Hello everybody,
I actually love these old "brass cars" from about 1900-1920, but I never had in mind to model one, it had nothing to do with the stuff I used to built. I knew about those staff cars that were to be seen on wwi airfields, but as I used to build in 1/72 and later 1/48 there were no kits on the market besides of the good old Ford T, still one of my all time favoured. The I saw the wonderfull conversions on this site, Rolls Royce Ambulances, Renault airfield trucks and so on, that were made out of old "Pyro", Airfix or Revell kits, that I never had even heared of before. When I then saw Des' great 1911 Packard tourer I was lost: I wanted to build such stuff too!
I have a certain diorama in my mind where I need a British staff car or a Crossley light tender. Although I had the luck to pick up an out of production Tommy's War Crossley, it was the Vauxhall type D 25 HP that I wanted to have. There are so much pretty pictures of this beautiful car on the web
but I didn't find any scale plans or other informations I needed to scratch build one. Then I found out that Airfix once produced a 1911 Vauxhall "Prince Henry" in 1:32.
Wikipedia told me, that the D-type was just a heavier, larger version of the prince henry, the "weight carrying chassis". Sadly the length of the car seemed to differ, 4,420 mm for the D-type staff car and 4,039mm, 4,115 mm respectively for the Prince Henry. Anyway, I thought, couldn't there be a way to convert one of these Airfix Prince Henries into a 25D Staff Car? These kits are old and rare nowadays, but on ebay I found one almoust finished and painted and another just bagged kit without box and with some parts missing. As both didn't attract kit collectors, I won both bids and soon I had my basis material in my hands. The kit looked quite nice besides of the terrible spokes of the wheels. At last I begged for help on this forum and Bern was so kind to send me a scale plan from Ken Musgrave (Thanks again!!!)
http://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=7449.0.
Although these plans are not always too precise, for me it was enough to start, because I didn't want to get deeper into the materia. I just want something that looks like a Vauxhall staff car for a diorama, I don't mind the underside of the car too much, as it will be quite muddy. Excitedly I printed the scale plans in 1:32 and compared the Airfix parts with them. It could be worse. The chassis is too short, but it fits in width, the wheels have the perfect diameter and many many small parts are at least a good basis to built my own from scratch, if I wouldn't use them anyway due to my lazyness.
Here are the chassis parts of correct length next to the kit parts. Having these done I connected them by using the reworked kit fuel tank. Besides of that I used all the kit parts reworked for the longer frame. Even the springs were usable with a little extra work. Only the front axle needs a bit more time, because the Prince Henry, as a sports car, is lowered.
Here's the reworked chassis from the underside next to the kit's chassis. The exhaust is still missing, I don't like the kit part.
As I wanted to use the kit's wheels I removed the spokes which are much too thick. Luckily I had an etched spoked wheels set from Tom's modelworks that fit these wheels perfectly
Here's the chassis almoust finished, the wheels are loosely attached for the photo
The bodywork of the Airfix Prince Henry is too short of course and I intend not to use it at all. I am planning to vacuform a new bodywork over a balsa mould. If that shouldn't work, I still can get back to the kit parts here...
At the moment I really enjoy this fun project before the next large biplane build.
I hope you like it too!
Borsos
