Lotus 98T - Tamiya conversion

[Steffen_T]

Thank you for all the nice comments!

Davey, you are lucky. I found a few pictures I took during the build.

First of all, I made a copy of the decals and printed them on Tamiya masking foil. I placed the JPS advertising around the cockpit to find out where the separationline between the bodywork and the windscreen should be.
If you watch this separationline from the side, it looks like a straight line, which gave me a crazy idea...
I took a few Lego bricks and build this jig:





Several layers of masking tape were used to adjust the height, with a slick isolation tape on top.



Then it got interesting. I fixed the bodywork on the jig, placed a saw blade on the isolation tape and slowly separated the bodywork. When doing this you should only use little pressure on the areas where the saw blade has contact with the tape, to avoid the saw blade being bended.



I still had to remove some of the material on the inside, but in general the cut was perfect.



On the inside i glued a thin strip of plastic to create an area where the windscreen can be attached.
The removed part was modified and used for vacuum forming the new windscreen.

[daveyman]

Thank you Steffen. That's a very nice solution, would never have thought of that. Superb result.

[wastgate]

very interesting

[indycals]

Do you still have your windscreen master? People will buy those vac-form wind screens from you.

[steinietrabi]

Nice build Steffen.

I first had to look for the wheel nuts in the picture
Glad, that I could help.

As always, there are a few nice details to be found.
I would also be also interested in one of these windshields.

[Seema]

Very nice conversion from 99T to 98T. My question is: Which decal film did you use for the wings? It looks excellent.

[Steffen_T]

I still have the master here and could do a few more windscreens, but the next few weeks until christmas will be busy for me. So I can't promise a date right now, but of course I can start a little run.

I used two different types of cf decals by Scale Motorsport on this car. The front wing was done with Hi-Def Carbon Fiber 1520HD (Out of production it seems), the rear wing and all the other parts with Carbon Fiber Twill Weave #1020.
Btw:
I painted the endplates on the front and the rear wings in gloss black. While doing my research I found a picture of Senna's 98T at the French Grand Prix, where he had gone off the road at high speed. The gravel had damaged the paintjob on the rearwing and little silver dots indicated the endplates were made of metal.

[Orso]

I don't normally build such modern cars but I have a 98-conversion started. Count me in among the crowd interested for a windscreen.
Your build has inspired me to bring out my build again.