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Citroën Xsara WRC - Francois Duval, ADAC Rallye Deutschland 2007 (part 3)

Work is continuing to prepare this kit for primer.

As mentioned in the previous part, several modifications needed to be done.

I started with the new position for the exhaust. With the aid of a reference picture and the decalsheet from Renaissance I sketched the position of the new exhaust with a pencil.
After double checking the position I went to work and made the cutout for the new exhaust.


Using plastic sheet and putty I closed up the old opening for the exhaust.

When determining the new position for the exhaust I taped the rear bumper to the body. Which resulted in some gaps here and there.
The moulding really isn't that great from Heller. Some filling and sanding will be needed to get this area to look right.
I started off with putty, but in hindsight I'd better filled the gaps with pieces of sheet and than sand it flush...


Next up were the stubs with the brake discs.
I separated the discs from the stubs with a PE saw and glued the stubs inside the inner part of the wheels.
After this I opened the square holes in the stubs, as some of them had a lot of flash.
Next I sanded the internal sides flat and glued a styrene disc (cut with one nifty piece of equipment) to the front side to hide the opening in the wheel. Which turned out rather nicely.



I removed all the unwanted plastic and moulded details from the body and prepared the openings for the hood vents and the intake in the bumper.
I got a bit overzealous on one of the vents. So out came the putty again to rebuild it to it's original shape.


Together with reference images and the decal sheet I drilled the new holes for the antennas and GPS module. Of course I filled the holes that were no longer needed with some styrene. And finished it off with some putty.
As I was drilling holes anyway I also decided to add the holes where the car stands are inserted during service as Heller hadn't included them on the model.


Working on the body I was a bit worried about the shallow panel lines. So I decided to deepen them with my Tamiya scribing tool.
Mould lines were removed from the body and other visible parts too.

The windows were grouped in one moulded piece which had a rather questionable fit.
To improve the fit I decided to separate the windows into single items. Which still resulted in a questionable, although slightly better, fit. Again, this is not a Tamiya kit.
I'm hoping this won't be an issue in the end as I'm not really looking forward to replacing all the windows with custom solutions. But I fear for several gaps that won't be easy to overcome...


Some windows will need to be replaced though. I'm not always the proverbial patient modeller. I do know the plastic used for the windows is more brittle than the regular styrene. Still I thought it might be possible to separate the parts from each other with a side cutter...
With the result being that one side window has a nice and subtle crack in it...
So has the windscreen. But as there will be a decal over the top part, that doesn't really bother me.

Final item I'd like to show in this part is the bottom of the car. As shown in the previous part this was severely warped.
The first trick up my sleeve, dipping the part in hot water, didn't work as planned.
So next up was the hair dryer method...


Not so bad I think.

A lot of small things done on this build. I had hoped to make some quicker progess with this build, but as it is I'm happy with the modifications I've done thus far.

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Location: 6071 Swalmen, Nederland

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