Tamiya Porsche Boxster Model

(More photos of the final model are at the bottom of this page.)

by Trygve Isaacson, March 7, 1998

Since I have been eagerly awaiting delivery of my arena red Boxster, I thought I would try building a model of it. I've never built a model in my life, so I wondered if it would come out all right. It did. The following are some notes and advice from the build, with photos of the process and the end result. Whether you are waiting for your Boxster to be built, or already have it, I can definitely recommend building your own model that's got your colors. It's not terribly difficult, and it's fun. Allow for paint drying time between work sessions; you can probably complete the project in a handful of 1- or 2-hour sessions.

Click on the thumbnails to see the large photos.

The Kit and the Supplies

I had seen a reference to the Tamiya model kit (#24187, 1/24 scale, 7 inches long) on the Boxster Board, so I checked www.tamiya.com, and they even had a dealer list which listed a hobby shop five minutes from my house. I stopped in and found that they could order it for me and get it in a couple of weeks. When it arrived, I had no clue what would be needed to build it, but the folks at the hobby shop were kind enough to fix me up with the necessary project supplies. The parts list in the model kit actually has specific Tamiya paint numbers, but you can find equivalents.

The model kit was $30. Additional materials: Testors 3 oz. spray paint cans (FS36251 Navy Aggressor Gray (primer), 1247 Gloss Black, 2905 Burgundy Red Metallic which I hope is close to Porsche's Arena Red metallic), Testors 1/4 oz. gloss enamel brush-on paints (1145 white for license plates, 1147 black for many things, 1111 dark blue for undercarriage), Testors 1/2 oz. custom enamel brush-on paints (FS17178 chrome silver for chrome pipes, 1780 steel for various metal objects, FS37078 flat black for convertible top and other objects, 2723 Turn Signal Amber and 2724 Stop Light Red for turn signals and brake lights), 1/2 oz. cyanoactrylate (uh, super glue), Testors 1 oz. Clear Parts Cement (special invisible glue for clear plastic parts), paint thinner, nail file / sandpaper, x-acto knife, small wire cutters (to cut the parts from the plastic model molds), tweezers for holding small pieces during hand painting, small paint brushes (sizes 2, 0, and 5/0). Total cost for the kit and all supplies was around $65.

Primer and Paint

There are three main plastic lattices with parts you cut off (one mostly interior parts to be painted, the other mostly exterior parts to be painted, and one with all the clear plastic to left alone or spot-painted), plus the car body, chrome parts, and tires.

The first thing to do is to spray a coat of gray primer on the parts that will be painted. Lesson learned: let it dry! I made the mistake of starting to paint and glue some of the suspension pieces before the primer was totally dry. If you're going to glue a piece or paint a color over primer, let it dry overnight. If you're applying additional layers of the same color to a piece, the can says to do so within 3 hours of the previous coat.

For the body color pieces (undercarriage, body, bumpers, side mirrors, and engine intake vents), apply several coats of the desired color. My mistake was to worry about complete coverage on the first coat, resulting in a thick first coat and some chunkiness. It is better to apply several thin coats, repeating until it's fully covered and solid. Be patient.

Once you've got the main sections primed, and body color parts painted in your car's exterior color, and it's all dry, you are ready to start cutting pieces from the lattices, sanding off the stubs, painting, and gluing.

Painting the Undercarriage

I don't know why they specify blue for the undercarriage accents, but I followed the instructions. Is it really blue under there? The engine and the rear deck are metal gray.

Assembling the Exhaust

The exhaust assembly uses metal gray paint for the pipes, with chrome to accent the clamps. For the exhaust muffler, the paint color instructions called for something I didn't think would work until I tried it: mix chrome paint with turn signal amber. The result is a somewhat dulled chrome color. It works out great for the muffler, which definitely should not be bright chrome. The tailpipe is a separate piece from the chrome parts lattice.

Building the Suspension

This is where you get into some complex assembly and gluing. Again I recommend that you give the paint plenty of time to dry before you glue pieces together. Otherwise applying glue leaves you with a mushy surface that won't stick well. Patience!

Pay careful attention to the instructions with regard to certain pieces that do NOT get glued. Most important is the front suspension, which allows the tires to turn by not being totally glued in place. They're held in place by being stuck between the wheel wells and cross beams, but pivotable.

The rear suspension is the trickiest to glue on. After you've assembled it, the whole assembly goes on over the engine and exhaust, in one big assembly, attaching in at least 8 glue points. It's hard to get them all in place quickly before the glue sets. I had two glue points not quite set right, but it ended up not really mattering.

The rotors and calipers are glued to the suspension, but inside each rotor is a rubber gasket that should NOT be glued. The wheels will attach by plugging into this gasket, remaining rollable.

Finishing the Lower Body

With all suspension pieces in place, the two cover pieces go on, the radiator grilles get painted, and wheels and tires slide in. This is a bit nerve racking, because you have to push pretty hard and it seems like the suspension is going to snap from the pressure. Actually I did have to re-glue one of the front rotors that I hadn't let dry completely when I glued it.

Finishing the Interior and Exterior

Once you remove the non-interior pieces from the lattice, you can spray all of the interior pieces still on the lattice. My interior is black, which turns out to make things easier: I could just spray the whole thing black. With other interior colors you'll have to spray the interior color and then hand paint black on a lot of little spots in the cockpit.

This is also a good time to hand paint the top-down tonneau piece and the top-up soft top piece. I didn't bother painting the hard top, since I'm not getting one. It's also a good time to paint the various black trim sections like the windshield, brake and engine intake grilles, and bumper and fender flares.

Finally, there's still a fair amount of exterior work to do. The chrome and glass parts such as the headlights, taillights, windshield, rearview mirror, side mirrors, etc. all need to be painted and/or glued.

For fear of making a permanent mistake, I chose not to glue the interior section or upper body to the lower body. The fit is tight enough to hold just fine.

For the rear deck Boxster logo, I put just a little bit of black paint on a piece of paper and touched it lightly to the raised lettering. I didn't want to screw it up by brushing it on and getting it in between the raised letters.

The decals suck. I had little success getting them to stick. I lost two of the wheel cap decals, and resorted to a little glue for the hood badge decal and the brake light decal, which is also a little too big.

I left the soft top unglued, so it lifts off for the top-down mode. It doesn't quite fit flush against the top of the windshield, but it might if I had decided to permanently glue the soft top on.

The Final Product!

Here are some photos I took with an Olympus D-500L digital camera. Click on a thumbnail to see the full size photo. (Actually they're half-size. The originals were 1024x768.)