This car started out life as this body:
And it's really a great looking car. But before I lost my nerve, I took it straight from the box to the dremel.
I think the Grand Sports look great, but those two that Penske bought and chopped the top off of beat them in the "cool" department. Fortunately, I live about 100 miles from one of them. I took a few visits to the Simeone Museum and tons of photos. Two things that stood out to me is that the car is not perfect (dents, uneven seems, metal screws sticking out) and that the roof supports are not cut evenly. You can see here that the driver's side support is an inch higher than the passenger side. I made sure to mimic this when I cut the roof off of mine.
I run digital, which means that this car will see contact. Removing that back deck lessened the integrity of the entire rear end. In order to add some strength back, I fashioned a connecting bar between the two rear mounting posts, held in place with a mixture of superglue, modeling putty, and epoxy.
In order to fashion a rear deck, I first cut out a template on regular paper, then on cardstock, and finally on a sheet of styrene. The rear deck bends away at the tail, so I took my cut piece of styrene and heated it with a hairdryer while rubbing it against an SCC set-up block. Once it bent, I was shocked to see that it actually fit in place. So I superglued it in place, then epoxied it from underneath and used modeling putty on top. I also had the interior taped in place in order to get a feel for how it would all go together.
After some sanding, it started to look like it was all done on purpose!
I went back and forth on whether to model the George Wintersteen car or the Penske version. I finally decided to not do either, and just build the car the way I wanted to see it. That meant taking a few liberties with the Penske livery. I just love the way the yellow and blue go together, and the paint actually came out very well. I went a little nuts and actually used vinyl tape to cover the headlights.
One thing I didn't do was take photos of it before racing it. On its maiden lap, it flew off the table. Luckily one of my slot car group actually caught it mid-air. Unfortunately, it did find the floor at one point, and took a bit of a beating as were testing out a new power supply that night. So it's got some road rash, but it's all in one piece.
Since i run digital, I wanted lights in the front. I wasn't about to try to model clear headlight covers that matched those that Penske ran, so I left the headlights covered and simply removed and drilled out the fog lights, replacing them with LEDs. They light the track well and help me keep track of the car on the circuit, so they do their job.
I didn't do much with the interior except to repaint the driver and add a few additional decals. These were very trying, but I felt it necessary to have a Grand Sport logo on the steering wheel since this was now an open car.
I can't recommend Micro Sol decal setting solution enough. It's a little pricey for a small bottle, but it will last forever as it doesn't take much to make a huge difference. Check out how the "CHE" in Chevrolet looks like it was painted around that panel on the hood. Just apply your decal, use a sharp hobby knife to cut it in the seems of the model, and then brush on a little Micro Sol. I sometimes find myself going out of my way to apply decals over panel lines just so that I can use this stuff!
It was a fun build that took me months because I kept flip-flopping on the livery, but I'm ultimately very pleased with it. To anyone considering a similar modification, don't think, just dive in with that dremel. You won't regret it!
