Grand Prix 1982! Options

[MAF]

Grand Prix 1982…
Here’s a couple of cars I’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks using plasticard bodies from Betta and Classic. They’re both from the 82’ British GP at Brands Hatch and are Bruno Giacomelli’s Alfa Romeo 182 and Niki Lauda’s Mclaren MP4/1.

I thought I’d take a few pictures along the way to show how I built these two. The bodies were £3.20 each; I also bought clear versions to use for screens @ £2.70 each. All the detail bits are scratch built or from my bits box of old plastic kits and slot car bits and bobs…

So here’s how I received the bodies…


And after initial trimming with scissors…



After further trimming with scissors and a scalpel, most of the trimming at this stage was done with a sharp scalpel. It’s best to shave off small pieces rather than try and cut big chunks out all in one go….



…so both bodies are pretty much trimmed to shape, I’m also using the Betta driver figures as I think they look fine with a couple of spare heads from my bits box which are Scalextric F1 driver heads…



I wanted to do separate rear wings so after cutting those off the Alfa (blue helmet) seemed to come up a bit short at the back so I added some plasticard to the rear bonding it with liquid poly followed by a reinforcement of araldite underneath…




I also cut off the roll bars and added my own…


I backed up the holes made by this with plasticard and again reinforced with araldite before filling smooth….



The roll bar on the McLaren is a piece of motor wire so will be flexible in a crash; the Alfa is made from bits of brass rod glued together (not so robust).

On the McLaren I cut out the rad ducts and replaced with what I think were tile spacers? which will make it much easier to paint as the black area can now be painted separately to the white bodywork…


Here they are taped in place…



That was pretty much the bodies done ready for painting.

Onto the driver figures, as they are vac formed (in thick plasticard) the detail is lacking compared to resin drivers but a little paint and simple technique you can make the most of them…
…here they are in primer…



I’ve used four colours here, red, black, brown and white. All I have done is paint the main colours on, wait to dry, go over the whole thing with a thinned (with water) black wash (acrylic), let that dry then using the same colours I used in the first step go over them again and highlight the high points by dry brushing. All that is is loading the brush with paint, paint on some paper until almost of the paint has gone and then light brush your figure and you’ll find the minimal paint left on the brush will highlight the raised areas on the figure. So once I did this for the white, red, and brown areas and I got something like this…



It really isn’t that hard and the more detail in the figure the more detail will come up, you can use the same technique on a resin figure, here there’s not much detail on the vac form but they still don’t look too bad.
I’ve added seat belt decals that I already had but strips of masking tape painted will do the job just as good (if not better) but I took the lazy route as I already had them.
Then I glued on the painted helmets…





I hand painted on the double L’s on Lauda’s helmet and the diamonds on Bruno’s helmet are bits of white roundel decal I cut into diamond shapes.

So onto the running gear. I made this up as I went along and its turned out great so will show what I’ve done. I’ve used a Penelope Pitlane SM1M chassis however you can use anything that fits or cut and shut something that doesn’t. There’s plenty of 70’s and 80’s Scalextric F1’s going for peanuts on ebay/swapmeets all the time, get one with the right size wheels and tyres and you’ve got yourself a cheap chassis (make sure you get one with a pan type chassis and not one where the motor/axles/guide clip straight into the body). There are some great threads by Ian H on here that show various mods to these chassis. The body mounting method can be adapted to be used on whatever chassis you’re using. The SM1M chassis is adjustable for wheelbase so make’s life a lot easier and I already had two so that’s what I’ve used. With these vac forms there’s no undercut to the sides, otherwise they wouldn’t come out of the mould so I’ve used a piece of black ABS I had and cut to suit the width and length of the side pods…



This will be used to neatly close off the side pods and mount the body….



I then bolted this to the underside of the chassis…




You may have to glue/bolt this piece to the top of the chassis you’re using with two pieces to go either side of the motor depending on ground clearance to achieve the same effect.

Then I used some 3mm x 3mm plastruct angle and glued two pieces to the inside of each of the side pods.



The bodies now just clip onto the chassis and to stop the body sliding backwards and forwards on the chassis I’ve glued in a small pin (cut from some piano wire) into chassis and cut a corresponding slot into one of the angles pieces. If the slot in the angle piece is slightly wider than the pin you can allow for a bit of body movement (if you like that sort of thing).



Rear wings – there was a lot a head scratching over these, and in the end I used the vac form ones as I think a scratched one from plasticard won’t be as robust as the all-in-one vac form which will also be bit springy and less rigid than a scratched one.

So after trimming these up with the scalpel it was time to think about a tough mounting method durable enough to take the odd tumble. I didn’t have thick enough plasticard to make the uprights so glued two pieces together from the stuff I had to get the thickness.



I then cut a slot in one of the pieces and glued this to the upright, then backed up the joint from underneath with araldite.



These are rock solid and really pleased with how tough the joint is. On the PP chassis there is a handy tab with a hole in it at the back (normally used for mounting bodies) so used it to mount the rear wings, just bolts straight on so if it does break I can just make another and replace it.



If the tab wasn’t there I could’ve bolted it to the top or bottom of the chassis and just adjusted the length of the horizontal piece and height of the upright piece to suit. On a Williams I’m also doing I’ve extended the underpan and bolted the upright to that…





I’ve used the plastruct angle again to provide a pad for the rear wing to mount on.







I won’t mount the rear wing onto the pad on the McLaren until after painting as the upright is black and the wing is white/fluorescent red so will make it easier to paint if they are separate.

A rummage around the bit boxed came with bits of old kit that can be shaped to cover the screw...







Front wing on the Alfa is a plasticard effort and will glue it in after painting also. It’s an all-in-one piece that goes across the length of the nose it’s easier to line up and is more durable than two separate pieces.
So here they are after the initial painting…







And with some homemade decals on…









That’s pretty much it apart from some detail paint and clear coat over the decals. Also did Keke Rosbergs’ FW08 made the same way as the Mclaren and Alfa but has Patto’s decals…





These have been great fun and think they make a nice little trio of cars from the ground effect era..

[ThaiRacer]

Inspiring work. Those are beautifully conceived and executed. And thanks for posting the great step by step photos.

[Ian H]

Seriously, seriously good work here MAF.

My cap is doffed to you!

Magic maestro, simply magic!

[Russell Sheldon]

Beautifully done! It's great to see you doing vac-formed bodies as well!

I really don't understand why so many race organisers don't allow vac-formed bodies -- they need to take a look at what you have done with these, for the fraction of the price of a resin body.

With kind regards,

Russell

[munter]

Fantastic....you have made it look so easy...

I expect PP to sell out of that particular chassis and there to be a rush on Plastruct too.

[superhornets]

Hi Marlon
nice to see you so far out of your comfort zone working with blob bodies and cars that havn,t got 20inch wheels
All joking aside it does go to show what can be done with not a little skill and a bit of patience with the humble blob body
I am sure that will be an inspiration for others to have a GO

well done

cheers tony

[loosesalute]

Awesome work as usual Marlon..wish I had a tenth of your skills!
Cheers,
Kev.

[MAF]

Thanks for the replies everyone

Hi Marlon
nice to see you so far out of your comfort zone working with blob bodies and cars that havn,t got 20inch wheels
All joking aside it does go to show what can be done with not a little skill and a bit of patience with the humble blob body
I am sure that will be an inspiration for others to have a GO

well done

cheers tony

Hi Tony, yep I hope it encourages other to have a go at building a car and show you don't have to spend a fortune to build something a bit different. You're right its not normally my thing, these are for my little nephew to thrash around his track so wanted to do something a bit more modern and not spend too much time or money on them given the use they're going to get!

Cheers, Marlon

[Bigblock]

these cars are splendid. Thanks a lot for the step by step .

[spykerman]

Very impressive. And thanks for the step-by-step explanation. Great photo's too.

regards,
Spykerman

[pace1970uk]

Brilliant work as usual I especially like the Williams

[zagato]

Nice work Marlon! Glad to see you eventually found a use the tile spacers!

Graham.

[tossedman]

Well done Marlon. Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing.

Todd

[bosmeck]

Wow! These are just lovely. Well done and thanks for posting how you did MAF

[MAF]

Thanks for all the comments, managed to finish these off this morning, they've all had a few coats of Klear over the decals and the air intakes are bare metal foil (flat aluminium) with a dry brushing of grey over the top...