Two More Mirages

I posted a 'teaser' for these cars in my thread about my Mirage M3 model and promised more details, so here they are.
Two members of this forum, Chappyman66 and Nimrod444, collaborated to produce 3D prints of three different versions of the 1969 Gulf Mirage prototype sports racer: the M2 coupe in early and later versions, and the M3 roadster. Chappyman was kind enough to print all three versions for me. I built the M3 some time ago and posted the details on this forum. Here are the two M2 coupe shells after a bit of light finishing.


I like to use wrecked 'donor cars' for the basis of many of my builds. In this case, I used a couple of Scalextric F1s from the 2000s, a David Coulthard McLaren and a Ralf Schumacher Williams. I'd bought the donor cars expecting them to have the slimline FF motors, but found they had, instead, standard Scalextric S-can motors.


Both chassis conversions are similar. I cut off the F1 front end and reduced the wheelbase to match the Mirages, then made a new front chassis from plastic (ABS) sheet about 1.5mm thick, which I had scavenged from some packaging materials.
I join the front and back halves of the chassis with screws. By leaving these screws loos, I can allow the rear half with the motor to flex slightly to give the effect of a motor pod.




I kept the standard Scalextric 'quick change' guide, which works well on my Policar track even though it is rather shallow. I also kept the plastic Scalextric wheels, although I fitted smaller front tyres and ground down the rears to a more-suitable diameter for a 1969 sports car. The 6-spoke F1 wheels are quite close to the design used on the Mirages, so I decided just to paint the spoke orange rather than making new inserts.
I don't like the look of black platforms in the cockpit, so I spent a lot of time grinding the underside of the drivers away and making an interior to fit around the motor. An FF motor would have been much better in this respect, but I was too stubborn to start again or to try to re-engine the chassis I had started with!




I made the windows from clear packaging material. As always, the little details like engine intakes, filler caps, exhausts and lights took ages to finish, but I finally completed them. I painted the shells with Montana Gold 'Fresh Blue' acrylic aerosol spray and made my own decals on my inkjet printer.


The No 51 car represents the BRM-engined car which debuted at the 1969 BOAC 1000Km at Brands Hatch and the No 8 represents the later, Cosworth-engined car which ran at the 1969 Nurburgring 1000Km later that year, all driven by the pairing of Jackie Ickx and Jackie Oliver who, of course, won the Le Mans 24 Hours that year in the Gulf GT40.




And here are the three cars together:


Predictably, I had trouble initially with the new interiors interfering with the chassis and motor, so I had to resort to more surgery to sort this out. The two new cars now both run well although, unlike the full-size cars, the BRM-engined M2 is faster than either of the others on my short home track, even though the M3 has a yellow flat-6 motor and a Sideways anglewinder chassis!.

Any thought or comments welcome!

Mike