Saturday, July 1, 2017

Breakthrough in F1-GTR MeLans 1995 1/12 scale conversion project

This is my "dream" project. I wanted to convert Minichamp's die-cast McLaren F1 road car into winner of Le Mans 1995 race. It has been on the back of my mind for many years. I have event started it few years back, but got stuck on the first step. Bottom part of the chassis just didn't want to separate, even though I took out all the screws I could see. Apparently there were 2 more screws at the top of rear wheel arches. Following an advice from automotive forums' F1 forum, I've removed rear tires from the wheels and that opened access to those hidden screws. After that block was removed I was able to dis-assemble the rest of it with pretty much no issues.

It turned out a decent models with high level and accuracy of detail for a die-cast. There will be a lot of things that would have to be improved and converted to specs of racing car. But it provides a decent starting platform, imho.

Here are some photos of the process.