ScaleKraft Broadspeed Mini Conversion, Finished Apr 22, 2014

[jbwelda]

I have had this excellent Broadspeed Mini Cooper resin body around for some time, as anyone who has tried to get hold of these kinda legendary creations would have to know...i only knew about the company for about a year before production ceased. anyway i have had this body sitting on top of a tamiya racing version mini cooper base kit for awhile now, and recently i had the opportunity to massage the body, primer it, fit it to the tamiya mini chassis, partially finish some wobbly web style wheels the Broadspeed variation often wore and tonite i stuck the wheels underneath and did some posing and photographing. i probably wont get back to this seriously for a couple months yet but just wanted to see how much interest this variant brings.

here is the base kit i am using, it has some race car parts like rollbar, racing front seat, some augmented instrumentation, stuff like that:






now the body take a bit of getting used to, just like its 1:1 prototype. it remains relatively untouched forward of the back of the door, but from there back it looks like someone swapped in a Marlin fastback in slightly less spendor sizewise, tapering back to a very seventies looking Kamm back with Ferrariesque overtones. Kind of like a fine wine but i digress. actually though, it does take some getting used to and i am not positive i am quite there yet.




heres a shot of the virtually unchanged from stock front end, with emphasis on the wobbly web style wheel...they are metallic black over gloss black and i still need to "chrome" the outer ring around each wheel. should stand out a lot more then:




heres where things start going all sideways...roof looks very grafted on but has a certain grace to it. the wheel tucks into the wheelwell nicely, i am going to have to do some major doing to get the car to sit down on its suspension like this though. i have build two tamiya minis and both ended up almost looking like 4X4s, which was ok for the one because it was a rally car and it was ok for the other because it ended up in the air in a garage diorama where its suspension should be relaxed anyway. but again with the digressing...





and here you can get a look at the rear end with the very pronounced Kamm back effect. the design especially in the back looks very european to me, and this was a pretty significant variant on the typical mini cooper design:




so i plan on painting this tamiya mica red with a red clear coat afterward for no other reason than i really like that color and it will contrast nicely with the black shiny wheels.

this body and the Traveller body i still have from ScaleKraft are both excellent. the kits they were included in, for roughly 60$ if i remember right, had interior panels, vac formed glass, wheels (these wobbly webs for instance), some very nice looking weber carbs to put on the standard tamiya motor, and short of having to trim flash out of all the windows (not a major undertaking, kind of a relaxing evening kind of thing) there wasnt really any cleanup necessary on the body. as you can see i have primed it and while i havent looked at it super close, in my fitting session i dont recall seeing any pinholes or blemishes or anything. the kit included a new hood to fit the body and i couldnt understand why because the tamiya hood fit pretty perfectly. then i noticed the hood is relieved underneath whereas the tamiya one is very shallow. i am assuming that is to allow clearance for the weber carburetors. we shall see.

thanks for looking and of course any questions cheerfully addressed!

Edited April 22, 2014 by jbwelda

[Johan020]

Great little car

Never saw one before

[Wicky]

I am a bit of a mini fan and have owned a few in my time , this being the most recent one

I have the 1/12 Tamiya kit I'm going to use to make a replica of it ,

a replica ( in progress ) of another one I owned made from a Corgi diecast

I also have a resin clubman body somewhere in my stash to make a copy of the 1275GT I had as a teenager , I shall be watching this build with intrest .

Edited October 15, 2012 by Wicky

[cobraman]

I never saw one either.

[Brizio]

I newer saw it too! But it is a cool project, looking forward to see more of it!

[GeeBee]

Nice little car, and a blast from the past, looking forward to seeing more of this build

[IMSANUT]

Very cool project! Where did you source the wobbly's from?

[Gluhead]

I've never spotted that body style, either...but I like it!

[GerN]

Maximum Minis, by Jeroen Booij has photos of quite a number of similar modified Minis, and an abbreviated history of most.

[jbwelda]

hey thanks for the comments, let me address the question:

>Where did you source the wobbly's from?

they were included with the scalekraft body kit as were a few other details.

i am going to look for that book, Gerald, thanks for the tip.

for now i have to get a couple other projects off the bench before getting

hot and heavy into this mini.

[Modelmartin]

Guido made up the Wobbly wheels. I have never seen a Mini with them. I think they were mostly on Lotus. I have most of the ScaleKraft Minis and have finished several of them including this one, the Minisprint(chopped and sectioned), and the woody wagon. They are great pieces to work with. I am doing the pick-up next.

As of a few years ago there was a place in Belgium who was still converting 1/1 Minis into Broadspeed fastbacks.

[Ace-Garageguy]

Very interesting. I've never seen the Broadspeed fastback conversion before, 1:1 or in scale. The tail looks kinda like some early Fiat 124 coupe and mid-'50s Lancia Aurelia coupe genes got mixed in.....

[jbwelda]

its been a while but a little work and some planning have been taking place in between other duties, so a small update is in order.

heres a photo of a xerox copy of a photo of a broadspeed mini showing the wobbly web wheels (top...kinda hard to see but look like black webs with chrome outer rings, they look a lot more like webs in the original i have than in the photo i took of it). i believe this is a photo of a real car (and not a built up model) but that is hard to say for sure, these photos were sent along with the kit:

and the motor is done and just awaiting the front suspension cradle being painted to plug into and add the remaining pieces:

(edit: ohhh i love these digital cameras! noticed that valve cover corner is not flush with the head top...it is now!)

right now though i am thinking on how to best set the ride height...still want it to look halfway real underneath, despite the gawdawful purple i painted the underpan...thats gonna get reshot with some drab green spatter stuff.

thanks as always for looking and comments certainly encouraged!

Edited February 23, 2013 by jbwelda

[Duntov]

Neat stuff!!!!

[XJ6]

Hey great idea you have there.....looking at your pic's....second one down from the top (engine).....it appears your valve cover is on backwards...the slope side should face the Dist....Fuelpump.....starter side...

Just a heads up........ I am now building two of the Mini's.....stock...and the rally at the same time . however the rally valve cover is different than the stock..

Cheers...Don

[jeffs396]

Very cool Bill!

Add another to the list that's never seen one of these before

We'll be watching with interest

[jbwelda]

>it appears your valve cover is on backwards...the slope side should face the Dist....Fuelpump.....starter side...

hey thanks for bringing that up...it wasnt glued down yet so i swapped it around! thanks for the tip!

[Skip]

You are getting to be a regular Mini-ac . Always liked the looks of the Broadspeed Minis, they look so much better than the Mini Marcos which is a similar Mini variant. With the "different" definition of vehical registration these body swaps are legal without any change to the car's paperwork; for some reason in the UK a car's body is considered a changeable part! As in if the body gets too rusted out, you could (maybe still can) buy another brand new Mini body and still be registered as the same year Mini. Keep up the good work, or should that be "Keep calm and carry on".

[crazyrichard]

thats cool i cualy really like the fastback body style , sure a classic mini body style is always cool but this one is really something different !!

looks great

[250 Testa Rossa]

This is going to be AWESOME

[Dominik]

Cool looking body! Never saw one before. Your work looks good so far. Keep on modeling

Edited February 24, 2013 by Dominik

[jbwelda]

a little progress to report: chassis/floorpan is about done, currently making a new rear package shelf for the rear window but all the rear suspension is in place (lowered about 3 or 4 scale inches) and the motor and associated front suspension in place as well (lowering as yet to be done but will probably get a little sloppy). decided to keep the gawdawful purple because it sort of grew on me so i am using it as the interior 2nd tone as well. i attempted a quick cleanup of the headliner before hitting it with color, but the result is pretty sketchy as you can see from the photo so i think i will get in there with some filler and reshoot before moving on to the exterior color coats. slowly moving forward...

engine sitting in compartment, wiring still to be fiddled with a little and missing weber carbs and some other stuff that goes on after body has been mounted:

a shot of the proceeds showing the non detail painted dashboard pieces:

finally a shot at the challenging headliner situation, even with the squinty windows i dont think i can let that pass...but i am not sure i can do a whole lot better either...wait, i know i cannot mess it up any worse that that...

alright and thanks for looking!

[sports850]

That's looking great , top job so far .

[jbwelda]

well its been awhile, but the paint was laid on, Tamiya mica red with Tamiya clear red overcoat, then a couple coats of clear. needs a coat or two more clear and then a good polishing session, but I knew from trial fitting there were going to be some fitting issues between the chassis/interior and the body. So I faced it like a man, and set it on a shelf to ponder and get on with life. Then the other day, a good 3 months from last notice, I got tired of looking at it sit there and got serious about fitting the thing together.

turns out there were a litany of problems, beginning with the rear seat being too wide at its widest point, so that had to be addressed, along with a corresponding ridge on the inside of the body (on one side only) that needed to be ground down a bit.

after that was clearanced the dashboard was the next thing to cause interference. Actually it was more like the inside contour of the body on the left (passenger) side, up under the windshield. so again got the dremel going and a bit of therapy in that area started to allieviate the situation. Just a little more...hey whats with this dark stuff in the light colored resin? ah that is the paint job...from the underside!

arrrggggghhhhh:

ok so as you can see above, I stuffed a little red putty in it and will worry about it later because the way its going this body shell is liable to see more paint sessions.

to gain a little more clearance in that passenger side dash area I also thinned the side of the dashboard as much as I could without totally obliterating it. I would rather have not touched the dashboard at this point but all that mess you see will be hidden and the contour of the dashboard still looks good tucked up under the windscreen opening. with these mods it fits in nicely now, level and even across the windscreen bottom, although fitting glass is going to be tricky...

meanwhile I managed to get the chassis in where I wanted it, or at least if I held it in place with pretty-firm-for-a-resin-body grip I could get the chassis up in the body to where the floorboards were just barely visible from the side. excuse my photos at this stage, I was taking them with one hand, no flash, while holding the model together with the other hand!

here it is with the wheels set in place just to get some idea of ride height, I had lowered the rear at least an eighth inch and the front suspension arms have been cut off for final positioning when the chassis and body are together. but you can see the floorboards barely poke out from under the body which is how I want it. by the way don't mind the color of the body, it is way deeper red than these photos show, not at all this pink shade that is coming out in them.

continued

Edited September 22, 2013 by jbwelda

[jbwelda]

as with many of my projects, I find myself in a situation where I wish I could have forseen the issues that would be facing me later in the build and for all the test fitting in the world I always seem to face some unexpected challenges late in the build. here we have a classic: body finally mated to chassis and all is looking possible in this world when I notice something I had not before: kind of looks like the valve cover is going to interfere with the hood. that actually stands to reason when I think about it as the profile of this hood is way lower in the front than the stock one and the valve cover sticks way up and probably determined the height of the front of the hood on the original body.

lets look:

hmmm not looking good at all. a test fitting of the hood (bonnet) confirms my fears:

the question is, what to do about it? maybe I can compromise with how deep the chassis fits up into the body, and let the floorboards be a little more visible?

hood fits like this:

but chassis fits like this:

not a good look. ah the challenges of resin body conversions!

what I think I will do is pry that valve cover off and do a little sectioning to it and I may still have to compromise on how the floorboards look from outside the body...

and I also notice no way are these side panels going to fit in the body with the floorboards tucked up inside there, so I need to trim maybe 2 - 3mm from the bottom:

I don't know if I will stay on task on this one or at least not in the next couple weeks as I am going to Bonneville salt flats for a week here soon, but will update again when some more material progress is made. thanks again for looking!