Have you ever been bored, looked at two things and wondered if you could put the two together? Well this is how this Mazda came to be.
I had in my possession an Arii 1/32 Mazda RX7 kit and a Scalextric C3 Chevrolet Corvette. The Corvette, sadly, had seen better days after I used it as a club racing car; the windows were missing, it had scratches on the roof and a few other little bits of damage.
The chassis was interesting though. This car was long due some replacement rear tyres, had the magnet removed for club and is front engined so it used to wiggle its way down the straight sections of track and would power-slide around the corners! Although a slot car can’t properly drift this chassis was the closest we were going to get to a drift chassis!
The body was always going to be a slot car. I’ve done a couple of these Arii Japanese car kits over the years with PCS chassis’ fitted into them. I fancied doing something a little different with this one though! As you can see I built up the interior. I was hoping to be able to include it as I hoped it would miss the motor but after some deliberation is decided it would be too much effort to cut the interior to fit the motor and then get it to line up right with in the shell.
The first thing to do when starting a cut and shut project like this it to make sure the wheelbases of your new shell and donor car are somewhat similar. Thankfully, as you can see, they are! The chassis should fit under the shell without any extensive modification.
I had to chop the back and front of the chassis down in order for it to fit under the new shell. The guide, per my estimations, would just about fit under the front bumper of the Mazda with the majority of the nose of the Corvette cut away and the rear had to be cut away as well as the factory light bar would not fit under the new shell as it was too high.
Hopefully you can see, I had to file away the majority of the plastic on the front bumper behind where the intercooler would be placed. I was hoping to keep the front bumper intact and the intercooler present. For aesthetics more than anything.
With the chassis actually under the shell it was evident that I would have shorten the rear axles a lot to get the rear wheels to fit under the arches and file the arches back so the tyres would clear them.
Thankfully my ‘bits box’ saved me from having to shorten the rear axle. This SCX rear axle fits much better…
… Ok, it’s not perfect fitment, but it will do for this quick build. Hopefully shortening the rear axle will reduce rear end grip even more 😀
Time for my favourite part now; putting the rest of the body together and painting!
Halfords’ grey primer is easily the best value for money primer on the market. It’s £7.99 for 500ml which is really cheap. I’ve used more expensive primers before and I can’t honestly say that the extra cost has contributed to me getting a better finish so I tend to stick with the Halfords stuff. Admittedly I’m not the best painter in the world but it works for me!
Then a coat of gloss black, again from Halfords.
Finally a few coats of white! Can any of my hardcore drift fans tell what this livery is going to be?
Interiors for saloon type slot cars I tend to make out of card with black vinyl over the top. If you want to paint the cardboard then that comes out fine too! Vinyl is easier for me though. The drivers head is from an old Scalextric car I brought as a breaker at some point.
That is then held into the shell with hot glue. If you haven’t got a hit glue gun, buy one, they are amazing for everything!
And finally I just have to mount the chassis into the shell and it’s done!
Well done if you guessed a Japspeed livery! Japspeed do loads of cool stuff for a wide range of Japanese cars, go check them out at japspeed.co.uk
I did sadly have to cut away the front bumper. The guide did fit but it couldn’t turn all the way which is bad for a car that I’ve built to oversteer. I wasn’t too sure about the Corvette wheels on the Mazda at first but now the car is done I don’t think they actually look too bad.
All in all this was a fun little project. It’s certainly not the best model I have ever made and it’s not the cleanest conversion but it was fun to do and will hopefully be fun to drive! I’ll let you all know how it goes soon!
Thanks for reading!
