These models are the same car at two different times in its life (Chassis #022). Before it was the dark blue #29 Solar Productions camera car for the movie Le Mans in the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans driven by Jonathon Williams and Herbert Linge, it was the white #48 car at the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring driven by Peter Revson and Steve McQueen to second place.
About this time last year I started building three Trans Am Camaros at the same time. It turned out to be a lot more work than I expected, yet here I am again doing something similar. With a little luck I’ll have these two done by the next 24 Hours of Le Mans.
1/43rd scale Starter resin kits. The basic clean-up and scribing have been done and the brass winglets have been fitted to them.
The Camaro set looked pretty good, this will be an interesting build just looking at the differences so far. Nice work getting the pe winglets on so cleanly.
The rear frame is PE brass in both kits, but not the same configuration. The one for the Solar camera car is on the right. It was very fragile so I soldered it up for strength. The other one seemed to be made from a much stiffer brass even though they are both the same thickness.
The roll bars are bent from wire provided in the kits. I could not get solder to work with them so I used CA to hold the two pieces of each one together.
The last few brass parts were added before priming and painting the bodies. TS-26 Pure White for the 48 car and for the 29 car I used an enamel blue I mixed for the Sunoco Camaro that I didn’t care for at the time as a starting point, but I tinted it with TS-72 Clear Blue to look more like the Porsche photos I have.
While I was prepared for the decals to be less than user friendly, I was pleasantly surprised how well the first one worked. I used a lot of decal solvent and it held together and stretched very well. It’s also even more opaque than I expected.
The kit decals and the shape of the body are not exactly spot-on compared to the photos of the real car, but then it is a Starter kit…
I used what was provided and tried to make them fit as well as possible. All of the decals worked quite well. Let’s hope the #48 car’s decals are as user friendly.
Another pleasant surprise, the decals for the McQueen car were good too, although a few of them split partly due to them being such delicate pinstripes. I’m sure age was a contributing factor as well. One of them was missing some ink so I cut a sliver of blue decal material and made a little patch.
