Mornin' all.
Its been a while since I posted about the 1/12 Escort Mk1 that I did a while back , but I was quite keen to do another one, but with a different theme.
I realise that the main goal of many modellers is to accurately reproduce the exact look and specification of the real car in miniature. I also would normally strive to do that in my own meagre way. But sometimes its nice to stray off the beaten track and just do something bonkers for the sheer enjoyment of building a project that you cant afford to do in real life.
Hence the JPS Escort below.
Now don't go trying to find technical errors as you'll be there all day, its really just an exercise in "What If?"
My reasoning goes like this : Could you build a saloon car with a Cosworth DFV V8 in the front? Now as many of you are aware the DFV was really only ever designed to be fitted in the rear of a single seater racing car with the gearbox/transaxle bolted on the back of it ( I have to put in a thank you to Andrew Noakes here as his book on the history of the DFV was very helpful) so for it to be at the front with a transaxle in the back would need a torque tube type of transmission. This has been successfully used on road cars before, e.g. Porsche 928/924/944 or, I Believe the Alfasud amongst others , but it wouldn't be easy.
So thats what I've tried to replicate here.
What I actually did was got another of the Escort kits from Christian at https://mezzo-mix-models.jimdoweb.com/ and a second-hand part built Tamiya Lotus 78 from French E-Bay and went to work.
It didn't go easy. the Body took a lot of prep of course and black is the most unforgiving colour for any little marks or mistakes and I'm still not totally happy with the final result, lets just call it battle-scarred. Also I had plans to build a full spaceframe chassis but my attempts were pathetic and I stalled for a long while with 'modellers block' (I just made that up as an excuse for not knowing how to progress) So the end result is a compromise between the original engine bay and a space frame to hold the engine from below. I had to also create a subframe and mounting points for the rear transaxle which meant taking out a lot of the boot space, and scratch build some front struts as the Lotus front suspension arms were far too wide and the spring were too short.
Anyway, it was a interesting learning experience.
See what you think,
Its been a while since I posted about the 1/12 Escort Mk1 that I did a while back , but I was quite keen to do another one, but with a different theme.
I realise that the main goal of many modellers is to accurately reproduce the exact look and specification of the real car in miniature. I also would normally strive to do that in my own meagre way. But sometimes its nice to stray off the beaten track and just do something bonkers for the sheer enjoyment of building a project that you cant afford to do in real life.
Hence the JPS Escort below.
Now don't go trying to find technical errors as you'll be there all day, its really just an exercise in "What If?"
My reasoning goes like this : Could you build a saloon car with a Cosworth DFV V8 in the front? Now as many of you are aware the DFV was really only ever designed to be fitted in the rear of a single seater racing car with the gearbox/transaxle bolted on the back of it ( I have to put in a thank you to Andrew Noakes here as his book on the history of the DFV was very helpful) so for it to be at the front with a transaxle in the back would need a torque tube type of transmission. This has been successfully used on road cars before, e.g. Porsche 928/924/944 or, I Believe the Alfasud amongst others , but it wouldn't be easy.
So thats what I've tried to replicate here.
What I actually did was got another of the Escort kits from Christian at https://mezzo-mix-models.jimdoweb.com/ and a second-hand part built Tamiya Lotus 78 from French E-Bay and went to work.
It didn't go easy. the Body took a lot of prep of course and black is the most unforgiving colour for any little marks or mistakes and I'm still not totally happy with the final result, lets just call it battle-scarred. Also I had plans to build a full spaceframe chassis but my attempts were pathetic and I stalled for a long while with 'modellers block' (I just made that up as an excuse for not knowing how to progress) So the end result is a compromise between the original engine bay and a space frame to hold the engine from below. I had to also create a subframe and mounting points for the rear transaxle which meant taking out a lot of the boot space, and scratch build some front struts as the Lotus front suspension arms were far too wide and the spring were too short.
Anyway, it was a interesting learning experience.
See what you think,
very nice
