RENAULT 12
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REPLICA OF THE RALLY CAR IN 1977 LONDON-SYDNEY RALLY, TEAM TURKEY.
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Started: 29 October 2005
Finished: 03 May 2009

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HISTORY: Renault 12, the well known car for its robustness, has been manufactured in Turkey during 1971-1999, by OYAK-Renault Co.
In 1977, two cars were entered for the famous London-Sydney Rally, by the factory, and they both completed the race, bringing Turkey the National Teams Cup. Unfortunately, the cars were later sold, instead of at least one being kept as a memo of that victory time. 
Believing that the memory should be lived on, I decided to build a replica of one of the cars. So, I contacted Mr. Aytac Kot, who was one of the pilots, and generously, he gave me the available photos from the event. The photos were not 100% enough for full info, Mr. Kot had enough patience and kindness to write answers to my questions. 
Manufacturing the model: Unfortunately, no 1/24 kits were made of Renault 12, so I had to scratchbuild everything. I took photographs and dimensions from various cars I found, which took some number of weeks.
29 October 2005:
After making enough sketches and drawings, I began with the front and central parts of the floorpan.
05 November 2005:
I continued with the rough construction of the floorpan.
06 - 22 November 2005:
I experimented on various materials for the bodywork construction. From copper as a whole and separate panels, from tin sheet, etc. I decided that plastic may work out better with this scale.

26 November 2005:
Continued with the rear parts of the floorpan, the boot platform and the gas tank shield.
28 November 2005:
I detailed the gas tank shield and manufactured the rear chassis arms.
Now the bottom of the floorpan is beginning to take some shape.
29 November 2005:
I manufactured the inner sides of the rear wheelwell and shock absoerber housings.
After curing, I cut open the sides to reveal the shock absorber housings.
03 December 2005:
I was dealing with the deatiling of the bottom of the floorpan and leaving the top (inside) blank, but then I remembered that what I was building was a rally car and that the floorpan was bare metal! So the stampings had to be seen at the inside too!

Next move was to disassemble the glued floorpan....

Then I imitated the internal stampings by pressing the tip of a heated file on the plastic.
Filing and sanding clean, the stampings exist at the inside too.
06 December 2005:
But the rear "pans" in the floorpan coulsd not be made by any heated tips or so, due to the curved surfaces. So first of all, I made a female mold from the plastic I had manufactured.
I cast a full resin male in the silicon mold.
Then I pressed a 0.2 mm thick aluminium foil over the male, to make a "pressed steel panel duplicate"...
I prepared a second female and another male around this metal part, so that the male and female molds had a sheet clearance between them. Then finally, I cast a thin resin part to go in the recess in the floorpan.
10 December 2005:
I corrected the spare wheel storage space, made the stampings in the rear seat area and applied some putty here and there.
13 December 2005:
I had glued the resin pans in before, now I applied putty around them for smooth transition.
13 December 2005:
I started manufacturing the front chassis arms. To scale the true width, two strips of 1.5 mm thick styrene per side was cut.
Then I joined them in pairs as in the photo.