Skip to main content

Jaguar XJ220 "Martini" GT, Italian GT championship 1993 (part 2)

Although I, still, haven't finished any of the other builds I'm currently working on, I couldn't contain myself and just HAD to start this build.
The Martini livery is just too appealing to leave it sitting in the box any longer.

However, the deeper I delved into this project, the more "problems" I encountered.
First of all, the decal sheet. It looks nice, but it's not complete. Several sponsors seem to be missing (but it is probable that the sponsors varied between races), but more importantly, the Martini striping is not complete.
When looking at the pictures below, you can notice that the Martini striping is on AND beneath the rear spoiler. But the decal sheet has only one option, obviously on the rear spoiler.
Might seem minor, but I think it's a shame, as it would not have been much trouble to include it on the sheet.

Another thing I noticed was that the set of wheels I intended to use actually sucks. The rims are quite unrealistic and need a lot of work to get them mounted on this car. Apart from that, the tires are way too small.
Luckily I remembered having a BMW 635CSi Racing lying around. And the wheels on that car are exactly what I was looking for, for this Jaguar.
Another pleasant aspect of the BMW wheels and tires is the fact that they're also from a Tamiya kit, so fitting them to the Jag shouldn't be too difficult.

Than there's the fact that this kit is a right hand drive version of the car. And the racecar is a left hand drive... A lot of work needs to be done there. Not impossible, but also not something that I'd anticipated in the beginning.



Work that body
First task I set myself was to get the bodywork ready for primer and paint.
The original kit is a roadgoing version with a transparent roof. But that won't be necessary for this build.
The roof of the car is however attached to the windscreen of the car. So I had to separate the windscreen and roof. Normally not a very exciting job, but as it was a clear part I needed to separate, I had to be extra careful.
But it worked out fine in the end.


Next I removed some parts from the main body which weren't on the race car.
And I had to fix the left windscreen pillar. It was bent a bit, so the windscreen wouldn't fit properly.
So out came my girlfriends hairdryer and with some friendly persuasion I managed to straighten the pillar enough to get the windscreen to fit right.


Below are several other parts I've been working on. However, the part on the right will need some additional work. An ejectorpin mark can be seen clearly. And also the opening for the mechanism to open and close the headlight covers.
But as the moveable covers won't be needed I will have to close the opening. And because the headlights will get a transparent cover, the ejectorpin mark needs to be removed too.
But that last part will be simple as the original headlight cover isappears to be inside the headlight pod, covering that ejectorpin mark.

The Wheels
As I mentioned on the previous page, the wheels that I intended to use for this build are actually quite useless.
On the picture below, the BMW tire is underneath the Scale Productions tire. As you can see is the SP tire quite a bit smaller.
And also the SP tire has only a hole in the middle. Whereas the original wheels of this car have a mounting pin to fit into the suspension assembly.


So I decided to use the wheels from the BMW kit.
When looking at the picture of the car at the top of the previous page, you can see that the dish of the rearwheels lies deeper that of the front wheels.
So, out came the scriber, to cut out the center of 2 of the wheels.
At first I wanted to put the dishes I cut out of the rims deeper into the rims. To that end I glued some styrene strip into the rims.

After I did this, I had to conclude that the dishes would get too far into the rim and that it would be nearly impossible to mount the wheels to the car without extensive plastic surgery.
So I had to take a different route.
I milled out the extra styrene I glued into the rims (because otherwise they would interfere with the brake dishes) and mounted the dishes almost flush with the front of the wheel.
And I think it looks quite nice.
One slight problem is that because of the removal of the dishes, I needed to fill the gap between the outer rim and the dish. And that is still visible. I'll try to figure out a way to make it less visible.

To get the dishes to sit right inside the rims I made a jig as can be seen the second picture above.
End of this update.


Comments

  1. I admire this article for the well-researched content and excellent wording. I got so involved in this material that I couldn’t stop reading. I am impressed with your work and skill. Thank you so much. Read more info about edge trims supplier

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 6)

Welcome to the next part of this build report. I left you last time (or should I say long, long ago...) with the images of the primed body, floor and roll cage, showing that there was some work to do to get everything ready for some color. In this update I will show you how far I got with these parts. I'll start with the body and floor. Sanding everything back turned out to be quite a bit of work. And of course there were several areas still in need of attention. Especially around the wheel arches there was a lot of additional work left. Luckily, with the car in tarmac setup, there's not much room left to see the remaining rough spots that have survived the clean up process... Which leads me to the conclusion that I could have cut some corners in this particular area by only cleaning up the most visible sections. It's a good lesson to check beforehand what is actually visible when the car is built together. I'll definitely be cutting some corners for the other two ...

Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 5)

As promised in the previous part in this update I'll show what I changed on the roll cage. The roll cage as included in the kit is far from complete. When looking at on-board footage and reference images found on the internet the roll cage needs some extra tubing added.  Over the years the roll cage of the Xsara WRC has had several variants as I've noticed studying my reference images. Which isn't that strange as the crash test and safety regulations have changed over the years.  The reference images I have of the specific chassis (#28) which Duval raced during the 2007 ADAC Rallye Deutschland are sadly inconclusive about which version of the roll cage was fitted. Which means that the adaptations I made are at best a good "guesstimate"... As long as it looks and feels right, it is right I guess... I used Evergreen styrene rod of 1.6 mm in diameter for the added sections for the rollcage.  The added sections are highlighted in the images below. Another section I...

Benetton Ford B190B, F1 season 1991 (part 5)

Well. I can hardly believe how long I've been silent here on this blog. Not counting the two show reports I posted earlier this week, the last posting here being from November 2021... But, since I went from a 5 to a 4 day work week at the beginning of this year, there is finally some more spare time to spend. Oh, and a good cleaning of the modelling "cave" did also help in motivating me to dive into the cellar and do some building again. To start a (fingers crossed) longer stint of modelling activities, I decided to (finally) continue with this particular kit. It's been lying around for almost 10 years, so you can say it's desperately in need of some attention. Luckily all parts are still accounted for as I had the parts nicely packed away (for a change). Upon inspecting my work I couldn't quite look past a few things that weren't so neatly done. Especially the engine/gearbox and rear wing assemblies were a bit wanting. Also, upon cross-checking ...