The completed Viper body, with chassis attachment hardware plus lexan cockpit & glass weighs 60gm, the max allowable. The cockpit and glass required lots of tedious trimming to fit, and several pieces of strapping tape to attach to the shell. The wing and all clear and photoetched parts were reinforced – not excessively – with glue to prevent damage during race impacts.
The completed body and chassis, with wheel inserts and all hardware, weighs 211gm, comfortably under the 215 max.
Concors details:
— The rear wheel inserts need to be trimmed on the edge/circumference or else they stick out 1/32 from the wheels for the sponge tires, making them illegal if viewed from above. It is a very tedious process to sand them carefully until they fit, then you may need to touch up the paint removed during the sanding process. The disk brakes look good – I painted the calipers bright red to mimic Brembos, altho the modeled versions do not appear as fat as the real ones. I painted the disks silver but they could be painted grey to resemble carbon disks.
— The exhaust ports are best left without the glued in “tips”, the eliptical divot in the body has a hole that can be reemed out slightly to resemble the actual exhaust exit in the 1:1 car. The bottom of the photoetched parts sheet has two perfectly sized rectangular pieces that were glued with CA following the exhausts to mimic the backfire sheilds on the 1:1 car. The photoetchs are in thin stainless steel which was tough to cut – I used some diagonal pliers to cut out the rough pieces and used a file and metal sandpaper to round the edges. Some gray paint dabbed in a tapering pattern mimics the ash and carbon that covers the real guards after a race.
— The kit comes with two grills – I chose the reinforced one which does not have an obvious set of studs to glue the front photoetched grill to.
— The supplied tow-hook is incredibly small and wimpy and would be snapped off within the first few races. I replaced it with the rounded tip of a ziptie, drilled out with a 1/16 drill in a pin-vise. This nylon version is not only bright red its virtually indestructable. I also moved the position down from upper left nose to the lower right grill which seems a more common location. I will upload some pix in a later installment.
"... get on your bad motor scooter and ride!"
Sammy with Montrose