Revell Porsche 911 Carrera RS 3.0 **FINISHED**

[flakmonkey]

Reissued from 1976. Almost certain to be careering tail first off the bench at the first corner.

[flakmonkey]

The sprues:



The seats are very odd. Fortunately, I have some spare 1970s Recaros to replace them with.



The transparent parts do not include side windows, front indicators or the reflective strip fitted across the rear panel;



Nasty;



Body shell is good, front bumper is a mix of RS and RSR. Very similar to the aftermarket bumpers found on modern day RS 3.0 replicas;



Rubber tyres are supplied as two halves. Why, I know not. I do know that somebody at Revell can't count, however;



Decals are very well printed and seem satisfactory until you realise that the "Carrera" script has been filled in white. The real decal had this part cut out to show the body colour. Annoying if you don't want to build a white one. And I don't want to build a white one. The UK number plate is 20 years in the future. The M prefix is from 1994. 1974, which would be the right year for the car, would have the M at the end.

[JamesPerrin]

Looks like the German's used deck chairs to save weight!? Obviously with no side windows you'll have to add a very loud stereo system to filled the void with pumping tunes!

[Dirkpitt289]

That is a sharp looking kit. I would love to find a convertible version of this car

[Narayan]

You've got your work cut out for you there. Good luck with it.

_________________
Narayan

1.21 gigawatts? 1.21 gigawatts? Great Scott!

A:B
2012 03:00 2009 19:16
2011 11:10 2008 16:03
2010 44:12

Overall 176:46

[flakmonkey]

Work is definitely cut out with it. There is a crudeness to some of the parts that I'm unhappy with and plan on fixing. Other parts are quite simply missing, for example the full width reflector across the back panel below the engine cover. Oh, and the interior - plain wrong in large parts. Really looking forward to those tyres though

[flakmonkey]

That is a sharp looking kit. I would love to find a convertible version of this car

Would a 2.7 RS Targa do? Actually, don't rush to buy that one. I thought €29950 was cheap until I read the ad properly and realised that it's been carefully worded. That's a replica. Here's a real one, but you will have to cut the roof off yourself. Price is POA, naturally

[Dirkpitt289]

this is what I'm looking for. I wanna build Hank Moody's 911

[JamesPerrin]

A burned out bankers car might be topical

[flakmonkey]

There is something undeniably cool about rat-looking a 60 grand car.

[flakmonkey]

A little bit of background:
The Carrera RS 3.0 was not developed from the earlier RS 2.7, but was in fact a milder version of Carrera RSR. The RS 3.0 and the RSR were the first of the wide bodied 911s, with the RS being considerably tamer in the width department than the bonkers RSR. Whilst Porsche envisioned that very few, if any, RSRs would end up in the hands of people of insane enough to attempt to use it on public roads, the RS 3.0 was a daily driver that could be used as a track car at weekends. If a daily driver with no rear seats, door handles made of string and a heater that only blew cold was your thing, then it was perfectly useable. Apart from the detuned engine, narrower wheelarches and a token piece of carpet, the rest of the RS 3.0 was pure RSR, including brakes a from Porsche 917 sports racing car that would only start working once they were red hot. Usually that was around the same time as you reached your destination. One of the best known RS/RSR cars was the Gulf orange RSR driven by the late James Hunt. Although Hunt was often seen driving the car, he didn't own it. He had borrowed it from his former boss Lord Hesketh, decided that he rather liked it, and didn't return it for quite some time.

Making a start by preparing the Porker's bodyshell. Overall, the shape looks good.



There are major league mould lines all over the place to be removed, and the engine cover doesn't fit as well as it could. The engine that it covers is so crudely done that I might cement the cover in the closed position and smooth things out rather than have it as a working feature.



The whale tail is the correct "small" one, and has a nice big sink mark.



Proper seats retrieved from the spares bin.



First job is to lose the moulded in oil cooler.





A new cooler will have to be made from very fine stainless steel mesh and then it will be set further back into the front bumper. We're going to have some fun with this one.

[Dirkpitt289]

Starting out well by ditching those original seats. What the hell were they thinking? The new ones look so much better. I found this very kit sitting on the counter of my LHS this weekend for $25. Not sure if it was a good price or not and since the reviews seemed a little shaky I held of getting it.... For no that is....

[flakmonkey]

Still undecided on the engine. Chances are that I will simply kerbside the kit and seal the engone cover down, which will be neater looking. Back-up plan is underway however, and I have started replacing the crude detail on the cooling shroud. The fan is made from pieces of brass and aluminium tube, with blades that you can't really see here from plastic card. Heat shrink tubing and bits of old bass string were used for the ducting.

[flakmonkey]

There is a BMW around here with its paint drying which gives me a perfect excuse to bash the Porsche.
Having looked at the faffery required to bring it anywhere near up to the mark, the whole engine thing has been abandoned and this will be a kerbside model. Deciding factor is the very poor fit of the engine cover.



Milliput will rescue that, but to rescue the poor 911 from the lack of a rear reflective panel surgery is needed. The moulded in panel between the tail lights has been cut out.



Raw materials rounded up for the new panel. Some foil from a Swann-Morton packet painted clear red and a piece of clear sheet. The kit does supply a P O R S C H E decal. I am grateful for such small mercies.



Well at least we have a bodyshell. Bumpers have been fitted now for filling purposes. Seems to be going well, but I have just made the mistake of looking at the kit's headlights. Oh dear. I can't bring myself to take a picture of them.



Boring car fact.
The 911 family are thought of as tail happy yuppy killers and the finger of blame is often waved at the archaic torsion bar rear end and the engine being even further back than the car behind you. The 944 had a very similar back end to the 911 and has no such reputation, and Beetles are similarly not well known for diving backwards through walls despite having an engine behind the rear wheels. The real reason that novice Porscheists crash 911s is because they lift off the throttle and try to use the steering wheel to correct it when it gets out of shape instead of applying more power. Simples.

[flakmonkey]

BMW drying and on hold until the paint is rock hard so there has been more Porsche'ing going on.

Here's a real 3.0 RS, showing the headlights off to good effect.



Here are the parts that come with the kit.



Imagining for a moment that they fitted to each other, which they don't, and fitted the bodyshell, which they also don't, they don't look all that similar to 911 lights. There is actually quite a lot of shape to the lights in real life. They certainly aren't a couple of flat discs that point skywards in an attempt to dazzle low flying aircraft. The easiest thing to do is to make a quick drawing that shows the difference between Revell and Porsche.



The wrongness is compounded by a complete lack of a reflector. We can fix that. First the hole for the reflector needs to be changed from its malformed keyhole shape to something a little rounder. The hole on the right has been doctored, the one on the left is as Revell intended.



Milliput to the rescue again.



I did spend some time painting the wheels. The wheels are now in the bin. I prefer round wheels. I quickly sprayed primer over the still wet paint to show their odd shape, ignore the lousy finish.



Very odd. I could buy resin ones for more than the kit cost (and still have to use the bizarre two piece tyres, that also don't fit together) or use some 18" Enkei RP-02s courtesy of Aoshima that I have lying around.


The offset is more 959 than '70s 911 but they are at least round. The suspension will need to be modified to slam the arches snugly down onto the wheels, so the model will end up having a resto-racer look which is fine by me. Going to have to scratch some brakes too.

Yawn inducing trivia:
The VW Beetle was designed by Ferdinand Porsche. The 911's famous progenitor, the 356, was designed by Ferdinand's son Ferdinand 'Ferry' Porsche. So the Beetle and the 356 were both designed by Ferdinand Porsche. Just not the same one.