REPLICA OF THE RALLY
CAR IN 1977 LONDON-SYDNEY RALLY, TEAM TURKEY.
.
Started:
29 October 2005
Finished:
03 May 2009
Page
1 of 9
HISTORY:
Renault 12, the well known car for its robustness, has been
manufactured
in Turkey during 1971-1999, by OYAK-Renault Co.
In 1977, two
cars were entered for the
famous London-Sydney Rally, by the factory, and they both completed the
race, bringing Turkey the National Teams Cup. Unfortunately, the cars
were
later sold, instead of at least one being kept as a memo of that
victory
time.
Believing that
the memory should be
lived on, I decided to build a replica of one of the cars. So, I
contacted
Mr. Aytac Kot, who was one of the pilots, and generously, he gave me
the
available photos from the event. The photos were not 100% enough for
full
info, Mr. Kot had enough patience and kindness to write answers to my
questions.
Manufacturing
the model: Unfortunately, no 1/24 kits were made of
Renault 12,
so I had to scratchbuild everything. I took photographs and dimensions
from various cars I found, which took some number of weeks.
29 October
2005:
After making
enough sketches and drawings, I began with the front and central parts
of the floorpan.
05 November
2005:
I continued with
the rough construction of the floorpan.
06 - 22 November
2005:
I experimented
on various materials for the bodywork construction. From copper as a
whole
and separate panels, from tin sheet, etc. I decided that plastic may
work
out better with this scale.
26 November
2005:
Continued with
the rear parts of the floorpan, the boot platform and the gas tank
shield.
28 November
2005:
I detailed the
gas tank shield and manufactured the rear chassis arms.
Now
the bottom of the floorpan is beginning
to take some shape.
29 November
2005:
I manufactured
the inner sides of the rear wheelwell and shock absoerber housings.
After
curing, I cut open the sides
to reveal the shock absorber housings.
03 December
2005:
I was dealing
with the deatiling of the bottom of the floorpan and leaving the top
(inside)
blank, but then I remembered that what I was building was a rally car
and
that the floorpan was bare metal! So the stampings had to be seen at
the
inside too!
Next move was
to disassemble the glued floorpan....
Then I imitated
the internal stampings by pressing the tip of a heated file on the
plastic.
Filing
and sanding clean, the stampings
exist at the inside too.
06 December
2005:
But the rear
"pans" in the floorpan coulsd not be made by any heated tips or so, due
to the curved surfaces. So first of all, I made a female mold from the
plastic I had manufactured.
I
cast a full resin male in the silicon
mold.
Then
I pressed a 0.2 mm thick aluminium
foil over the male, to make a "pressed steel panel duplicate"...
I
prepared a second female and another
male around this metal part, so that the male and female molds had a
sheet
clearance between them. Then finally, I cast a thin resin part to go in
the recess in the floorpan.
10 December
2005:
I corrected the
spare wheel storage space, made the stampings in the rear seat area and
applied some putty here and there.
13 December
2005:
I had glued the
resin pans in before, now I applied putty around them for smooth
transition.
13 December
2005:
I started manufacturing
the front chassis arms. To scale the true width, two strips of 1.5 mm
thick
styrene per side was cut.
Then
I joined them in pairs as in the
photo.
..........................
