Can Am/Interserie Porsche 917 Prototype

[ibj40]

Porsche, as they contemplated entry into the North American Can Am Series (and then ultimately into the European Interserie), created prototypes of their 917, to determine how they might compete.

 

This is a picture of a prototype, that appears to blend the nose from the Longtail version of the endurance 917 and the evolving sprint turbo-charged 917 chassis.

I thought it might be an interesting project to try to create, in 1/18 scale, something similar.  Mind you, my end product will not look exactly like the example, due to availability of parts, but I will try to get as close as I can.  This project to put an AutoArt 917 LongTail nose on a Minichamps 917/10 chassis.

I hope many of you are familiar with the Porsche 917/10 Can Am/Interserie model. Both Minichamps and Exoto made them, although Exoto's were limited to those prepared by Penske and driven by Mark Donohue. Minichamps made several liveries and a couple of different versions of bodywork.

Here's what I started with.

Actually, they are pretty easy to modify, if you want to remove the front bodywork, it's just a couple of screws, and a jeweler's saw.

 

And with that, you have both a body and a chassis.

 

And then let's look at what an AutoArt Longtail front nose looks like mocked-up onto the chassis.

 

As is obvious from these pictures, the AutoArt nose is 3/8" narrower than the Minichamps chassis (not sure how this happens, and haven't researched it, but either the tub of the real 917/10 was wider than the endurance version, or there was a little bit of license taken by either AutoArt or Minichamps).

Regardless, this requires an additional surgical step to "widen" the nose of the AutoArt.

That will be the next installment.

 

Edited August 28, 2017 by ibj40