1972/1974 Lotus 72 SRC 1/43

[vrba]

After completing the magnificent Tameo WCT 1970 Lotus 72C, it's time to get back to the much less detailed SRC 1972 car. Here I must resort to a lot of scratchbuilding and adjustments.

Anyway, decaling is in progress, with the golden stripes being cut and assembled from many pieces to fit the shape of the car better than the original decals (especially around the front wing and on the sidepods' top because I widened the sidepods by 1 mm each so the original decals do not fit
).
I closed the rear side of the monocoque with the 0.3 mm brass sheet because I'll use This Way Up DFV engine.
In retrospect, I may have used 0.6 mm aluminium sheet instead, I wouldn't have to care about painting/decaling the brass then. But never mind.
With all these small pieces of deals being placed everywhere, I'll try to put the clear coat on as soon as possible.

I plan to scratchbuild the rear wing (or probably re-use the main plane from the kit) because the endplates do not match the real ones completely. That would require again a lot of cutting of small pieces of gold stripes to fit the new shape. As usual, I used photographs and AutoCAD to draw the endplates. I must also draw the logitudinal "ribs" that the Spanish GP car's rear wing had.

emdplate_rear.PNG (3.34 KiB) Viewed 198 times

[vrba]

Returning to this project, I worked on the rear end. I used This Way Up DFV engine, brakes and gearbox, Tameo cam covers, PE radiator plates and (modified) shock absorbers.
Hex fittings and hoses are by Top Studio.
Everything else is scratchbuilt and it looks much better live than on the photos. I still have one "Ford" decal and one fuel line to add.
As far as I know, this is the only Spain 1972 Lotus with the correctly shaped oil tank

[CK]

Very nice rear end of the car!

[Jeff]

Great job, love the detail

[vrba]

Here we are, with this slow but thorough build.
The front suspension has been scratchbuilt with the help of Tameo wishbones and brake discs. I finally glued together the powertrain and the chassis. I also prepared the wheels (with tyres sanded to correct dimensions) and scratchbuilt the rear wing. The cockpit surround has also been modified. Seatbelts (Tameo) added, gear lever scratchbuilt, seat modified from SRC original. Steering wheel and dashboard are being built in parallel.

The profile looks sharp! A real 72! And in reality it looks much better than on my bad photos.