Revell Porsche 911 Carrera RS 3.0 **FINISHED**

[flakmonkey]

Thanks for dropping by. When I think that this kit cost just £5 less than Tamiya's BMW 635CSi kit, I start to feel a little wronged. Especially when the rear screen, moulded as a single piece with the rear side windows, doesn't fit. The screen itself fits (barely) into the hole in the shell, but the overall width of the piece is about 5mm too narrow, leaving the rear side windows to float magically around the interior. There is also no attempt whatsoever to represent any of the framing around the windows. We shall fix this. The side windows were cut from the rear screen and thrown away. Wait, there's more.

Framing from strips of black .020 plastic card. Tiny dots of superglue were used to first tack down one end.



Then the strip was fed into place, tacking it down along the way. What I really need is a very small man with a hammer and some panel pins.



New side windows were cut from Vivak clear acylic sheet, tacked in place with more tiny superglue dots and then Formula 560 run around the edges inside the shell to toughen everything up. It's lucky that 911s don't have complex compound curved rear side windows. They're not flat, but they only curve in the lengthwise direction so life is easier. Beetle windscreens are not flat either, despite everybody saying that they are. One day I shall tell you how I know this. Proper torsion bar sprung Beetles, not the springy 1303 which obviously had a very curved screen. Off topic. Sorry.



In other news, the whale tail is being shaped to fit. One side fits, the other side doesn't, as you may be able to tell from the picture. At least Revell supplied the right type, I wouldn't have been surprised to find the tea tray spoiler from a 3.3 Turbo in the box.



From the useful items drawer I got some double sided tape, black plastic card and some fine stainless steel mesh. Combining these items produced the new oil cooler bug screen.



Fitting the Aoshima wheels to the Revell hubs was a head scratcher. Fortunately it turns out to be relatively easy. The Revell wheels come as an inner and outer half. The inner half is also the hub that attaches to the stub axles. Sanding off the locating ring that mates the inner half to the outer half of the kit wheel away gives a crude but effective dummy brake disc. Very simple representations of calipers were made from little slices of rod and some plastic card and stuck on.



Once they're tucked away inside the wheel they don't look bad from the other side of the room.



The hubs can be glued carefully inside the wheels and that should make fitting them a little easier.

911 yawn induction:

Although Porsche have always referred to the 911 as a 911, there are also internal Porsche model numbers that enthusiasts generally refer to to distinguish one car from the other. According to Porscheists, you haven't really been able to buy a 911 since 1989. Variously, the cars have been known as:

911 from 1963 to 1989
930 was the original Turbo model
964 from 1989 to 1993
993 from 1993 to 1998
996 from 1999 to 2005 (Boxster style headlights and watercooled engines)
991 from 2005 to the present.

Simples.

[flakmonkey]

Engine and transaxle in place, so the rear wheels can be attached. The hubs needed a 3mm spacer either side to widen the track, filling the arches properly. The narrower kit wheels would have a hard time under the Carrera's rear arches. The dampers were shortened, which allowed the semi trailing arms to be rotated upwards which slammed the arches down nicely around the wheels. If you were to lower a real 911 you would go about your task in much the same way, but would use harsher language.



At the pointy end, the locating pins were trimmed from the rear ends of the lower control arms. This allowed them to be swung slightly outwards. This dropped the front end and and gave it some authentic negative camber. The brake control bushes are now attached to the floorpan by one bolt each, an obvious MOT failure.



The bodyshell was taped in place temporarily to check the sit. No noseweight required.



You already had a boring fact today. We try to use them sparingly.

[Dirkpitt289]

I realize this has been giving you a few fits here and there but it's looking pretty good all the same.

[JamesPerrin]

Were you fearing a tail sitter?

[Jagewa]

Clever, a real custom job.

Cheers
Jim

[flakmonkey]

Were you fearing a tail sitter?

Not a tailsitter, just a little anxious to tame it's tendency to be a tailwagger. 911s like to wag their tails at the merest whiff of provocation. You don't even have to be going fast to get them to swap ends.



I can report that having given this 911 a few laps of my desk, it doesn't handle too badly. My impression of an aircooled flat six is coming along nicely as well.

The heat exchangers have gone on. The shape is good but they're pretty flat. If you want to wind a Porscheist up, call them exhaust manifolds so that they can hear you.



The silencer was assembled and the mis-shapen tip that Revell provided me with was thrown away. A perfect excuse for something beefier.



The front quarter windows were moulded as one piece with the windscreen, and fitted about as well as the rear ones did. They were sawn off and new ones cut from Vivak sheet. Framing was made from strips of black plastic card in much the same way as the rear window frames.
Some safety belts were made from shiny black craft paper and the bodyshell was waxed to protect it from superglue mishaps during its attachment to the chassis. Do not adjust your eyes, my camera misbehaved



A good buff up with a piece of soft cloth and a cotton bud for tricky areas. A cocktail stick was used to get wax residue out of the shut lines.



There are just a few detail parts to go on and it can be called finished.

[Dirkpitt289]

Sweet

[flakmonkey]

Lunchtime finishing off session.
There are no windscreen wipers in the kit and I only had one in the spares bin, so that's all it's getting. The separate door handles are quite nice though. The German number plates came from the kit's decal sheet. They were cut out and the edges blacked up with the edge of a Sharpie pen. As they are the new style Euro plates they are too wide to fit the rear bumper, so they had to be cut again to remove the country flash from the left hand side. Does nobody at Revell check these things? Rhetorical question, obviously.

Final fingerprint removal, wax and sealant. This reminds me that my own car is looking a little grubby. Must put the cleaning things where The Tall Vegetarian Wife can see them when she comes home.



Road dirt added to the treads of the tyres with Mig Pigment's wonderfully named industrial city dirt.



That's good enough for me.









Not a very nice kit and quite expensive for what you get in the box. It does date from 1976, but even then it must have been rough compared to the best efforts of other manufacturers. It certainly isn't what it claims to be on the box, at best it could be passed off as a 911SC with a body kit, incorrect roofline notwithstanding. For not very much more money you can get Tamiya's 3.3 Turbo, which is a much nicer kit. If you really need a pre-impact bumper wide bodied 911, the Fujimi Enthusiast Series 911s are the ones to go for, but they are getting expensive these days.

[JamesPerrin]

Well done for making a nice pig out of a pig of a kit. A lesson in how far car kits have evolved.

[Beowulf Shaeffer]

i think its very nice....well done

[ShaunW]

That looked like hard work Flakmonkey, but an excellent looking result.

[Dirkpitt289]

Bravo, well done

[flakmonkey]

Thanks for following along. Not an inspiring kit to build, and now that I look at it I can see that the roof is wronger than a box full of wrong things. Too low and too short; it gives the model a cartoon look. It's fine on a high shelf though.

[TimJ]

A great result. I see what you mean about the roof, it does make the proportions look not quite right.