes that need opening in the front of the body.

 

Anyhow, I think the DS3 is a great looking hatchback, and a great looking WRC car. The Red/Gold livery is one of my top 5 favourites for a rally car.

 

 

Here's the Heller decal sheet in all it's glory. Noticeably better quality decals than the (also Heller) Red Bull one provided with the kit.

 

 

Some free paints for the bin, and a brush I'll keep and use.

 

 

 

All the plastic. Interior looks good, rollcage looks comprehensive. Chassis and suspension are super non-detailed, although at least this time Heller have made the wheels steer. And provided door cards.

 

 

 

5 holes to be opened in the front. Two on the bonnet, the main grille and the two small circular inlets.

 

 

 

A long long long time later. The plastic in the largest hole is nearly 2mm thick. That's a lot of scribing.

 

[Vesa Jussila]

I am following this with great interest. I don't have this kit in my stash so seeing parts is good thing. Maybe something for me 2023 too.

[Windy37]

Your build plan for 2023 is similar to mine ; dependent on decal levels is a deciding factor in what I build . 

  I have this Citroen in the stash and always promised to buy after market Abu Dhabi decals to finish it , but for some reason other kits came along that I needed to build more . Following yours here might inspire me .... 

Good start though !

Gary . 

[keefr22]

I'll follow along too, although your build won't inspire me to buy one, as I have no intention of buying any more kits (except maybe a DModels Sierra and Escort. And maybe their Celica when it comes along. And I'm still waiting for the Belkits Ascona and.... oh dear!! )

 

But I would like to copy your plan of building 5 kits from the stash. Would make a nice change from my usual one!! 

 

Keith

[Vesa Jussila]

@keefr22 feel free to share your plan. I already copied idea.

[galaxyg]

The rollcage is all within one dedicated sprue, so after having removed much of the sprue, it's ready to be painted grey, then aluminium.

 

 

In a photo it looks no different to how it came out of the box, but the body has now had two small sink marks filled near the rear diffuser, sanded, and all-over primed in white, ready for a white gloss coat.

 

 

Here's the virgin interior, painted all over in Tamiya aluminium. It's a bit sparse.  Ready for some detailing.

 

 

The location holes would have this footrest right up against the bulkhead but what few reference photos I've found have it further back, half over that electrical box. Two new drill holes later...

 

 

(Below) Footrest now coated in Kevlar. The driver's pedals are also in and the flat section of that coated in carbon fibre.  The fire extinguisher is part of the kit, but it's decal is not. Fortunately I have a load of extinguisher decals.

 

The gold on the pedals and the extinguisher looks weirdly bronze in these images.

 

 

I've started to add some wiring now. The paint went blobby on the rear centre console blue buttons so I'll have to redo that black and redo the switches. I've also added the ribbing, one rib per side - which I should have done at the start before overall paining. Nonetheless, the co-driver side still looks OK when painted alu later, and the driver, gets heat shielding/grippy texture. The black box in front of the drivers seat mounting is also not part of the original kit.

 

 

The blue box and the white box will be black later, and form more of the electrical boxes not included in the kit. The blue box is cut off a scrap Skyline rollcage and the white box is an 80's stereo/cassette from the spares box.

 

 

The seat backs have some harsh ejector pin marks on them, enough that they need filling and in one case, excess plastic cut off first.

 

 

 

[Toftdale]

Great progress in a very short space of time, she's coming together nicely - Andy 

[Windy37]

Looking good . Detailing the interior and researching for this ,  I find , gives a greater understanding of how these rally cars are put together . I think they rival F1 cars in the levels of detail in their design . Of course,  it's mostly hidden , but we know it's in there 😉 

Gary . 

[galaxyg]

Detailing and researching indeed. You'd think for a rally car of only 10 years old there would be endless images of the interior but no. Fortunately I have two good ones from the front, but nothing showing what's right behind the seats.

 

Anyway speaking of seats, the ejector pin holes are filled, the seats painted matt black and with a carbon fibre back. This isn't a decal, it's self-adhesive carbon pattern from Hasegawa. It's slightly stretchy so can be pulled over gentle curves like this. Anything with tighter or more complex curves and it's useless. It's also quite pricey.    (Inset) the Recaro decals are also not part of the kit.

 

 

 

From one of my few good reference pics - that I only found in an Italian language modelkit forum of some guy building 5 of these kits at once in different liveries.. I can see the driver has a tool that looks very much like it's for cutting seatbelts, attached to his chair's side. So a spare windscreen wiper volunteers a part of itself for this task.

 

 

Meanwhile, I decided to paint the headlights. I soon noticed that the moulding of the headlights matches the road car version of the DS3, not the actually rally version. A few Motor show pics of the Rally DS3 has it using the all-chrome road car lights, but anything out in the wild has a lot more black and a lot less chrome, so I've attempted that here with a Molotow marker.

 

 

And since so much chrome blobbed out of the marker, I've done the back lights a lot earlier than intended too.

 

Edited January 4, 2023 by galaxyg

[Vesa Jussila]

This tool is combined seat belt cutter and hammer for class. You can see spike in top of tool. 

[Jbourne124]

@galaxyg glad to see another one of your rally builds take shape!

[PatW]

Good to see a WRC car in progress! Looking good!

[galaxyg]

After a long time Sunday morning, the seatbelts are all threaded up with PE parts and electrical tape.  The Sabelt decals are just cut from the decal sheet, and having had their blue-decal-paper edges touched up with a red marker pen, glued in place with PVA. The extra cushion parts on the seat bases are just 400 grit wet-n-dry held in place with double sided tape. The great thing is it's already grey, so no need to even paint. The seats have two Citroen decals apiece (which were part of the kit), although they're a bit too large to sit where they're supposed to be with which is a bit further forward than I have them, on the leading end.

 

All this faffing with seatbelts and I promise myself my next rally car build will be another that has driver and co-driver figures in it, or have an interior where I'm happy to get away with decals.

 

 

Test fitting the seats. Too early to glue them but hurrah - even without glue they sit firmly in place, even if the body is turned upside down. I've also added to each seat outside a yellow pull strap I see on reference photos.

 

 

Since I didn't have to thread these straps on the spare wheel through too-narrow seatbelt buckles, I was able to use actual belt fabric. The ring is something Mrs galaxyg found in her crafts draw, and the "ratchet" is a reworked PS seatbelt retainer.

 

 

Test fitting some of the roll cage.  The upper pieces will need to be painted black at some point. The roll cage overall looks very comprehensive albeit a little flimsy and probably not likely to just sit together without help. I've also added another interior box behind the driver. It's made from a cut-up centre console spare from a LHD Nissan 180sx interior. I have so many unused left hand drive dashboards, centre consoles and wipers in my parts box.

 

 

Meanwhile masking the black parts of the body.

 

 

Comes out pretty well. Only a tiny bit of overspray under the other (not shown) A-pillar.

 

Edited January 8, 2023 by galaxyg

[Windy37]

Nice to see kit seats that actually sit in place securely . Don't know if you have , but when I use electricians tape for seatbelts I give them a coat of matt clear to take the shine away .  It's a right patience tester threading the buckles but they do look good when done . 

Gary . 

[Toftdale]

The harnesses may have been a pain, but they certainly look the part.  As ever I am envious of your masking ability - Andy 

[ceeb555]

Coming together really nicely and the enhancements you have made to the interior is improving what is a basic kit into a stunner.

looking forward to the next installments

chris

[galaxyg]

On 1/8/2023 at 6:22 PM, Windy37 said:

 but when I use electricians tape for seatbelts I give them a coat of matt clear to take the shine away

 

Thanks, I'll do that. Sounds like a good idea.

 

On with the build.. My first decal of this car. Conforming the tricolour to this roof vent was tricky, even with a lot more decal softener than I'd expect to use. I guess that sets the tone for what is to come around the front and rear wings.

 

 

Roof. So far the largest single decal I've ever applied to a model.

 

 

Shown below the car - nice they supply a seperate small duplicate part of the roof decal, so the gold can run both under and over the roof vent.

 

 

 

It was all a bit too wide however, so had to trim.

 

 

Completed roof. I've touched up the leading edge of the vent with paint to make the tricolour flow over the front edge.

 

[keefr22]

Good job, those look like some really tricky decals and you've got them looking very neat!

 

Keith 

[Windy37]

Excellent work to get that massive decal on in one piece ! How long was you chasing air bubbles out !!??

Gary . 

[Spiny]

I agree that's good work with the decal. I think all of us who have built Belkits kits would agree that their decals aren't always the easiest to work with so you can be pleased with how that's turned out.

[galaxyg]

3 hours ago, Windy37 said:

Excellent work to get that massive decal on in one piece ! How long was you chasing air bubbles out !!??

Gary . 

 

Fortunately - not that long. I don't know why. Small mercies.

 

4 minutes ago, Spiny said:

I think all of us who have built Belkits kits would agree that their decals aren't always the easiest to work with so you can be pleased with how that's turned out.

 

This one's Heller.  But I have a Belkits Citroen waiting in the wings for some other decal Marathon.

 

I'd planned on an evening decalling with this but I've realised now I come to study it, that there's an area around the back of the car that's red, awkward shaped and one of the few areas of decal that could easily be sprayed, so that's the next task for the body. Wish I'd noticed that sooner.    Instead, onwards with the interior.

Edited January 11, 2023 by galaxyg

[galaxyg]

Looking at decals 7 and 9 - the red bits, I can see getting them to conform to several changes of direction at once and entirely fill a big area with red was something that was just better sprayed. Masking commences. Taking a tip from a blog I was reading, much of the car is actually wrapped in cheap and easy to apply cling film. Although I've put something in place to protect that big roof decal even from the cling film. Not that modern cling film is half as clingy as it used to be.

 

 

End result. Not as tidy as a decal edge but filling the entire area solidly with red. The semi-gloss-black diffuser will remain masked off until clearcoat is done.

 

 

Meanwhile at the front of the car, I thought I'd better start here in case this area also needed to be spray painted. It didn't. The decal (still wet in the photo) did the job.

 

 

No escaping this bit really. The decal is not quite finished on the car at this point - I did get those wrinkles out. But you can see here the flat version for the other side, and conformed version Heller are expecting everyone to just do.

 

 

And then further up the front wing with the second piece of gold/red/yellow. There's a generous amount of overlap in the decal, both onto the other gold and around and up into the wheel arch.

 

 

This is what it looks like when you first put it on and then (inset) once conformed with decal softener and a lot of coaxing.

 

 

Some considerable time later, the front end of the car is done aside from decals that will go on after clearcoat - the sticky carbon fibre for example.

 

 

There's a long way to go yet however, and some really big decals to go down the sides.

 

 

Edited January 14, 2023 by galaxyg

[Vesa Jussila]

Real good work and I like this decal work!

[Windy37]

When they are designing these complicated fancy designs , they have no consideration for us modellers who have to try and replicate them ! 

Keep up the good work 

Gary.  

[Spiny]

Looks as though the decalling is a challenge on this one, but it's always pleasing to see the decals conform with a bit of softening solution. I often find I have to give some of the more recalcitrant decals more than one application to get rid of the last of the imperfections (although even this isn't always successful) and it could well be worth giving such big decals as these a second going over to get rid of those last few bits which are showing in the photos. At worst you might lose a bit of time.

 

As for the paint job on the rear bumper, you've done some good masking there to get so little overspray on those compound curves. I suspect that with a bit of picking with a cocktail stick dipped in IPA, then a light sand with very fine paper or Micromesh you could get an even smoother edge. (This coming from someone who would be delighted to be able to mask that well!)