But David that's the secret. twist my arm and I'll tell all.......
OK OK here goes.....yes you are correct it is a very heavily reworked Monogram Lotus shell.
This car has been an ongoing build for at least 5 years. The first car, (pictured below) was going to be a Beardog Racing production item.
Inspired by a Monogram based Lotus that I saw Al Penrose build, or should I say start to build.
Al split a Monogram Lotus 33 down the center and narrowed it by 2-3 mm. OK I thought that makes sense, so I did the same. I cut out the cockpit, and modified the rear of the body to the correct swoopy lines of a late model 33. I built all the accessories: driver, transmission, injectors, wheel inserts etc and sent it off to Al Penrose because he said he'd mould it for me.
Well it was in Al's bat-cave for quite some time, and I inquired apon progress. Al said in his opinion the Lotus was still too big, and he had reduced the "deck height" considerably, and he was working on cleaning it up.
That's where all progress stopped and it still lives in Al's bat-cave #2, and is awaiting the magic hands of it's new master....Al.
Rat's I thought, how to solve the problem? So I started anew, but this time I did my homework and got the correct dimensions for the Monocoque tub. Based on these dimensions I compared them to another Monogram shell I had been graciously given by Mr Mark Huber.
To my surprise I found that the width was spot on, but the tub was nearly 3/8" too deep.
The Monogram body apart from being much too deep, also had very little "tumble-home" as well. A Lotus 25/33 has a very tubular cross-section. So using photographs as reference I set about fixing the problem.
The lower half of the Monogram body up to the seem marks was removed, and replaced with panels with a reasonable curvature that I sourced from a Tamiya 1/20th Lotus 25 kit. See the picture below. No filler has been used, the shell is still in raw green plastic.
Now I found that the gap between the lower edges of the shell was too narrow for one of my F-1 chassis to fit. Ah well, it was about time to design a new chassis with some flex built-in. I also incorporated two motor mounts so that I and future customers would have a choice between a )#), )%) can or the new Pioneer motor or my favourite a mashima open frame motor.
The photo below is of the prototype Mk 3 Beardog Chassis, with a Mashima motor fitted. The aluminium Beardog gear pictured would be replaced with one of the great small Ranch Design set-ups. The front wheels are some BWA 13' mediums with MRRC BRM tyres, and the rears are a pair of old patto's 13" wheels fitted with AB Slotsport urethane's tyres.
I wanted to get this Lotus 33 looking as realistic as possible, so rear of the body was re-configured to the correct shape, using off-cuts of green plastic, again from the Tamiya kit. The correct size opening for the injection trumpets was cut, holes for the roll bar drilled, and injection trumpets were made up using bootlace ferrules, inserted into small brass tubes.
The final finishing of the car consisted of cutting a Dave Jones Lotus 25 windshield to fit, installing rear view mirrors obtained from a Supershells Lotus, and scratch building a replica transmission. The ZF gearbox was painstakingly built up from, a monogram gearbox and assorted bits and pieces from my plastic parts collection.
Using the strategically place attachment points in my new chassis the suspension was made up using fine piano wire and hypodermic tubing from RB Motion. The rear shock's were assembled using the same hypo tubing, aluminium tubing and red electrical wire for the springs.
The transistor box was constructed using layers of plastic sheet, super-glued together, and cut to shape. Wheel inserts are cut down Maxi-models eagle inserts, and if you look very carefully at the gearbox area you can see a bulkhead made from fiber-glass board and the anti-sway bar attached with RB Motion ball joints.
The driver is made up from the fantastic Immense Miniatures full Graham Hill driver kit, his head was swapped out for a PSK head that had the face mask already attached.
Paint: The whole car was painted Tamiya Racing Green, with decals from Penelope Pitlane (numbers, roundels and stripes) the Team Lotus stripes and nose logos are from Patto's.
I'm sure I missed a lot out, so if you have any questions or how to inquires please ask away.
Thanks
Chris
