1:12 scale 1966 Ford GT40 , 1931 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 and 1:18 scale 1967 Ferrari P4

P A D

Western Thunderer
With continued restrictions in place due to Covid 19, I still don't have access to my workbench and tackle at my brother's house, so I'm still slumming with limited space and resources in my garage. After my last thread regarding the Piko Baureihe 64 in G guage, I've gone even further off the rails and I'm building a 1:12 scale Ford GT40 plastic kit by a company called Magnifier. It was originally released by Trumpeter in 2008 and I believe withdrawn in 2015. It's been recently reissued under the Magnifier label, but for some reason it is referred to as "US Sports Car - 24 hour endurance racing car. There's no mention of Ford GT40 anywhere on the box or in the instructions, so maybe they are not licenced to use the name.
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The box art is exactly the same as Trumpeter's and I understand Magnifier are using the same moulds. The Trumpeter issue only provided transfers for the 1966 winning car as shown on the box, driven by Bruce McLaren and Chris Amon, whereas Magnifier also provide transfers for the second place car driven by Ken Miles and Denny Hulme. There's some interesting history behind the 1966 race, with the GT40 having been specially developed and funded by Ford to break the stranglehold that Ferrari had on the race in the early 1960s. I won't repeat it here as a simple Google search will pull up the story.

The kit consists of over 300 parts in Styrene, photo etch, vinyl, woven fabric and lots of crosshead self tapping screws, turned metal air valves for the wheel rims plus other assorted metal parts. The bulk of the styrene sprues are packed in poly bags, with the larger body and floor pan mouldings in a separate box inside the main box.
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Here are the bags laid out for inspection. Most of the parts are in white, with quite a few in chrome, plus one black sprue and some clear sprues for the windows and lights. The wheels come ready painted in gold and 2 or 3 of the white parts have areas ready painted silver. Many of the chrome plated parts should not be chromed and this will be stripped with bleach before using.
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Three lots of transfers are provided, one for car number 1, one for number 2 and a smaller one with the Goodyear markings for the tyres. The dials for the instrument panel are on the sheet for car number 2.
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Here are the main body parts laid out along with the lenses for the lights.
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The model will be about 13 inches long when complete and both the doors, bonnet and engine covers can be opened. The front wheels are "steerable" and the suspension is sprung and operable.
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Here are the instruction pages showing the parts for identification purposes.
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And the livery diagrams. I'll be building it as car number 1 which finished second in the 1966 race.
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The kit is very well detailed and from reading a number of reviews, the fit of the parts is in the main very good, but there are a few errors and omissions that I will be rectifying, most notably on the engine, which is the starting point in the instructions.

As mentioned earlier, quite a lot of parts that are chrome plated should not be, so to improve paint adhesion it's better to remove it. I discovered on one of the plastic model building forums that soaking the parts in bleach removed the chrome, so the first thing I did was give it a try on several of the engine parts. All the below parts were plated but following 5-10 minutes in Morrison's thick bleach diluted 50:50 with water, they now look like this. After removing from the bleach, I gave the parts a good rinse in water with some vinegar added to neutralise pH and kill the chlorine smell, followed by further rinsing in water only.

For touching up the parts that should be chromed after removing from the sprue, I bought this Molotow Liquid Chrome marker pen, which although not cheap, does what it says on the tin. They come in thicknesses of 1, 2, 4 and 5mm. Here's a link to the supplier.
Molotow Liquid Chrome Marker

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As far as I can tell, the basic engine and gearbox are accurate, but do not include the starter motor, distributor, coil, spark plugs and leads or the clutch operating mechanism. Although some of these will be barely visible when the model is complete, it does not seem acceptable to me to not include them on a 1:12 scale model, so I'll be scratch building them. Here are some views of the engine parts after assembly.
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The aluminium cylinder head and the sump were gold coloured and come ready painted in the kit, as does the gearbox. However, I'm the replacing pretty much all of the moulded nuts, which are little more than nodules, with ones made from plasticard using the RP Toolz nutter tool, so the whole engine will be primed later and repainted.
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Spark plugs are being represented by 0.5mm brass rod with wire insulation representing the porcelain. The plug leads will be made from 0.5mm ID silicone tube which I have on order.
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Here you can see the nodules on the sump before replacement and note also the core plugs in the engine block which should have a recess.
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This is the alternator, pulley wheels and drive belt moulding after dechroming. The belt is way too thick and the nuts on the large pulley are wrong, so it needs rectifying. Here a start has been made on thinning the belt. Note how glossy the cream coloured plastic is when the chrome is removed. I wonder what mechanism is involved in the sodium hypochlorite bleach removing the chrome? Any chemists on here know the answer?
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That's my 16 file limit for this post so it's time for beer.

Cheers,
Peter
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
Yep, that's the one I'm doing. I haven't seen the film, but I assume Miles and Hulme are denied the victory due to corporate bullshit as actually happened.
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
You should find the time to watch it, a jolly good filum it is too. Whilst I doubt all is authentic and some movie license is applied, it did leave me with sober thoughts on many aspects. A talented man robbed of his win and taken sadly all too soon.

I had a track day this year as a present and opted for the Aerial Atom supercharger and bloody hell is it fast, fastest thing there actually in acceleration, but next time, the only car that even remotely interests me is the genuine Le Man GT40 they have on the books. No interest in Lambos, Ferrari's or Subaru fang dangly hip hop nutter wannabes.

As far as kits go, I do have a growing hankering for a large scale ETO Razorback Thunderbolt or PTO Corsair.
 
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Tim Humphreys ex Mudhen

Western Thunderer
Mick, a car I'd also really like to drive, unfortunately the originals are limited to people with a max height of 5' 10". Some of the replicas are designed to overcome that problem and with the correct motor should give a great experience.

Tim
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
Hi Tim,
Dan Gurney was 6'4" and he raced them. Mind you they had to cut a hole in the roof of the driver's door and rivet an oval plate on to give him headroom. It became known as the Gurney bubble. The car Ken Miles drove in 66 didn't have it although the McLaren car did. The kit comes with the bubble so I'll be filling it in.

Yes Mick, it's a great shame that the suits from Ford intervened and neutered the race when Miles was in the lead and could have won, scoring a treble having already won at Daytona and Sebring.

Cheers,
Peter
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Mick, a car I'd also really like to drive, unfortunately the originals are limited to people with a max height of 5' 10". Some of the replicas are designed to overcome that problem and with the correct motor should give a great experience.

Tim
I'm 6'-2".....I'll manage for three or four laps :))

To be fair, they may have lowered the seat, I'm not sure I'd have to check but they don't/didn't have a height restriction when I looked into it before.

They say it's genuine and I've no reason to disbelieve, they have one of the Starsky and Hutch Gran Torinos and apparently one of the original Batman film set cars. This year one guy turned up all dressed up as the Riddler to drive the Bat-mobile, I kinda thought that was cool and told him so.
 

Tim Humphreys ex Mudhen

Western Thunderer
Mick,
I hate to dispute what they say but I'd be surprised if a car that is worth several million ponds were available for track experiences far less a Le Mans winner. Anyway many of the replicas I've seen are very difficult to tell from the original provided items such as the engine, gearbox and wheels match up. I also confident that they drive very much like the original.
Tim
 

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Mick,
I hate to dispute what they say but I'd be surprised if a car that is worth several million ponds were available for track experiences far less a Le Mans winner. Anyway many of the replicas I've seen are very difficult to tell from the original provided items such as the engine, gearbox and wheels match up. I also confident that they drive very much like the original.
Tim
I'd concur, they haven't said winner, my apologise if I said/intimated that, they just say it's raced at Le Mans, or could be a slip of the fingers and is a replica of the 'type' raced at Le Mans.

Either way it looks and sounds good, so worth a punt for a few laps :thumbs:
 

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Fast cars? Track day?
If I'd been a little more enterprising a while back you could have both had a Heavy metal Pit day with my avatar.
It would be a treat to see your faces when you finally made it into 3rd gear at 7mph with a full freight on.......

P.S. here's what my 1/35 scale mainly resin Masterpiece Models kit, waiting for a rainy day and a dollop of courage, could look like when built (I'm learning a lot from these plastic kit build threads):

Masterpiece 1:35 Lima 604.jpg
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
Nice digger Mr. Osgood.

7mph in 3rd gear! When you get the truck up to 30mph are you in 12th gear?

Back with the toy GT40 here's the front end of the engine after fettling the moulding. I've also made a start on making the distributor.
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And made the starter motor. The alternator has been worked on to the fill the open end of the moulding at the rear, plus other bits of fettling and additions to match the original. The core plugs have been recessed and various nuts added and original "nodules" replaced.
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Amongst other references I'm using the website dedicated to the last restoration of the 1966 winning car for information. According to the blurb, the restorers have done everything possible to return the car to it's 1966 race condition. Apart from not having the Gurney bubble and different livery, the Miles/Hulme car was identical (I believe). I think I saw an image of the #1 car used in the Ford vs Ferrari film and it has the bubble and if so that is incorrect. Christian Bale has a very good likeness to Ken Miles in the film but Matt Damon is a bit off the mark for Carrol Shelby in my opinion. Not that it matters of course. Here's a link to the restoration web site.
RK Motors - GT40 P/1046

Here's a closer view of the distributor.
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The rear drive shafts lack detail on the universal joints so need some attention. A company called KA Models do an upgrade set for this kit, but it is nearly double the price of the Magnifier kit and from what I've seen is not worth the money in my opinion. It provides white metal replacements for the drive shafts, but they are too long and too thin for the brake gear, so it makes more sense just to fettle up the styrene parts. Here I've made a start on the lower one, drilling through at the knuckle to open them up.
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To give this.
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Here's the engine with the drive shafts added and sprayed in primer.
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Further work on the distributor.
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And I've made a coil.
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Here they are after painting. The coil has been painted with the Molotow Liquid Chrome pen and the distributor with Tamiya semi gloss black and chrome silver. It's made from plastic tube with wire insulation for the terminals and the clips from waste brass fret.20201127_185241.jpg

Here are some shots of the engine after painting. Still a lot of stuff to add but this is the state of play so far.
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Cheers,
Peter
 

Mike W

Western Thunderer
That's looking very nice Peter. Surprised to see the engine blue. All Ford V8s I've come across were green, but it could be special for a race engine and afterall, the Ford badge was always blue at that time.

Mike
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
Taken from the Coldstone Cut no doubt. Fascinating place. Did you visit the remains of the ancient lime kiln lower down Greenhow Hill, which is also very interesting.

Tony, no worries about the digressions. When we were there in the summer we had it to ourselves, so we road up the spirals on the mountain bikes. I was dizzy on the way down going round and round, but still fun. We then road down the 50 yards of stair set at the start of the path back down to the car park. Happy days.

Thanks Mike. I've done the block in blue as that is the colour they have done it in the restoration of chassis P/1046. The restorers recon they have reproduced all the details and colours of the car as it raced at LeMans, so right or wrong I'm going with that. The chassis were build initially in the UK at Ford Advanced Vehicles and derived from the Lola T70. Ken Broadly the owner of Lola cars worked with Ford on the design of the GT40 and some Lola T70s were painted blue, so maybe it was his decision. As far as I know the chassis and interiors remained in blue and only the outside of the cars were repainted in team colours. I assume that Ford/Shelby America where the engines were added, used the same colour. Anyway, my silicone tubing for the plug leads arrive in the post, so I'm off out to the garage to wire up the engine.

Cheers.
Peter
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
So, here's the tube I bought on Ebay from one of the fishing tackle suppliers. The inside diameter is 0.5mm, but unfortunately the outside diameter was not mentioned and it's too thick.
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Just to see what it looked like I "wired up " the plugs.
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So on to plan B, the 0.3mm ID tubing by Guru that I used on the BR64. It's very soft and flexible and is easy to push onto the 0.5mm brass wire on the plugs and terminals on the distributor. I've searched high and low for this size in orange to copy the restored car, but had no luck, so I'm going with the grey tube.
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This is the front end of an actual engine, but not the one on the restored LeMans car. I have a colour photo of that but it has a weird file and it won't upload.
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And the model after wiring up with the thinner tube. The brackets below the rocker covers were made from flattened copper wire and painted with the liquid chrome. I "decanted" a little of the paint into an Humbrol paint tin lid, and then brush painted the brackets with a find brush.
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It's not easy to see but I've angled the spark plugs upwards as I think the area where the plugs are, is not correct on the moulding. I think it should be nearer to flat not sloping as on the model.
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As is my wont when building kits, I tend to flit about from section to section as the mood takes me, ignoring the sequence in the instructions. I was eager to see how the rivets on the seats would turn out using the Molotow chrome marker so I prepped them and primed and painted them with Tamiya Matt black. I gave them one brush coat, then a spray coat diluted 2:1 paint to thinners. I've grown to quite like these Tamiya paints since using them on the BR86, as they dry much quicker than enamels. Here are the seat mouldings, the one on the left as received and on the right after drilling through the rivets. The real seats have riveted holes in the padding to allow heat to dissipate. I believe the mark I cars had air conditioning for the seats, but as part of the development it was removed to reduce weight. Even with the much bigger engine it was important to reduce the weight as much as possible to compete with the much lighter Ferraris. To that effect, the cylinder head was cast in Aluminium for the Mark IIs running at LeMans in 1966.
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Both seats drilled. In total 300 rivets! I thought using the mini drill would create heat and melt the plastic so I started with the pin vice, but after 5 or 6 decided it was just too bloody tedious and had a quick trial with the power tool. I found that with a 0.5mm bit at the lowest revs (@5000 rpm) it was fine, so I did the lot in a fraction of the time it would have take with the pin vice.
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Here they are after priming with Halfords grey plastic primer from a rattle can.
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And after painting black and picking out the rivets with the Chrome marker. I bought the 1 and 2mm pens as I was not sure which would work best. I gave the 1mm a try first but found that I needed to draw around the rivet the get a good result. Difficult and risky, so I tried the 2mm pen. With that I found that 2 or 3 dabs gave an acceptable result so I went with that.
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A further digression. Here are the seats plonked in the cockpit which I assembled and primed earlier. I'm pleased with the result on the rivets but still need to touch up one or two with the pen and also the Matt Black where there is some over spill. I had to re-drill some of the holes where the chrome paint had welled up and I decided to do the lot with a 0.6mm bit which I think looks better.
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And going off on another tangent, here are the ready painted wheels. Just common sense really, but tabbing the wheels to the sprue on the inside of the rim is a nice touch which negates the need for any touching up of the visible surfaces.
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The vinyl tyres come with some foam inserts which I assume is to stop them compressing over time. I would not have thought there will be enough weight in the model for that to be an issue, but I've added the inserts anyway.
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Here are the four of them assembled. Note the turned metal air valve in the front wheel and the missing valve from the rear wheel. It must have been poorly glued in place and fallen off. I only spotted this after taking the photo, but after sweeping the area under the work area was lucky enough to find it. The wheels are fixed in place with self tapping screws and the knock of locking nut mouldings are a push fit, so the model may be posed with the wheels off if desired.
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The Goodyear branding is provided as water slide transfers, but the blue line around the wall of the tyre will need painting by hand. My thoughts on that are to make an insert for the wheel centres, then use a spring bow pen to draw the line. Hopefully that will work and if not, I'll have to do it with a fine brush and then clean up any overspill with thinners, as described in Ian Rathbone's excellent book on painting and lining.

Cheers,
Peter
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
I found a bit of tech on t'internet that allowed me to convert the engine image to jpeg. This is the restored engine on car number 2.
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Plus some other images of the 7 litre engine from the Internet.
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This engine has the oil filter attached to the engine block, but on the GT40 it is fixed to the left hand bulk head of the engine bay. The hydraulic clutch mechanism is attached to the flywheel cover with the link to the gearbox. I've got a nice close up image of that to help me scratch one up.
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Here's the oil filter attached to the side of the engine bay.
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Cheers,
Peter
 

P A D

Western Thunderer
Back on the engine, I added the hoses to the coolant pipes from strips of PVC tape.
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And added some photo etch hose clips. They are a bit fiddly to put on but look nice so are worth the effort.
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Here's the engine with the pipes added.
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And t'other side.
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This pile of noodles is the exhaust pipes ready for priming and painting. I marked them with a felt pen so as to identify them for correct fitting, but of course the markings will disappear under the paint, so I've added tape with the numbers on.
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After rattle can priming I airbrushed a coat of Tamiya chrome silver and when dry, oversprayed with a very dilute mix of Tamiya Titanium Gold and Clear Red.
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A digression onto the bodywork has opened up the air vents on the sides and tops of the engine compartment cover. Here the left hand vent on the top has been opened.
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And the upper vent on the right hand side.
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And t'other side.
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All done.
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Top vents and engine cover added.
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Plus the innards.
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There's an adjustable spoiler on the back. Here it is in place after opening up the slots which are filled in on the moulding.
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Primed up ready for painting.
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Cheers,
Peter
 
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