Tamiya 1:20 Williams FW07 to FW07B conversion 1980 Alan Jones

[Flying Badger]

Many months ago I picked up a Tamiya William FW07 kit on ebay fairly cheaply as a spare or repairs job.

I actually want an FW07B from the end of the 1980 season rather than the FW07 from 1979 and early 1980 season. Fortunately at 1:20 the difference is very minimal, with the exception of the front wing, which as the ground effect was so good on this car they decided they didn't need and they removed it - so  will too. The shape of the leading edge of the nose was marginally reshaped but nothing more than a sanding stick won't achieve.

 

On closer inspection of this kit I was pleasantly surprised to find it mostly complete and un-started... The decals are very old and are shot and it was missing a set of parts mostly associated with the right side:

• front right wheel rim
• right rear wheel rim
• right rear tyre
• right drive shaft
• right rear top suspension arm
• right rear upright
• 1 engine intake trumpet

 

All of these have the left side version present as a template and as I have a resin 3D printer now, this just offers an opportunity to use it! 🙂 

Whilst I wait for the weather to warm up a touch more for painting on the other cars and aircraft that are mid-build, I thought I'd crack on with replacing these bits.

 

Started last night with the drive shaft modelled in Fusion360 after copious measurements with my digital calipers etc. on the Left side parts.

 

Whilst it is only the right side of this that is missing I am probably going to print both to ensure they are exact matches (and because the 3D print won't have seam lines to clean up!)

 

More as it happens

 

FB

 

EDIT:

For comparison here is a picture of the kit part for the left side:

 

[Malc2]

That looks good, but if you are going to the trouble of drawing and printing new parts why not make the inboard CV joint more representative of the real thing?

 

Malc.

[Flying Badger]

Fair point. Hadn't thought Tamiya would model it differently to the actual car before but now..... I am filled with doubt....    time for some research! 

 

Fortunately in this I am fore-armed having spent a day at the Williams heritage collection back in November.... I felt I was rather restrained and only took a couple of thousand photos so one of them may have the rear end of the FW07B 🤞

[Malc2]

I just did the Classic Team Lotus workshop tour and can't over state how good it was, do they let you close to the cars at Williams?

[Flying Badger]

Err.... OK. Tamiya just did a somewhat generic job didn't they? Its nowhere near the real thing!

 

Damn you Malc, now I have to check every part against reality....  the blooming thing is likely to end up being more 3d print than kit... I'll be modelling it for months 😉 😁

[Malc2]

For those wondering what we are talking about:-

This is a photo of a restored car, in period the CV joint had a rubber boot as your rendering above

M.

Edited March 20 by Malc2

[Flying Badger]

26 minutes ago, Malc2 said:

I just did the Classic Team Lotus workshop tour and can't over state how good it was, do they let you close to the cars at Williams?

Yes. You can put your nose within a mm of the cars so long as you don't touch! They have one of every car design they ever produced, most of them are the most significant chassis of that year. E.g. they have Villeneuve's FW19 still with the rubber and red paint scuffs from Schumacher ramming his Ferrari into the side of it at the 1997 European Grand Prix in Jerez that cost Schumacher the title and subsequently his 2nd place finish. It's an awsome collection and really well presented. Worth the high ticket price, but tickets are limited so get them as soon as you can. My mate and I paired it with a trip to the silverstone museum the day before and made a guys weekend of it. 

[Vesa Jussila]

I will follow this for sure. My plan is to use this kit as starting point to make FW08. Need to make this trip to museum too and get good set of photos. I think Tamiya used generic parts in many this period kits. Engine and transmission was common in many cases when you think real car.

Edited March 21 by Vesa Jussila

[Flying Badger]

Yes I suspect you are right. Especially given how many of this era were all powered by the Cosworth DFV engine. The temptation to just use the same parts and save development time to get a kit out fast would be high.

[Flying Badger]

Adding to the list of items to replace.... the tyres the seller supplied with the kit are nowhere near big enough to fit the rims in the kit so I think they aren't the original ones anyway. 

One of the tyres is missing and I was expecting to have to print a replacement anyway but I'll be design and 3D printing all four now. 

The one remaining front rim (one is missing) doesn't look like the real thing in the Williams collection so that will get 3D designed....

 

This kit might turn into a trigger's broom!

[Flying Badger]

More work in Fusion360 making replacement / upgraded parts:

 

I'm missing the right rear top suspension linkage. Here is the left:

 

And here is my finished fusion design:

 

Not bad and I've added a few minor details. These (left and right) parts are upside down at the moment as the top side of the main arm was flat with a straight edge so gave a good reference base line to measure everything off.

Once I've got the other parts sorted I may embellish these a bit and convert those sticky out pegs to hex bolt heads etc. where appropriate. For now though they are a close reproduction of the kit parts as a staring point.

 

The cut out and sticking up peg joins to the top of the rear upright and in reality is part of it. I'm missing the right upright and there is no real reason to model them seperately so when I finish that one I may merge the designs together into a single part

The kit upright:

There is no trapped rubber friction holder inside the uprights (like there is in some other kit designs of this period) so there is no reason I need to model them in two pieces like the kit. The kit does because of the issues of undercut and mould release from the injection mould (but thats irrelevant for 3D resin printing) I think it will be cleaner and easier to CAD model it whole.

 

Also I think I realised why the kit wheels look so wrong - they're early FW07 wheels (left over from the FW06):

 

Later on in 1979 the FW07, and then the FW07B in 1980 had a more complex rim design with a bolt in internal hub with six spoke arms in gold:

This is from my visit to the Williams collection with the FW07B in the foreground, in the background is the FW08 with 8 spoke version of the front rims.

 

FB

 

[Jo NZ]

When I draw up identical but mirrored parts in fusion360 I only draw one side -  I find it easier to use the mirror function in Chitubox when it's printed.

[Flying Badger]

4 hours ago, Jo NZ said:

When I draw up identical but mirrored parts in fusion360 I only draw one side -  I find it easier to use the mirror function in Chitubox when it's printed.

Same here normally (except I prefer Lychee slicer to Chitibox).

But I wanted to show I'd be printing both sides so I used Fusion 360's mirror to duplicate the finished part body just for the image.

 

I also normally design at 1:1 scale and then scale parts down in Lychee, however these being duplicates of kit parts has me working at 1:20th scale. 

 

[TommyOneTwoFour]

Hi there,

I've never been too much into the 70's/ 80's F1 era but watching the Ecclestone series "Lucky!" lately changed that. As a consequence, I got myself this kit too. 😉 As I understand, this kit has never been re-released so they all date from 1980. My decals still look pretty good for that age, but you never know before you put them into water... 🙄 I will continue to follow your WIP!

[Vesa Jussila]

15 minutes ago, TommyOneTwoFour said:

My decals still look pretty good for that age, but you never know

 

Make a good quality scan of decal sheet and then you have option of reprinting that if everything goes wrong.

[TommyOneTwoFour]

7 minutes ago, Vesa Jussila said:

Make a good quality scan of decal sheet and then you have option of reprinting that if everything goes wrong.

Yes, I do... standard procedure! 😉

[Flying Badger]

I bought a replacement set of decals on ebay... not original Tamiya ones but ones from china and they are OK (ish)

Here are the replacement ones on the left and the originals on the right. (the colour difference isn't as marked as it seems in the image - partly that the colour of the backing paper as well.

 

if you zoom right in on a photo you can see the print pixels of the replacement set as they are digitally produced rather than the originals which would have been screen printed

To be fair it's perfectly OK when viewed by the human eye. 

The large green decals I don't care about as I'll be painting those bits of colour on the car anyway - prefer painting where possible as I get a cleaner look.

 

Of course I have a slight problem in that the decals used on the FW07B at the 1980 Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal* aren't the same as the standard set for the 1979 FW07. Most are the same but there are a few Canada specific ones (Frank Williams being a targeted advertising master) as well as some evolutions of the 1979 decals. Thus I will be designing some of my own to get printed too.

 

*my rules for this build list is the car of the championship winning driver as driven at the race they clinched that years championship... thats Canada for Alan Jones in 1980

[Flying Badger]

Oh and yes scanning new decals is standard procedure for me too!

[Orso]

Indycls has decals for the 1979 and the 1980 cars: https://www.indycals.net/decals/f1.html Some of the 1980 decals might be usable.

They had a front wing at the Canadian race

 

[Flying Badger]

Sadly the indycals ones for 1980 are early season and don't have the Challenger Canadair or the Dallah Avco decals to match the Canadian GP. 🙁 However in retrospect I should have bought those rather than the ebay ones as the quality of Indycals is always excellent. 

[Flying Badger]

Some more 3D CAD work. This time on the rear uprights:

 

 

These took a bit of work as those cutouts at the top are where the top suspension link mounts and it's not a horizontal surface but rather around 2.6 degrees off (this was worked out by measuring and drawing up all the other components of the rear suspension system (and in so doing realised I was also missing the rear suspension frame D13 - more on that soon).

 

However when you put it next to said top linkage the kit's part design shows a flaw:

The top link includes the pivot brackets that are in reality on the rear upright but the Tamiya part design means there is that ugly step that looks wrong. The corner fillets make it hard to get a good join so I'm planning to copy these two bodies, alight them and then merge them together as a single part. using 3D resin printing I don't care about the overhangs etc. that injection mould makers have to worry about so I can get away with them being one part instead of two. 

 

More soon.

 

FB

[Malc2]

Some good stuff going on there!

Look forward to seeing the prints.

You are right about the kit wheels being wrong, for 90% of the races in 1980 the front wheels were 3 spoke 13inch Dymags, in 1981 both 13 and 15inch Dymags and the multi piece polished rims were used.

 

Malc.

[AntPhillips]

Don't forget the side pods changed during 1980, for the first 4 'fly away' races the cars retained the original slab sides with a kick up just in front of the rear wheel (as moulded by Tamiya) but from Belgium onwards they changed to a more blended transition from vertical to horizontal surfaces, the Canada GP picture illustrates it exactly. 

[Flying Badger]

7 minutes ago, Malc2 said:

Some good stuff going on there!

Look forward to seeing the prints.

You are right about the kit wheels being wrong, for 90% of the races in 1980 the front wheels were 3 spoke 13inch Dymags, in 1981 both 13 and 15inch Dymags and the multi piece polished rims were used.

 

Malc.

Yeap, Williams were early on in their development as a racing team and they seem to have a lot of different rims all used at the same time (reusing stock or experimenting with setup?) 

That really shows in the rim choice at Canada in 1980: The picture Orso's posted above shows the car set up with the six spoke multi piece polished rims. I think the photo Orso posted must be from practice which was wet. 

But there are also pictures of Jone's FW07B the same weekend with three spoke front rims. (see this image on Motorsport Images )

 

I originally thought the car crossed the line with the six spoke multi piece polished rims but your post had me recheck everything and I just watched the race again on Youtube (god I miss Murray Walker's commentating) and I'm 99% certain that the car crossed the line with the triple spoked black wheels.

That simplifies it a bit for the CAD but I'm glad I checked before starting on the CAD work or I'd be grumpy!

 

FB

 

 

 

[Flying Badger]

7 minutes ago, AntPhillips said:

Don't forget the side pods changed during 1980, for the first 4 'fly away' races the cars retained the original slab sides with a kick up just in front of the rear wheel (as moulded by Tamiya) but from Belgium onwards they changed to a more blended transition from vertical to horizontal surfaces, the Canada GP picture illustrates it exactly. 

Yes. The FW07B in the Williams Heritage collection is in late 1980 setup so I've a fair few images of the side pods from various angles:

 

This zoomed in image is a bit fuzzy due to the low light conditions in there but is pretty useful:

 

I've not decided how I'm going to get this effect yet from the kit. I think just traditional scratch modifications as the kit models the pod sidewalls as flat pieces seperate to the rest of the monocoque upper half which also has the upper side pod surfaces on. From the radiator openings I think the pods are slightly wider too (need to investigate) so I'll probably glue some extra plasticard strip inside the angle of the pod side to top join and then file/ sand the profile down to the correct shape (after having cut off the little fin shaped splitters at the back near the rear wheels)

 

FB