Ford P68 3L
I have to say this is one of the most pretty, well-proportioned and purposeful racing car's I've ever seen, and the reason why I wanted to model it. I also very much like the Alan Mann racing colours - red with the nose-to-tail gold stripe. It's a shame that only a handful were produced, and those weren't reliable ! P68 = the year 1968 by the way.........
So, Airfix did a static kit of this car, plus there were later slot car versions by Airfix & MRRC.
Kit box art above. The kit itself isn't bad - a fair attempt at a very complex and curvaceous shape. However, some improvement will be required; the rear spoiler needs building up & shaping, the rear needs detailing, a windscreen wiper needs adding, the front lights need work, there's a grill missing inside the nose air intake etc. etc..... Worst of all, it's got RAISED panel lines ! And there are no decals - unless you include the cut-out paper numbers on the instruction sheet ! However, I've got some decals for it from Patto's Place.
Here to the left is what an original MRRC slot car of the P68 looks like. I borrowed this picture.....
So here to the left above is the body top from the Airfix 1/32 scale static kit, plus an MRRC slot car chassis/floorpan of the same car ( slot car based on the Airfix static kit anyway, so they mate together fine ). And to the right is the donor chassis - a Scalextric Astra. The floor pan's really low, and can be shaved flat, so will fit OK, and the sidewinder motor will give the space for the full interior.
I made up a driver from assorted slot car driver and military figure bits to fit the seat, and a basic interior using black plastic card plus donor seats from a Ford GT40 (Hornby)..
I adapted the kit wheels, adding the tyre-locating ridge around the wheel that will fit inside the tyres. Tyres are the ubiquitous ones that you see on Scalextric GT40's, Corvettes, Mustangs etc. The rear wheels had axle-hole hubs cut from some spare slot car wheels, with an extra disc of (black) plastic card to centre & reinforce them. The front something similar, though what's inside behind the black plastic disk is threaded stubs cut from body mounting posts ( I'll be using the MRRC steering Ackermann unit that came with the chassis, and mounting the wheels from the inside using screws - hence threaded stubs ). The wheel spinners are from the kit.
Quite fiddly to get the height of the driver just right - hopefully low enough for his head to fit under the body top & glass, high enough so his eyeline is just over the top of the steering wheel.........
I cut out the middle of the MRRC chassis pan to open up the interior, and boxed everything in with black plastic card. I then added in the bits - extinguisher, seats, gear lever, the kit dashboard and steering wheel - plus driver. Oh, and a bit of detail on the dashboard..........
Chassis fully assembled; only thing left to do on the chassis is to shorten the engine wires, and add braids. Note the wheels have been painted - black behind the spokes, red spokes, chrome paint for the alloy on the rims, metal foil on the spinners.
In the background, the MRRC chassis / cockpit interior has had the MRRC steering unit added, plus front wheels. The bit of blue plastic visible is a new tracking rod, slightly narrowed to remove 'toe out' on the front wheels. In the foreground is the motor pan, cut from the previously-mentioned Scalextric chassis. 3 mounting screws, 2 behind the rear wheels, 1 between just behind the front wheels, going in to blocks of plastic card.
Body shell - in front is the static kit upper body that is going to be used, after cleanup,and detailing.
Raised panel lines have been reversed - removed & scribed in instead; and some repositioning, esp. on door tops and around air scoop exit on top of front; and extra lines in the air scoop exit; and extra lines and rivel detail around the windows and headlamp apertures. The 3 air intakes across body behind doors have been opened up. Fuel filler cap on offside front wing has been removed, so it can be painted properly & replaced. The rear spoiler has been extended. Front & rear valances added, and the joins filled. Rear wheel arch has been reprofiled ( note extra bit of white plastic card on front edge ). Other details - door handles, and small oval panel fixers. The finished shell has been keyed for painting by rubbing down with fine 1000-grade wet-and-dry.
In the rear is This is the original MRRC slot car shell upper body; note raised panel lines.
Finished - the shell was primed with matt red enamel. Then I added the gold stripe, by masking it off and knocking over with a gold acrylic aerosol paint. The rest of the body was then given several brushed coats of vermillion acrylic. One coat of Klear acrylic floor polish to seal the red paint, then decals added, then two more coats of Klear to seal in the decals and complete the glossing. Decals - some Patto's Place ones, some I made up e.g. the racing numbers, which are 14mm circles of plain white decal film, plus numbers from a dry transfer lettering set. And yes, the numbering - 35 - is generic, i.e. no particular real car.......
Interior - again, as said before, I think the work done has paid off. GLASS - I used the kit glazing, which comes in one piece. However, it had a thick bit in the middle, some sort of moulding gate, parts of which intruded on to all visible glass areas, so I had to separate some parts - particularly the rear window - and pare off and polish away the moulding gate. I ran matt black paint round the edges of the glass to frame it, and note also the anti-glare strip across the top of the windscreen. DETAILS - note windscreen wiper, chrome-painted fuel filler cap, rear-view mirror on roof.
This nicely shows the gold stripe over the body. A nitpicking problem - on the 'real thing', there's a very, very small secondary gold pinstripe just off the edge of the centre band, but I couldn't find any realistic way to do this....
I had to do some work on the headlamps ( and indicators ). The kit original kit had no headlamps at all, just an empty socket, covered with a clear moulding with a large location post on it. I reshaped the apertures, scribed in panel lines around them, added rivets, then fitted headlamps from the scrap box ( came off a cheap 1/43 diecast car ), and reglazed ( with reshaped covers from a diecast E-type Jag ). Also, though not visible, I added orange indicator lights in to the empty sidelight sockets on the kit, before adding the kit glazing.
The curved black edges of the Scalextric-donated motor pan are just visible under the rear and the lower sides of the car. The rear wheels are a tight fit under the wheel arches! The original spindly exhausts that came with the kit were replaced with thicker sprue, drilled out at the end, and painted grey / black. Rear lights - I used the chrome set from the donor MRRC slot car, but flattened them to leave just a chrome rim, and then added on red and orange 'slot car spare' brake and indicator lights. The reflective bit of the rear-view mirror on the roof has been done with Bare-metal foil.
A later revisit for a couple of changes.....
Firstly, skimmed a little more off the front suspension mount, to lower the nose a bit - checking the photos, the car was sitting 'nose up'.
Secondly, improved the wheel spinners, by taking a moulding from the wheel of a Cobra kit, and casting then up (chrome foiled and black-washed after to finish).