I'm calling this one done. I've been working on it as time allows, which means it's probably been over a year in the making.
I've always been a fan of the Renault R5 Turbo. Really cool little pocket-rocket that always responded well to modifications. They still seem to have a great following, as online pictures would indicate. I found this old Humbrol/Heller 'Bobkit' R5 Turbo online, and snapped it up in a minute.
The kit is more of a toy; the doors open as does the hood and hatch, and the wheels roll. The kit even comes with some tubs of paint and glue, although they had long ago become tubs of little hockey pucks, and quite useless. The directions are about 4 pages of cartoon-like but fairly-clear illustrations. The painting notes are almost non-existant, though. The tires are vinyl, and were a bit deformed, especially around the sprue. They came out okay in the finished product, as long as you don't look too close.
Page 1 of the instruction sheet:
There were few parts with the kit, and outside of a pretty nice, albeit a little soft, details on the body. I figured, of course, I could improve things a bit with some scratchbuilding. So, to this kit, I added:
Seats from the Fast and Furious Mustang
Disc brakes from the same Mustang kit. BMF added to the discs.
interior flocking
harness bar for the roll bar that came in the kit.
4-point harnesses from Milliput, using PE harness ends.
Seat adjuster lever on both seats fabbed up, along with the seat adjuster rack (since these seats were out of another vehicle)
Hold down for the spare tire and it's locking wire fabbed up from wire
Added a valve stem to the spare.
Added brake lines to the master cylinder
Added some under hood details with punched out styrene sheet and pieces of square styrene tubing (hood latch, for example)
Added windshield washer reservoir (this was a piece of scrap sprue from the kit filed and painted with wire added for the washer line.
Scratch built coil-overs for the rear suspension (these are mostly hidden).
Scratch built distributor (which is a typical French distributor with side posts and is that odd Bakalite brown in color) and wires.
Scratch built engine controller and wiring
Added aluminum foil 'insulation' to the walls of the engine compartment.
Added aluminum foil heat shield to the turbo to cover it's lack of detail.
Bent aluminum tube for the exhaust pipe.
Scratch built shifter actuator rod and rear frame brace.
BMF added to the side view mirrors.
I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting, it's been a long build.
I also took the stock Minilite wheels, painted them gloss black, and hand brushed some Alclad around the rim to simulate a polished rim.
Driver's seat view (still having problems getting decent macro pictures, sorry):
Under hood area, again, kind of fuzzy image:
Front seats with Milliput harnesses and PE hardware:
Engine compartment:
Another view of the engine compartment:
Scratch-built coil-overs:
Engine compartment with body attached, hatch open:
View with everything open:
And finally, front end view:
