Solido 1/18 Porsche 935/78 Moby Dick

[Beurlys]

My first WIP on this forum. This project was started on Feb 6 2021.

I was very happy when I saw that Solido made this car, for €45 I think it's great value for money.

 

Foto's from CK-modelcars were I bought the model :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last 2 photos show the wheelcovers that look more like clogwheels from a clock. I used a bolt and nut to hold the wheelcovers and removed the teeth with my lathe, I also made the cover a lot thinner. After a coat of primer and Tamiya X7, the covers were attached to the painted wheels (done with a Tamiya paint marker) :

 

 

 

The cockpit will get most of the work. I removed a big piece of plastic to make room for the drivers feet :

 

 

But I ran into these big blocks. They are part of the front suspension and have to be removed to make room for the extended floorboard. Out came the Dremel :

 

 

 

Had to go all the way thru the bottom to clear enough space :

 

 

First Idea was to improve this part :

 

 

Drilled some holes to remove the part between the tubes :

 

 

But then I decided to make everything from scratch, that will allow me to add the missing tubes. The roll cage needs some mods too. The upper tubes in this picture dont look like this on the real car :

 

 

This plastic tube is also part of the roll cage on the real car. It will be sanded down and replaced with alu tubing :

 

 

The front tubes of the roll cage are supposed to be the same size (like the one on the right). I have no idea why Solido made them like this. Will be fixed with alu tubing :

 

 

These tubes on the floorboard will be removed :

 

 

This was my first attempt to modify the area behind the seats. Reference photos of this area are hard to find :

 

 

Then I found the WIP by Scratchbuilt. He made this car in 1/8 scale from scratch, his build log has some very nice pics :

 

 

 

 

The big hump is being reshaped :

 

 

And slowly the firewall is taking shape :

 

 

There's a lot more work then I thought, but I 'm still very happy with this model.

Done a lot of work on this project. Endless measuring, sanding, dryfitting, sanding, etc. The modified firewall is finally glued in place :

 

 

Quite complicated angles to make, the shiny spots are leftover from the Tamiya ultra thin glue :

 

 

Looks very dirty with all the dust from the sanding. After a wash tonight, primer will go on tomorrow :

 

 

Dryfit of the aluminium  tubes going from the radiator to the engine (these are not on the Solido model). The right side will get 2 of these as well :

 

 

The floorboard was sanded. Reference photo's show none of the details that Solido made on the floorboard. I will add aluiminium tubes to the floorboard to form the chassis :

 

Before :

 

 

After :

 

 

Lowered the front of the model by sanding 2 mm from the plastic tubes that are part of the front suspension :

 

Before :

 

 

After :

 

 

There's still a couple of mm's of space between the tire and the mudguard in case the front needs to be lowered a bit more.

Sincerely

Pascal

 

 

 

[Beurlys]

Spend a couple of hours fiddling with 2mm alu tubes. Just need to add all the smaller ones. Dryfit :

 

 

Where the 2 tubes cross, I filed halfway thru each tube, when they will be glued together the join should be good :

 

 

Added the 2 diagonal tubes, these will hold the gearshifter :

 

 

 

I will sand the yellow coating from the tubes and make some adjustments so that they fit better. Will use JB Cold Weld to glue them, that will - hopefully - allow me to form some weldspots between the tubes while the glue is drying.

 

When Murphy strikes, he strikes hard !

If you put a primed piece of plastic (in this case the interior in an oven, you get a nice hard painted finish.

BUT, if your oven turns out to be a grill (heating tubes bottom and top side), you get a completely deformed piece of plastic :

 

 

 

I asked Solido if I could buy a replacement part, guess what the answer was...

It's a shame that so many diecast companies refuse to help their customers. I can buy nearly every single sprue from Tamiya, even if they have to ship it from Japan.

Ah well, If there's 1 thing that I have, it's patience. So I will painstakingly rebuild the interior from scratch and use a couple of deformed parts that can be salvaged.

Before it gets better, it needs to get worse. After some breaking and cutting apart, this is what I have to start with :

 

So, my oven experience was a total disaster...

But I've worked a lot of hours during the past 3 days, this is the result so far :

 

 

 

Strange how this photo makes it all look bent and crooked  :

 

 

 

 

 

Started making the fire extinguishers  :

 

 

Used some self-adhesive bandage to wrap around the seat  :

 

 

When the bandage will be painted black it will look just like the rough surface on the seat of the real car :

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Bugatti Fan]

Some inexpensive die casts lend themselves to really well to detailing up. Look forward to following this post.

[Beurlys]

Small update ,but a major leap towards saving this model from last friday's tragedy.

In order to fit the new interior, I had to remove almost 5 mm of plastic from the inside of the wheel wells :

The tubes (aluminium wire from the flower shop) have had their yellow coating removed. Dryfit in the new interior :

Dryfit with some of the scratchbuild / modified parts :

 

 

I used self adhesive felt to cover the inside of the seat :

Colored the selfadhesive bandage black, looks a bit rough on this macro photo, with the naked eye it looks just fine  :

Something was way off, but I couldn't put my finger on it. With the help of some reference photos, I finally found the problem and it's a big one.

The sides of the interior are way to wide :

 

I used the Solido parts as a guide, but those are about double as wide as on the real car :

 

 

If I paint these sides black, it will give the model a wrong look. The outer part of the sides need to be white like the body :

 

 

This will require some major surgery by cutting the sides in half :

 

 

The outer part will be glued to the inside of the body. I hope I can get the right shade of white :

 

 

It still won't be perfect, but it will look at look better - fingers crossed - when done.

Thx mates !

 

Interior is ready for a new coat of primer :

 

 

 

 

I won't put it in the oven this time, I promise.

Sincerely

Pascal

[Beurlys]

I used Humbrol 106 Ocean Grey applied with a sponge and a black spraycan. The grey was sanded to remove the gloss, the black received a matt coat and was then polished to give it a satin look. I was going for a "used" interior, quite happy with the result. The tubes for the radiators are dryfitted :

 

 

 

 

 

Last photo shows that I need to touch up the black on the left side. Next step will be the fitting of the tubes that form the frame.

 

The frame has been glued to the floorboard. The 2 diagonal tubes are from a different type of aluminium because they are a lot shinier on the real car :

 

 

 

The seat has been gluedd to it's scratchbuild frame, then the frame was glued to the rails. I had to remove about 4 mm on each side of the seat, so that it will fit in the cockpit :

 

 

 

The pedalbox was completely rebuild. The part on the left was scratchbuild and has 11 parts :

 

 

The rectangular strip with the diagonal part was also scratchbuild :

 

 

 

Dryfit. The pedalbox sits to high, will be fixed before it's glued to the floorboard  :

 

 

 

 

The gauges on the dashboard received a tiny circles of transparent plastic, these were sealed with Parket + :

 

 

The part with the 5 gauges will be sanded flat from the rear and the grey decal will be removed :

 

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[Chris Smith]

Looking good ? looking forward to another update 

[Beurlys]

This model keeps fighting me all the way, but here's a little progress :

The dashboard looked like this :

Solido added sidewalls to the center console these were removed and some circles were added to the back of the dials :

 

A lot of work goes into the modification of the body. Before :

 

And after. I will need to add a couple more layers of white paint, then polish it :

 

Big difference between the modified and the un-modified side :

Solido put a grey circle around the number on the doors. This was not on the 1/1 car, so these were removed with a knife and a toothpick. The photo shows that I started on the right side  :

 

The glass covers for the headlights were glued badly to the body. The covers also have some very ugly square pegs :

 

 

I removed the pegs and the CA-glue with sandpaper, the one on the left has been polished :

The glass cover fit very poorly because the inner parts are to big. The one on the left has been sanded to the correct size, quite a bit of plastic has been removed ;

 

 

Wheel covers, part 2.

Wasn't happy with the first modification, so I went a bit further. These are the covers for the rear wheels. Used the bolt to fix them in the chuck of my drill, about 1 mm of plastic was scraped off. (didn't use the lathe cause I don't want to put my fingers that close to the lathe chuck) :

The ring was removed from the backside :

Before :

And after. Not there yet, still have to remove some plastic from the inside of the wheel, so that the cover can sit deeper inside the wheel :

These are the covers for the front wheels. The modified cover is a lot thinner and the diameter is smaller  :

To get the cover to sit deeper inside the wheels, I removed some plastic and filed the spokes one-by-one to about half the original size. A VERY therapeutic job ! (later on I'll add a new wheelnut and a ring with the bolts) :

Before :

Afer :

Hope to do the other 2. It took about 3 hours to modify the first 2.

 

These were all the updates from the work that I've done. From now on, updates will show the current work.

PS : Please feel free to comment. Criticism, feedback and even "oooooohhh's and aaaaaahhh's" are very welcome.

Sincerely

Pascal

 

[Beurlys]

Update :

 

It took a lot of time to find a way to make the tiny parts for the gear lever, shaft and all the details that surround it.

 

On the right side of the photo, you can see the coupling of the gearbox shaft :

 

 

Solido made the coupling like this :

 

 

I kept the rear part of the coupling and modified it :

 

 

The front part of the coupling is made from piece of alu rod :

 

 

These are some of the parts that I will use for the gear lever and shaft.

 

From top to bottom : 

 

Steel rod (from a large paperclip).

The little piece on the right that sits on top is a modified piece from a lighter.

Steel tube from a cable ferrule.

Scratchbuild front part of the coupling.

 

Still have to make the tiny square block for the shaft :

 

 

Dryfit, the cockpit has received some cables and braided wire, fixed in place with painted lead foil from a winebottle :

 

 

 

To make the gear lever, I soldere a piece of  copper wire to an eyebolt. The photo shows a dryfit with a M1 hex bolt and nut :

 

 

 

The little ball has a diameter of 2,5 mm, it's from a kit to make necklaces :

 

 

The front of the gear lever housing will get these tiny parts :

 

 

Hex nut, turned piece of alu rod, smaller nod and the lid I made with the lathe :

 

 

This dryfit shows that it's to high, the piece of alu rod will be shortened :

 

 

It will be quite an adventure to fit and glue all these tiny parts together.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

Edited February 27, 2022 by Beurlys

[iBorg]

When I first started looking at this topic I thought you had it in the wrong category. Then I started reading it. It truly looks like you're making an amazing model  model. I will be following along.

 

[swede70]

Really nice work, while it's refreshing to chance across another 1:18th diecast/resin fabricator/modifier not adverse to tearing preassembled and prepainted models apart consistent with correcting what we may.  Happy to discover your thread, anticipating further progress as such is added.  Thanks...

Mike K./Swede70

[Beurlys]

Update : 

 

Using copper wire I made the V-shaped bracket that's welded to the diagonal tube. Painted and glued in place (the white stuff is flour + CA) :

 

 

But I didn't look good and didn't look like the real car.

 

It was then that I realized that I made a big mistake. The tube diagonal tubes that run through the top of the firewall sit to low :

 

 

The big black bump on the firewall needs to be some 5-6 mm higher :

 

 

To modify the bump, I have to take the entire construction of the interior apart. I highly doubt that the parts will survive that kind of treatment.

 

So, I decided to leave the bump and make a new tube.

 

The old one and the V-shaped bracket were removed. Very gently because that part of the construction is fragile :

 

 

 

Installed a new tube and a new V-shaped bracket :

 

 

Much better :

 

 

The V-shaped bracket will hold this lever. It's made up of 7 parts, the tubes on the left side will be the same length when everything is installed :

 

 

The eyebolt were carefully filed to a much smaller size :

 

 

Tiny piece, the square is 10 x 10 mm :

 

 

I'm glad that I found a solution to the problem, even though it's not perfect, it will hardly be noticable when all the parts are installed.

 

But it will be quite a challenge to assemble all the parts in that limited space.

 

We'll see...

 

Pascal MNTADO (*)

 

(*) Motivation Never Takes A Day Off

[Beurlys]

It's been quite a struggle to find a way to fix all the scratchbuild parts together.

 

These are the parts that will be fitted to the lever (brake balance lever ?) that's just to the left behind the gear lever.

 

The tubes are made from injection needles :

 

 

Dryfit in the cockpit :

 

 

 

With the tubes, not connected to the eyebolts because - at this stage - they aren't long enough :

 

 

 

They're not parallel, this will be fixed later :

 

 

Made another piece of tubing to get the correct length :

 

 

Now the tubes are long enough, so they fit over the eyebolts. Macro photo shows there's some cleaning to do :

 

 

New dryfit :

 

 

 

 

 

One hurdle completed, on to the next one.

[JFK]

You are doing Awesome work here!  I look forward to watching your progress! 

[Beurlys]

Thx Joseph, always nice to get a reply.

Update :

 

I finally managed to glue (using CA and J&B weld) the gear lever and it's housing to the tubes in the cockpit.

 

The macro photos shows the dust that is left after sanding the J&B weld :

 

 

 

 

This photo shows the medium grey J&B weld that I put between the tube and the housing to get a strong bond :

 

 

This is the tube that connects the gear lever to the gearbox, 8 parts in total. The right part is the only part that came with the Solido model, the rest was scratched.

 

The little tube on the left that sits over the larger tube is a modified part from a lighter :

 

 

 

Dryfit. The bottom part of the gear lever will be glued inside the little vertical tube that I put on the large tube :

 

 

 

 

Not to much to show, but it's a BIG step forward.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

 

[Beurlys]

Finally the work on the interior is coming to an end.

 

The fire extinguishers are scratch build and have 16 parts, they look real nice with the decals designed and printed by Tim :

 

 

I added some more details and wires :

 

 

 

 

 

Dryfit with the dashboard :

 

 

This is how the interior looked before the work began :

 

 

I still need to find a way to glue the dashboard firmly in place.

 

Then it will be a delicate job to put the seat in after the rollcage is fitted. Not enough space to do it the other way round.

 

Finally the radio, some tiny home-made parts, and the seatbelts need to be installed.

 

After that, the interior is done.

 

Hope to reach the finish line in 3 - 4 weeks.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal