Tamiya Lotus 25 converting to 1962 season

I started to backdate the Tamiya kit. I wanted a car without the yellow line. I could have opted for a car from the opening of the 1963 season, but I found that to easy.


But as I'm already are building a 1963 car, (with the yellow stripe) I want to make this more different than just the paint.
I started with the windscreen making a template to make a new one.


I filled some holes in the body with plastic card.


A couple of cuts with the saw are needed to make the upper part narrower at the back.


The engine cover needed to be higher so I made a couple of cuts and added material to it. A few small distances of plastic card was glued between the parts.Then superglue and baking soda was used to fill the gap.


I need to make the nose a little longer so I added some plastic card in the front.


It cave me some material to sand down to the right shape.


Coming this far I learned that more work was needed.


I built up the inside of the engine cover with plastic card as I needed to sand down the big bulges on the sides and knew that I would get a hole otherwise.
The cowl now has the same shape as the rest of the body. I made a new cut in the top of the cowl to lower it at the back.

What a great start Bjorn!
Cheers
João Alfredo.

Finding the location for the new bumps are a bit tricky. I hope that I found the right place.
I cut a couple of notches where the valve covers will stick out. It should then be covered by the new smaller bump. First I thought of making bumps in Magic Sculp but then got an idea of drop tanks in 1/144



Looking in my spare part box I found the camera bulbs from Heller's SAAB Recce Lansen that may work.
Unfortunately, the engine cover does not fit . The valve covers touch the top. I tried grinding down the inside of the cover but I've probably made it too narrow at the rear. There is not enough material to remove. Now I must add material to the outside so that I can continue to grind the inside without it becoming a hole.

Finding better pictures of the car made me realize the the engine cover shouldn't slope like my build.


So I had to rebuild it.


But now I need to get some paint on it to be able to see how the shape is. It is hard to see on that spotty surface.

I am surprised that I didn't break the engine cover earlier considering that it has became so thin.


But of course it was bound to happen and so it did when I was almost finished.
Well the new bulges are in place and the damage has been fixed. Sadly the cover doesn't fit as good as before but it will probably work.
Now I need to build some Weber carburettors before I can continue bur finding out the size of them are problematic.

The project went to sleep when I came to the problem with carburetors. I got some tips and made a mock-up to test the size. I don't know, perhaps it is to high in relation to the width?
The plastic card I used is thicker than what I'm planning to use when I build the carburetors later. A good thing is that they aren't very visible with the bodywork in place.

Really cool mate