Porsche 917 K "Shell"
Checking the boxes with scrapyards of slot cars looking for usable parts, I found a Fly Car Model Porsche 917K bodyshell , belonging to the collection of cars sold by Fly Car Model in kiosks approximately 10 years ago. The decoration of the bodywork corresponded to the 1971 Buenos Aires 1000 km. with Carlos Reutermann and Emerson Fittipaldi at the wheel, where they qualified 9th to almost 4 seconds of pole time and left the race on lap 43.
The body was in perfect condition since it had been stored in a bag for several years but had no interior, since the interiors of the bodies were included in other installments of the fascicles.
On the other hand, in the mechanical parts box I have a good collection of chassis, engines, axles, guides... and I began to search if any of the chassis fitted to the 917K body. I found the Alpine A310 Avant Slot new chassis, with support for the new removable pod and I realized that the wheelbase was the same as the Fly 917K. In addition, the guide was where it should be and suddenly I saw it clear: I would fit the Avant chassis to Fly´s body.
Taking advantage of the lugs of the same body that I had cut with the mini-drill, I screwed them to the chassis after leaving them at the correct height and glued them to the body with epoxy glue. To leave them in the correct position, the front axle was fitted with F1 tires to get the axle perfectly centered on the wheel arch.
After leaving the body lugs well glued and reinforced, I sanded the body surface gently with a very fine sandpaper. From experience, I know that Fly cars are quite complicated to strip the paint, and being a white car, I decided to take advantage of the car paint as a primer, since it is very well applied, and remove the pad printing with sandpaper. With a few soft passes the car was ready for painting.
As the body had no interior, before painting it I made one. Draw on a paper a template on the inside and then cut out of an old credit card. By the way, when making a flat tray, I had no problem placing the engine in a sidewinder arrangement since the interior of the model did not interfere with the mechanics of the car.
Regarding the decoration, I decided to make a "Shell" livery, which although it is not very original, I love it. I really like the combination of yellow and red for racing cars and they are also very colorful on the slot track, and when we run, seeing the car well is very important. So I first painted the car with a pair of lemon yellow coats (Tamiya reference X8) to get a homogeneous yellow color throughout the body.
When the yellow color was fully dry, I masked the body and painted the red parts with Tamiya X7 acrylic paint applied with the airbrush.
The rest of the decoration was done with waterslide decals, some homemade and others from a set of purchased decals. The intention was to take advantage of rest of decal sheets from other decorations that I leave saved and that for cases like this can serve perfectly. In addition, I did not want to make an excessively ornate decoration, since in the years where these cars competed (early 70´s) the decorations were quite simple. This is how the car looked with the decals on and after applying two layers of automotive varnish:
Regarding the tires, I continued with the development of the idea of ??using all available scrap parts. I had stored some resin inserts of the 5-spoke wheels that Fly Car Model reproduced very accurately, so I planned to use them together with the tires that were stored as follows:
- For the front axle I used a pair of five-spoke Fly Car Model wheels, which are the same as the manufacturer used in many of the Porsche models manufactured (917, 908 ...) so that they were aesthetically perfect.
- Since I did not want to compromise the proper functioning of the car on the track by putting some bad tires on the rear axle, I used a couple of Avant Slot plastic wheels, which are very well centered and which is very easy to place a resin insert.
After gluing the inserts, I applied them a coat of golden paint (Tamiya X12 acrylic applied with the airbrush) and when a coat of automotive varnish was well dried to protect the paint and give them more shine.
For mechanics again I used used components but in perfect working order:
- Avant Slot sidewinder motor podt
- Avant Slot black guide with with silicone insulation cables from the same manufacturer.
- Spirit SX-03 motor sparsely used. It is a long box motor that delivers about 24,000 rpm at 14.8 V. and with very little magnet effect.
- Angle transmission with 10-tooth pinion and 27-tooth crown of Avant Slot to achieve a good top speed on long tracks.
- Calibrated hardened steel axels
- Avant Slot nylon bushings
- M-2 stainless steel screws
- NSR rear tires and Fly Car Model front tires (the 917K Fly original ones)
- Home-made suspension springs for the motor pod, as I did with the Escudería Repsol Lola T290.
I finished the chassis by placing the simulated exhaust outlets of the Fly Car Model body, glued to the rear of the chassis instead of the body so that they did not interfere with the operation of the chassis on the track.
Only the interior was missing. To the flat tray I made with a plastic sheet, I put putty to make the dashboard after waiting for it to dry and sand it until get the properly shape. The driver´s seat is a piece of resin that he had saved and the pilot is also another one that I had saved, coming from a Scalextric car to which I put a SRC head with helmet. All off them pieces from scrapping or other work rests.
To decorate it, I applied a base of Tamiya X11 silver acrylic paint and then painted in different shades, the satin black dashboard (with Vallejo paint), the driver matt black (Humbrol enamel 33), the seat in matt red (Tamiya XF7 ) and the helmet in purple (Tamiya X16) to make it stand out a bit, since it is very fitted inside the body and I wanted it to stand out through the canopy.
And as a last detail, I placed the spare wheel, which is the original that came in the Fly Car Model body, adjusted to fit the rear lug of the body and painted gold like the rest of the tires to which I adjusted a tire I had in the spare parts box.
And after a simple assembly process of the rest of the body parts (fuel plugs, glass, headlights, front grille ...), the car looked like this:
I enjoy a lot this kind of works, for me they are the essence of scratchbuilding, a piece of a car, another part of another, parts of here and there, tried to make a colorful set but move freely along the track and, above all, taking advantage pieces of which we accumulate in our boxes, which can be given a second life that may even be better than the first one they took. In this sense, an abandoned body has regained its splendor and many mechanical components that seemed worthless have managed to form a car that works well and especially with which I enjoyed a lot during its construction. I have done better jobs, more neat and complex, but few so satisfying.
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