Riley & Scott Mk 3 by Top Slot but in Fina colours
by Mark Gussin
What is a Riley and Scott? Yes, that's what
I thought. Whatever happened to names like the Firebreather Special or
Windbreaker Special! Then I noticed in the motor racing magazines that
Riley and Scott 
were
gaining some success in the ISRS championship. American enthusiasts wondered
when a manufacturer was going to produce a 1:32nd slot car and finally
Top Slot did. The quality of the Top Slot offering is superb but I really
took the bait when I found out that the company I work for sponsored a
car in 1998. This became the challenge as I wanted to do a car up in the
Fina livery.
The body fits well onto a Fly Joest Porsche chassis, a little modification is necessary to the back part of the chassis. I chose to leave the rear wing support alone cutting back the plastic either side to the engine/suspension detail.. I use brass collects for the screw fixings as the posts are fairly thin. There is one major change between the Top Slot kit car and the one I wanted to model. That is a large NACA duct on the near side of the car. Brave stuff cutting a big hole in the side of the new body and then forming the duct with plasticard but it wasn't difficult to do. Duct completed it was time to paint.
The whole lot was painted white and left to
dry for a few days (I often do a number of projects at the same time for
this reason!). With the paint nice and hard the masking commenced. 
I
have used bare metal foil as a mask in the past but it is very difficult
to handle; this time I used Tamiya's own masking tape which proved to
be excellent. I had to use the airbrush for the first time in ten years
to get the graduated effect on the sides and the top but it worked really
well. The blue spray on either side of the cockpit was feathered back
using T-cut. So on with the decals.
The big logo was copied onto decal film using
a colour copier, the numbers were made using photographs of the real car's
numbers, photocopied, reduced and copied onto decal film. The sponsorship
writing above the headlamps was generated in "word" and then printed onto
decal film. Sounds easy but took ages. Once all the decals were very dry
the whole body was given a couple of clear coats and polished up. The
driver was detailed up and that included a Fina logo across his chest!
Rear mirrors 
were
made from scrap plastic mounted on pins. The job was done. I hope you
appreciate the result.
The real racing car photos were all supplied by Fina and acknowledgement and copyright of these goes to "Agence Dppi".
