Talbot T26, Le Mans 1953

This is part of my ongoing quest to reduce the Coides Unbuilt Body Shells Mountain. As many of you know, George Turner (GT Models) bodies are among the best out there so this isn't much of a scratchbuild! The one major modification was fitting it with lights and I'll concentrate on this because I did it using a new and cheap way (at least to me).

The LED lights that I used are available on Ebay (search for L1218WM). Typical prices are around £8 for 20 lights, or £1.60 per car and you can get brilliant white or 'warm' white for the fronts and red for the rears. Obviously, for a 50's car I chose warm white. All the lights have red and black wires and are set up for 12V so it's dead easy to connect them up. The one dodgy aspect is that they have a small resistor soldered in series so they are rather long and rigid but they can be bent to fit the available space with a bit of care.

After drilling out holes in the body for the lights I glued the LEDs in place from the inside with a rapid epoxy (Araldite), holding them in place with BluTak while the glue set. I then connected them all up in parallel to a long lead running from the motor (it needs to be long to allow the body to be easily removed from the chassis) and superglued all the wires flush with the interior of the shell.



I then filled in the exterior spaces with the same epoxy. For the rear lights I just added enough glue to form a smooth convex exterior, let it set, then painted it with a transparent red paint at the end of the build. For the front I prepared headlight lenses by hunting around the Coides Spares Bits Box till I found some scavenged headlight lenses that were close enough then fiddled around with them until they fitted perfectly and were actually transparent across the whole lens. They were pressed into the glue, mopping up the excess that squirted out the sides. Both these approaches worked out very well. Then it went to the spray booth. I made sure that the primer completely covered all the interior and exterior space around the lights to avoid that unfortunate 'glowing body' effect that most commercial lighted cars have.

Here's the final outcome:





. . . and a couple of mood shots below. The rear shot above is a bit washed out - actually, the rear lights are nice and red like the photo below.





This is the GTM resin chassis that comes with the kit - neat and effective.



Andy