Bob Wollek (1943 – 2001), nicknamed "Brilliant Bob", was from Strasbourg, France. He won an amazing 76 races in his career, 71 of which on Porsche cars He was killed on 16 March 2001 at age 57 in a road accident in Florida riding a bicycle.
Brilliant Bob and the team near the car, nice view of the overall stance the car should have, I like the "shell" painted on the grill mesh in the front.
That´s the real one, notice that the lower portion of the front bumper changes very often, it's easily getting dammaged on the race and have to be replaced, so it gets different colors and sponsors, don´t worry to see in the kit a different version.
The intersection between the fender and the hood in the kit is a sharp line that goes all over the place around, should be a very big and smooth radious all around, I will remove also this molded in hood pins.
The top view shows how simplistic this area was done, needs some attention IMO, the fit of the hood is very tied, that means we are going to sand a bit in order to keep parts fitting even after several coats of primer, paint and specially clear coat.
For comparison that´s a picture I took from a porsche of the same age in a museum nearby, here we can see how the fender should look around the headlamp area, look how smooth it is around there and how big is the radious conection with the hood
I have made some notes of the problems I found with the "C" pillar and the rear fender, it can´t be 100% solved but can be improved, changing too much the contourn of the rear side glass will make the clear par to not fit anymore so, be mindfull.
Now look how is the curve of the rear window behaving in the "C" pillar, more pointy than the one in the kit, the welding flange of the roof goes all the way to tue rear hood and the transition between pilar and rear fender is big and smooth.
Looking better, now when it comes to sand, 2 things to keep in mind: do not mess with the headlamps bed or the hood edge or you will loose the conection with them and they will no longer fit together.
I think the wheel lug nuts from chrome sprues does not look so nice, so I wanted to remove the ones from the optional wheel covers that I'm not going to use here.
I also sanded the rubber to get rid of the center seam and also reduce the tire side wall as much as I could, it was very tedious process but I could improve the overall look with this step, if anyone know a better way to do this please tell me.
Primmer on, Mr Surfacer 500 diluted 1:2 with Mr Leveling Thinner, I have scribed the gap of the roof longer to make up for the flange dying before the rear hood, also sanded more the transition from the pillar to the fender.
The fix on the headlamp area looks convincing to me, some transitions on the body does look far too "mechanic" to me, specially around the fenders, going to sand it to improve and prime again the hole thing
I also sanded the tires to reduce them a bit and remove the seam line in the midle, still looking too big behind, if any of you have some advice on the best way to sand down rubber just let me know in the coments.
Place is marked, I also do not like the look of the hoses just intersecting with the firewall, so I will put a little surface there to cover a bit that problem
Here the hole was drilled and the small flange added from styrene, looking more convincing IMO, also we can see how the fenders have a smoother transition now with the headlamps and the hood from another angle.
All painted with a mix of Tamiya colors, decaled and clearcoated with the 2 component automotive paint from MIPA, 2 parts paint, 1 part hardner and 1 part thinner.
Mipa automotive clear coat, 2 part paint, one part hardener and one part thinner, one tacky coat and one full wet coat, that's it, some dust specs here and there to take care later, notice how the clear coat pools around the decals and close to the gaps.
Out of the gun the Mipa 2k looks super glossy, without orange peel, I'm proud of that, but around the edges and decals you can see the light bumping all over the place.
The decal helped me to hide that contour problem but created a bump in the light that is uneceptable for a Porsche fan, that area MUST be perfect! let´s sand all that down!
I atempted to minimise the problems with the rear pilar contour around the side glass but I can´t do much to the internal flange or the clear part will not fit anymore, so it was just a compromise.
All that you see here is sanded down to 3000 grit, after that I moved to 5000 grit all over the car and than 7000 buff just before go into the polishing process.
I used this system to polish the car, some foam disks very small on an addaptor into my dremel, using a bit of Ultimate coumpound and Ultimate polisher from Meguiars.
After sanding and flatening the surface, the final polish reveals a reflection free of bumps around the edges and the decals, I'm getting the hang of it!
Masking everything for the Black bits painting, all done with Stynylrez, the worst part of the build to me. Notice my panic of having overspray or bleeding.
Some of the steps I took to reduce a bit the rear ride height: I opened the conection from the axel with the strut towords the botton thus making the wheel hub sit higher in relation with the frame structure.
I also scraped the mounting suport with scalpel n° 15 shaving the plastic and alowing for the whole assembly to sit even higher until the tire toutches the wheel arch, wich was also scraped from inside, all to alow the car to be as low as it can.
Another thing to consider is the front joint that have a squared type of shape, I use a small file to tenper this towords the car so it would alow for a bit of the resultant "rotation" of the assembly.
for the front I cutted off the mounting pole were the brake spins, just cutted a bit, tested, filed off some more with diamond files, test again until I´m satisfied with the hight
Dryfit again the check for impacts of paint thickness, ride height have inproved and I´m happy with that, some more sanding will have to be done in parts like the front hood or the tail hood, they are almost not fiting now anymore.
I have added magnets in the bonnet under one of the caps and a bigger one under the boddy in the hole created by molding process in the same spot, that way the hood will not come off unwantedly.
According with some references the top of the dash was flocked to avoid glare so I did it, I also brush painted the gloss black in the center of the searing wheel, I'm particularly proud of that finish without brush strokes, quite an acheavement to me.
Good improvement to me, and was not as difficult to do as I was thinking. In this view we can see on top of the rear fender catching in the light some of the minor scratches, sure needed more fine sanding before the polishing, nothing is perfect I guess.
I have reesprayed the clearcoat on the bonnet after too much sanding, I went trough the clearcoat in places and could't move to the polishing step, so I putted another coat of clear, sanded some dust specs and finally polished to get the uniform gloss.
Previously in the build I have sawed off the molded in coolers that came with the kit, this will allow me to have a better finish and sharper details. In the picture, left is the original pocket, in the right one I cutted off the cooler
That will also have the pratical function to alow airflow from the airbrush to put the paint smoothy in there, it is never easy to spray deep closed pockets and get good results, clearcoat would just pool, obliterating the details or have dusting.
That´s how it is in reality, notice how there is one considerable gap between the end of the intake and the oil cooler, you can see the floor trough it, and the central grill mesh is tighter that the outer ones.
Comparison between the original seat on the left and the modified one on the right were I opened the sides to pass the seat belts. on bough I painted with synylrez black primer and painted the back with GX-01 gloss black
The seat with the belts installed, some comparison with the provided decals on the kit, now I cut the "autoflug" emblem out of that decal and place in my new belts
I pressed the center of the photoetch part to bend a bit the angle of the conections and brake the flatteness of the assembly, I think it worked, interesting to see in this picture is that it show the milling marks of the kit's mold all across the kit.
The lower view of the engine, the conection between the turbo wastegate and the ehaust is looking very convincing, and I didn´t even painted it! if I didn´t pointed that out would look like it was part of the kit
Detail of the upper cooling fan, the fiber glass parts I painted with Revell aqua color beige as per instructions, than I used Vallejo wash for figures, burnt sienna all over the place, that makes all uneven, pool in the crevices and works as a filter
César MunizInternational Scale Modeller Rising Star · 10 h · Detail of the distributor. in the kit there is a plastic wall there with a raised detail of that part, I cutted the wall around the detail and added a section of sprue to make a round se
Test fit, all good, added some hoses going to the hood, a transparent-gold hose coming from the reservoir, the distributor coil conected with the distributor and some wires for the various electrical boxes on the side.
I stretched the sprues into fine lines and glued them with some thin glue that is quick drying, Mr. cement SP or Tamiya Extra thin quick setting, this way I don't melt them down loosing detail.
Coolers separated and frame completed! In the other side I just glued one piece of PE mash to fill the blank and compare the results, It was way easier and many would prefer doing that way, but I enjoy scratch building.
Painted, and washed with Tamiya panel line black, the unused front grill provided by the kit received two small vertical plastic cards, a black primer and a dry brush, with use this to fill the hole I opened under the windshield.
Bob Wollek (4 November 1943 – 16 March 2001), nicknamed "Brilliant Bob", was a race car driver from Strasbourg, France. He was killed on 16 March 2001 at age 57 in a road accident in Florida while riding a bicycle back to his accommodation after the day's practice sessions for the following day's race, the 12 Hours of Sebring. He won an amazing 76 races in his career, 71 of which on Porsche cars.