My current race car build is once again another Porsche, so what else is new? This time it’s the Fujimi 1/24 scale Porsche 917K that raced at the 1970 24 hours of LeMans. Instead I decided to make the small corrections needed to convert it into the #2 winning John Wyer Automotive Gulf Winning Porsche 917K at the 1970 Daytona 24 hours. The JWA Gulf 3 car Porsche 917K team placed 1st and 2nd. Here’s the winning car pre and post race. One thing is for sure, it took quite a beating over the 24 hours.
For the most part the major difference was leaving off the small spoiler/wing at the rear of the engine deck.
As I studied pics of numerous 917Ks, there’s a few differences whether the Daytona winning car actually had the right side ID light installed, which it did, and just how was it installed. Fujimi just gives you a lens and placement guide, but that’s incorrect. The actual light is in a light receptacle attached to the inside of the engine cover, and just the lens is on the outside.
So I drilled a hole in the proper place, then using a few parts from my spares box, and some sheet plastic, made the light fixture. Here’s the part and how it looks just temp tacked in place. I won’t paint and glue it in place till after the body is completely painted, decaled, and glossed.
I started the body shell by gluing the front lower nose section to the cockpit section. The fit was ok, but needed contour sanding to blend it in so that it looks like one piece. The front compartment that houses the steering linkage, brake, and clutch Reservoir cover was warped and just way to thick. So it never fit correctly despite my best efforts. I glued it into place, and sanded it down so that it fit correctly. I also removed the 8 fasteners that on the real cars secures it in place as they unfortunately looked like plastic blobs and nothing more. I’ll come up with either some Indy Cal decals to represent them, or PE, but gluing them on after paint and polish isn’t one of my stronger points, and I just could create a major issue 8 times over. I also thinned out the spoiler on the cover as the molded one was just way to thick and chunky looking. Sorry that the pic really doesn’t show it correctly.
I also decided to glue the engine deck in place as there’s no engine included with this boxing.
The Gulf Porsches all had that top window rather then a solid roof. Test fitting was a little rough but it was easy enough to get it to fit, but not 100% flush. Pictures do show that it’s that way on the real car as it looks liked a bead of caulk was applied all the way around. So I’m going to leave it off till after the body is finished. Hopefully I won’t screw it up installing it.
The last issue I needed to figure out is why some 917Ks have what is actually an electrical outlet to plug in an extension cord to supply electricity. Turns out that it’s for a heater pad that is on the bottom of the oil pan to heat the engine oil as well as the oil in the oil tank. Some cars have it on the outside of the engine deck while others have it attached to the frame. Doesn’t really make any difference as once the oil is heated up, the engine cover needs to be opened up so that Brake fluid can be added to each velocity stack to fire the engine up. So I won’t be using the decal that Fujimi supplies to represent the housing on the on the outside of the engine cover as none of the 3 Wyler Gulf cars had them.
Fujimi does supply a decal to represent it, but it’s square not round. And while I have several pictures of different shapes, none are a box shape.
Just about done prepping all the various body pars needed to paint, decal, and gloss coat the body shell. It’s taking some time as every piece seems to have a little flash including every suspension strut.
joel