BMW Z8

That's a nice gutsy start mate, sounds interesting.

this promises to be good popcorn-and-drink-smiley-emoticon

This is looking good Don. What kind of racing do you do, if you don't mind if I ask?

Don, that really sounds like a lot of fun to me.

I like somebody who is not scared to use a scalpel or dremel !!!!
Great work so far Don.

Actually John, none of this cutting has lowered the car's stance one bit. All it has done is move the wheels up in the wheel wells. In fact they moved up so far, I didn't like the look. The wheel openings were too low on the body. The way to solve this problem was to raise the wheel openings. I know of at least 5 ways to do this. Three of which involve massive amounts of cutting and puttying, which I hate doing, because I'm no good at it. I did mud in one corner and then backed out, before it hardened. I changed my mind, for what I thought was an easier way.

I have been postponing making this post for over a week because of embarrassment. I discovered that a round glass paint jar perfectly matched the wheel opening. All I had to do was raise the wheel openings 1/8". So all I had to do was make a fixture to hold the paint bottle and locate the body as I heated the wheel wells with a heat gut and push down on the body until it hit the stops in the fixture. Well the first three worked great.



Then the stuff hit the fan. I felt like some of your tales of burning and blowing up models when you were a kid. Not sure what went wrong. Maybe I was in a hurry, too confident, or the body heat soaked and softened up. Things went bad, very bad. I could not get the right shape in the last wheel opening. The more I tried the worse thing s got.



I just could not get the right shape in the right front wheel opening. Then I noticed how screwed things had gotten. From repeatedly reheating and trying to reshape the wheel opening I made depressions in the hood with my fingers.





These pixs are after extensive repairs. Notice the headlight on the right is still lower than the one on the right.



One door decided to bow out while the rocker panel bowed in.



The rocker panels looked like Ruffle potato chips.



I thought it was totaled. Now after a lot of reworking, it might be savable with massive amounts of putty and a lot of time, which is something I don't have. I leave for Sebring tomorrow. I have only taken two models on the road with me before. We'll see.

A good piece of sand paper and a little filler putty, she will be perfect in no time mate,
good to see you had a go, but learnt the hard way, that plastic don't like heat. ( not tooo much, anyway).
I think we have all done it though, i know i have, but it always turns out for the better,
look forward to seeing the finished product, because it will be great i reckon.

Enjoy Sebring too, i know i would.  

Sorry, I didn't finish on time guys. I got involved with this.  Don't know when I'll be done. Hope to finish it later.

You do good work and changing a model from box stock always takes time and effort. Hope it finally comes out all right. In side view I see hints of an XKE Jag convertible and a bit of other early race cars. Thanx for the work! The best part about your car sectioning is you don't have to worry about engine clearance!

Sorry to hear you couldn't get it done in time. I was really liking the direction you were taking with it. Hope you can finish it sometime in the future, would love to see this when finished.
Cool what you did with the killer whale too!

Sorry guys. I didn't make that. I'm just distracted by this time waster.