Sunday, July 24, 2011

McArlus Cars - 28 - stickers on.

At bit of a milestone number update!
The only thing missing from the last one was a few stickers to really set the car off, well here they are!
Regards
Simon
For those who don’t know, or haven’t guessed, the McArlus is based on a dream of mine to own a Can Am sports car. Clearly I don’t have the money to buy and run one (forgetting for a moment the need to also have some ability behind the wheel!), so instead the decision was made to build a roughly ¾ scale one from scratch.
In retrospect it may have been simpler to just to get second job and buy the real thing!
When it comes to Can Am racing, Mclaren cars were head and shoulders above the rest, so the choice of car was fairly straightforward. A lot of time has been spent buying and reading books, models and videos to get the shape and as many details on the car correct. Not forgetting that I was constrained in using many proprietary parts, modifying them as necessary, and also having to get a six foot, 93 kg driver in a ¾ scale car!
A lot of lessons were learnt on the yellow car (but not the one that says to never do this again!) and so the new orange car incorporates all of the lessons learned, making the finished package a really nice looking and well proportioned car, to me at least.
The finishing touch for the body work was to try and source some matching stickers like those on the real Mclaren M8A. It turns out they weren’t that difficult to get, and thanks to the wonder that is eBay, the Goodyear, Gulf and Champion stickers were easily and relatively cheaply sourced from the UK.
The numbers and name stickers, I scaled and had made locally.
You can see on the picture of the 1:18 Mclaren model, I have tried to copy the stickers as best I can.
McArlus, which incidentally is a name made up of the “Mc” in Mclaren, and “Arlus” which was my late brothers’ nickname, takes over from Mclaren. A small kookaburra replaces the NZ kiwi, and of course the names have changed.
I have chosen the number 4 for myself, which was Bruce Mclaren’s number and Ken will have number 5, Denny Hulme’s number.
I’m not sure if this is such a good idea as Denny one more races than anyone in Can Am cars! 
I really happy with the way that it has turned out, what do you think?
Regards
Simon

3 comments:

Colin said...

Congratulations Simon. It's a beauty.

Anonymous said...

Awesome! It has been a great adventure following the build. How soon before it gets on the track?

Tony

Cassie Brendan said...

The car looks like it really can't wait to hit the race track! A lot of work must have really been put into making this car, and the result is just awesome. Is it ready to take on the road now?