43rd and More - Kit reviews by Wayne Moyer Archive Edition

by Wayne E. Moyer

You really have to give Dan Gurney credit! In spite of all the technical advantages (principally wind tunnels with moving ground planes) available to European race car builders, Dan has never given up on his dream of building American Indy-car winners. He's done it a couple of times; in the mid- 1960's and a decade later in the '70's Eagles were the car to have if you really wanted to win on American race tracks. But as race car aerodynamics became ever more important, the ability to test and tweak models at 200 mph, reproducing the airflow around, through, and under the car, became a critical part of the design process. Eagles disappeared from CART racing for almost 20 years, though Made-in-the-USA Eagle-Toyotas did dominate the last years of the late, great IMSA GTP series. Then in 1996 Eagles flew again, as the Eagle-Toyota Mk.V joined the CART circus with Juan Fangio II and P.J. Jones as drivers. Although the Eagle-Toyota was among the best-looking cars in the field, it was never quite quick enough to be a contender; neither driver managed to lead a lap of CART competition.

Given the almost total lack of 1/43 scale kits of recent CART cars, the new Formula Models kit (FM07) of the Eagle-Toyota Mk. V is VERY welcome, whether or not the full-scale prototype was a great success. This is a true multi-medium kit, with beautifully cast resin body and baseplate, white-metal baseplate, seat, front wing airfoil, transaxle, and brake cooling scoops, plus more than 70 photo-etched pieces. You don't use all those photo-etched parts, though, as parts (and decals) are provided to let you build either a superspeedway or road course car for either driver. Although you must paint the p. e. wheel spiders, the inner and outer wheel halves, along with the brake disks, are machined aluminum parts that have been anodized black. The large exploded-view drawing and numbered parts breakdown/painting guide is sufficient to select the parts you'll need for the version you choose to build. There's a great photo feature on the car in the June 1996 issue of "Racer" that's a lot of help in seeing just what should go where, though.

It didn't take long to get the resin body ready to paint as there were just a couple of small mold lines on the lower edges and some thin flask inside the cockpit opening and the air scoop/vent openings, which are open through the body so you can see the photo-etched radiator faces after they're installed. I built up the wings before the primer coat because the glue-to-metal bond is actually stronger than a paint-to-metal bond. There are a lot of small pieces in the wing assemblies, but they all fit into their etched slots and I had no real problems. I'd have preferred that the rear wing have a white-metal airfoil casting like the front though; race car wings are not flat panels! I glued the photo-etched lower body panels to the body before priming it, too.

There were no bubbles, pinholes, or other surface blemishes in my casting, so one coat of primer was all that was needed to get it ready for painting. The body is painted white and I used semi-gloss black for the interior, baseplate, and seats with several metallic colors on the transaxle. Be sure to bend the photo-etched belts to conform to the seat before you paint them, though, as the paint will flake off during the bending process. The wings must be painted to match the decals so you must mix those colors; Castol Green for the front and red for the rear. Unless you're really good with a paint-brush (I'm not) you'll have to have an airbrush to do this job as I don't know of any spray can paints that will work.

The decals fit well and went on with no major problems, but there was a strange reaction to my usual clear coat. I'd highly recommend using a water-based acrylic if you decide to clear-coat the decals. Once that job was completed, "final assembly" went pretty well, though there were a couple of glitches. The instructions show that the seat should be glued to the baseplate, but there's no clue as to just where it should go. And if you do glue it to the baseplate, it won't match up to the upper cockpit padding (part 7), so glue the padding in place and then fit the seat up against that inside the body shell. I also found that it was necessary to file the outer edges of the wheel spiders to get them to fit into the wheel halves. Neither of these is a problem if you test-fit first, but if you're one of those guys who puts on a couple of drops of super-glue and then sees how things go....!

The primary suspension components-- upper and lower A-arms and uprights-- are a single photo-etched piece that you fold into a "U" shape. Shock pushrods and other details are separate photo-etched pieces. This works very well and gives you sturdy suspension; I glue the lower A-arms into their locating holes and fit the wheels before gluing the upper arms. That lets me "tweak" the suspension to get the car sitting level with all four wheels on the ground. Be sure to get the rear suspension in as tight to the body as you can; my model wound up with the rear track about 0.1 inch too great, but I think more careful construction would have eliminated that. I also glued the rear wing strut to the transaxle and then glued the wing to the strut with thick, slower-drying super glue as you must align it to all three axes strictly by eyeball. All in all, though, for an open-wheel model, this kit was really pretty easy to build.

I think the rear wing's span may be just a fraction too short, but otherwise the complete model matches the "Racer" photos perfectly. The colorful graphics are all correct, too, and every dimension except that rear track is right on 1/43 scale. Formula's kit of the '96 Eagle-Toyota is a great addition to my collection of Indy (oops, Indycar) models and I'm really looking forward to their kit of Villeneuve's Indy 500 winner! The price for this one should be about $58.00 and it should be available now from shops that stock top-quality 1/43 scale kits.

Contact Wayne at mailto:wmoyer@infinet.com

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