Porsche 935 K3 from a Tamiya 1/12 Porsche

This 12th scale version of the Jagermeister 935 K3 is as it raced at Zolder in 1981. The various Kremer K3s were very successful, even winning Le Mans outright in 1979.
I based this model on the Tamiya 1/12th Porsche 935 (kit no. 12038). The body only retains the hood, doors and front one third of the roof from the original kit (very much like the real car). Everything else is completely scratch built (front clip, front & rear fenders, running boards, rear 2/3rds of the roof, rear window, rear deck, wing, rear clip, etc.). The interior has been heavily reworked as well, especially the area behind the driver. The work was done with resin, aluminum, brass, styrene, Lucite, Renshape and bondo over about a 4 year period. The front headlight covers were created by pulling heated clear sheet vinyl over bondo patterns. The headlight buckets were filled with bondo, the outside sanded down to the correct shape and then popped out. They were primered and polished before pulling the plastic over them. They were very carefully cut and the edges sanded until a near perfect shape was reached. The paint is a custom mix by MCW (Fruehauf orange to be exact). After MANY coats of primer (sanded down between each coat) I painted the body with Tamiya orange as a base. I then shot on the MCW paint and after that Tamiya clear. I normally don’t clear coat but this time it seemed like a good idea. The paint was allowed to cure for several weeks and then I rubbed it out with a series of Tamiya polishes. The decals are a combination of ones taken from the Tamiya 934, the CMW 956 and custom ones done in Illustrator on my Mac and printed up on special decal paper with my Canon ink jet. My own decals were gently clear coated with Krylon Crystal Clear, cut out close to the edges and then applied. As I wanted the model to be displayed closed up I built it as a curbside (as it is all the work on the interior really doesn’t show). It was difficult enough to create the exhaust and twin turbo set up but I really didn’t want to spend many additional hours building the new injection/intercooler system that sits on top of the engine as well. I have too many 12th scale projects underway to make each one a full detailed model.