Fiat 806 GP FINISHED

[paddy]

Italeri Fiat 806 1/12

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A little bit of History on the Fiat 806

It’s quite hard to find out much about this car due to car reliability, it only raced once in its first season and the 1500cc class was discontinued that year, so it never raced again and was scrapped. Of course pictures are also very rare

Four 12 cylinder engines and one chassis were built , the engine was two straight sixes with a common crank case in a U config , overhead cams (x3) and 2 valve per pot gave 187 hp and 8500 rpm and a top speed of 150mph…not bad for 1927

Italeri Bought the Protar moulds when Protar folded and like the other cars in Italeri vintage range this is a plastic version of the Italian Protar metal original. I haven’t seen the metal version, but I am told the plastic version reflects the exact imperfections / casting lines etc of its metal Sister.

Anyway, lets push the boat out on this one
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On opening the box the thing that caught my eye was the chrome floor and PE wood covering. straight away i am thinking how to go about this

Unfortunately there are 2 large ejector marks on top of the ??? tank above . Deciding that there is no reason for a chrome floor and i would have to strip the chrome from the tanks to clean the marks anyway i decided to strip these parts

My next step will be about what to do with the wood. I dont think it will be easy to do anything with the PE so maybe scribe the "planks" and use oils. The reason for this is its going to be hard to blend the edges of the PE to the edges of the plastic floor and if i build this with panels off you will see that edge

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[paddy]

This arrived this morning from China.

This a 1/12 tool set for a Dolls house . The box is genuine wood, the scissors and pliers actually work and all for under £5.00 GBP inc postage. (about$7.00)
Just need a little tidying up and some wooden handles for hammers and saw and they will be good for 1927 race cars

 

[moon puppy]

How neat!

 

[Heavens Eagle]

 

[paddy]

Having striped the chrome off i painted the tanks gloss black then Alclad Aluminium which might be a mistake.....i also adde some lines to the floor to represent the planks

I then masked the aluminium and painted the floor Tamiya dark yellow followed by burnt umber oils with some lighter colours added to give a wood effect

My problem now is i dont think i can weather the Alclad as i wanted to as i think any sort of wash other than water will just activate the Alclad
So I have ordered some MRP "steel" which i think will look better than aluminium and will take mig type washes.

I wonder if the wood would have been varnished on a one off car.

Thinking about it i doubt anything would have been aluminium in a one off car either in 1926 ..

 

[moon puppy]

 

[Heavens Eagle]

On my P-47 build a few years ago, I used the Alclad gloss black for undercoat then the chrome Alclad over that. Kept to the same brand to be sure it worked best. I used some acrylic brown over that with no problems at all.

 

[paddy]

That's good to know Paul thanks,
I'm going to wait for the MRP steel to arrive anyway as i always struggle with aluminium colour on these early engines......, car ,bike and aero as i think it looks anodised rather than a bare metal.

 

[paddy]

Well done Paul, quite right the white spirit based mig washes are fine over Alclad

As usual i dont have a plan so i dont know whether to put the panels on this or not. If i dont i need to do something with the black box here as thats the seat base and not designed to be seen... The seat itself is fixed via rivets to the body tub.

 

[paddy]

I hope you dont mind me sharing my problems, mostly self inflicted , here

This the fuel tank, it comes chrome plated (why do they do this) and of course you cant join these halves without a wicked seam that needs sanding which then destroys the chrome...

As you can see after removing the chrome and spraying the thing Black it looks a complete mess.
The problem was i couldn't sand this down properly without removing the rivet detail

So now i am thinking i need to completely remove the rivet detail sort out the mess and then re add the rivets. The only way to do this is as far as i can see is to use a filler primer to get a smooth surface and then drill and fit real rivets. the smallest i can reasonably work with is 1mm dia round head ..

 

[moon puppy]

Sand it and new rivets. Easy for me to say but I think it'll be worth it.

 

[Rhino]

Sand it and new rivets. Easy for me to say but I think it'll be worth it.

Yeah! What 'Pup said!

 

[paddy]

Ok so i sanded the rivets off sorted out the surface with sanding and a filler primer, added some new rivets and gave it a coat of black in preparation of a coat of "steel"

A few words on construction

As I previously mentioned this model is pretty much the old Protar metal model re-released in plastic.

Consequently, the method of construction is mostly screws rather than glue. The problem here is the plastic doesn’t have the rigidity of metal and the screws are inadequate so don’t be tempted to use them on their own, use them as a way of holding parts together in addition to conventional gluing.

This shows one of only 2 screws to hold the belly pan on

The only way to get good all-round contact with the chassis is to glue as well so you dont have gaps. The greatly increases the strength of the whole thing as well.

 

[moon puppy]

That's pretty dang neat though.

New rivets was worth the effort.

 

[paddy]

Having really made a pigs ear of this fuel tank i am quite pleased with the save

Its actually quite odd not having any reference pictures for this build. its really a case of guessing most of the finishes or just being guided by the Protar model and trusting they knew any better.
My take is this was its a one off so definitely hand built. It only did one race so the heavily weathered builds you see on the internet are probably just artistic licence. It likely it was all pretty new and i would guess things like this boat tail fuel tank was probably mass produced for other more successful road models. Its nice to be given free rein but it would also be nice to have some basic guidance

 

[paddy]

Todays conundrum following on from comments on Greg's thread

These are the kit rubber HT leads and rubber plug caps. The leads are 1.5mm so to scale that would be 18mm
Plu leads would have been nearer 7mm so about .5mm

They also would have been cloth wound and plug caps hadn't been invented in 1927 as far as i know.,

this is cloth wound HT lead with period plug connectors

I tried making these in brass but its a no go for me with my limited facilities. however after some thought its possible to make these with plastic card which also allows for a smaller hole. This will mean chopping the plug tops off and replacing them with some brass rod of about .5mm and a .6mm hole in the card/connector.

This shows my failed attempt in brass and a better solution in plastic card. Unfortunately the cloth HT lead acts like a wick to the super glue....

Rubber HT lead and cap compared to correct dia cloth HT lead

Plug tops need to be cut off and reduced from 1mm to about .5mm for the card method to work.
Should have done this before i assembled this but you know me...plan.............what plan

 

[moon puppy]

Crazy how you guys are on the same page.

 

[Heavens Eagle]

THAT'S NICE!

 

[paddy]

End of week update

Chassis is a mix of flat and semi gloss Rosso red
Engine is just flat black at this stage
Floor is wood (oils)

Fuel tank is missing because i forgot to put in the picture

 

[Greg Kimsey]

For not having a plan this is (to me) going amazingly well. Way above my pay grade. Trying to soak in what you are doing.