1939 Mercedes W154-M163

[DRUMS01]

Looking in the GB's for an upcoming F1 build, I checked if there was ant interest for me showing my recent build of an early 70's Casado-Revival metal kit from Italy; and the answer was yes. I do not claim to be a world class professional, but rather a person with a hobby. Please keep that in mind when you read my build (thanks). The majority of the information below was copied from Wikipedia:

HISTORY / OVERVIEW: The Mercedes-Benz W154 was a Grand Prix racing car designed by Rudolf Uhlenhaut. The W154 competed in the 1938 and 1939 Grand Prix seasons and was used by Rudolf Caracciola to win the 1938 European Championship. The W154 was created as a result of a rule change by the sports governing body AIACR, which limited supercharged engine capacities to 3000cc. Mercedes' previous car, the supercharged 5700cc W125, was therefore ineligible. The company decided that a new car based on the chassis of the W125 and designed to comply with the new regulations would be preferable to modifying the existing car. Although using the same chassis design as the 1938 car, a different body was used for the 1939 season and the M154 engine used during 1938 was replaced by the M163. As a result of the new engine, the 1939 car is often mistakenly referred to as a Mercedes-Benz W163.

CONCEPT: For the 1938 season, Grand Prix racing's governing body AIACR moved from a formula limited by weight to one by engine capacity. The new regulations allowed a maximum capacity of 3000cc with a supercharger or 4500cc without. This meant Mercedes-Benz's previous car, the supercharged 5700cc W125, was ineligible to continue. Its new car was based on the W125 chassis, with a supercharged 3000cc engine determined after both types had been tested.

CHASSIS and SUSPENSION: The chassis was largely based on that of the preceding W125.[3] The frame was constructed using oval tubes made of nickel-chrome molybdenum to provide stiffness. The suspension was also near identical to the W125. The rear consisted of a De Dion tube, designed to keep the rear wheels parallel using a solid tubular beam. It also had hydraulic rear dampers, adjustable from within the cockpit during a race. The bodywork of the W125 was aluminium, left unpainted like its predecessors, making it another of Mercedes' famed Silver Arrows.

ENGINE and TRANSMISSION: The new M154 engine was a 3000cc (2,961.54 cc, 67.0 x 70.0 mm) supercharged V12, attaining an output between 425-474 horse power. In 1939, the 2-stage supercharged version recorded a test bed power of 476 BHP (483 PS) at 7,800 rpm. To compensate for the smaller engine compared to the W125, the W154 had an extra gear with a 5-speed manual transmission. The first gear was protected by a latch to avoid being engaged accidentally.

RACING HISTORY:

A) The W154 made its debut in the opening race of the 1938 season, the non-championship Pau Grand Prix in April. Cars were entered for both Rudolph Caracciola and Hermann Lang. Lang crashed during practice and the team withdrew his car. René Dreyfus took pole position in a Delahaye, but Caracciola was second and managed to beat Dreyfus away from the line at the start of the race. Despite leading, Caracciola was suffering from an old leg injury, and when he pitted for fuel he handed the car over to Lang. Dreyfus took the lead and would not need to pit as his car's lower fuel consumption meant he could complete the race non-stop. Lang's car developed a spark plug problem and finished the race in second place.

B) The car's next outing at Tripoli, again a non-championship race, was much more successful. The three cars that were entered for Lang, von Brauchitsch and Caracciola qualified first, second and third respectively. The gap from Caracciola to fourth placed Clemente Biondetti was over three seconds.

C) The first race of the European Championship was the French Grand Prix, held at the Reims-Gueux circuit. Three cars were entered, for Caracciola, von Brauchitsch and Lang. A poor turnout meant that there were only nine competitors. Team manager Alfred Neubauer offered to enter a fourth W154 for Richard Seaman, but the organisers insisted on a maximum of three cars per team. Lang took pole position, with von Brauchitsch second and Caracciola third, ahead of the two Auto Unions of Christian Kautz and Rudolf Hasse. The Mercedes-Benz cars led from the start. After two laps, four cars had retired, leaving only the Mercedes-Benz and Talbot cars in the race, the Talbots already a minute behind. Lang had difficulties in a pit-stop and Caracciola's engine started firing on only eleven of its twelve cylinders. This left von Brauchitsch to claim victory ahead of Caracciola and Lang.

D) Three weeks after the French Grand Prix came the second race of the European Championship, the German Grand Prix. Four W154s were entered and they took the first four positions on the starting grid; von Brauchitsch took pole position from Lang, Seaman and Caracciola. At the start, Lang took the lead but on lap three his car's spark plugs oiled up and he had to make an emergency pit stop. Shortly afterwards, team manager Alfred Neubauer brought Lang into the pits so that Walter Bäumer, a reserve driver for Mercedes-Benz, could take over. Lang's mechanical problems allowed von Brauchitsch to take the lead. Meanwhile, Caracciola had been struggling with abdominal pain and stopped on lap ten to allow Lang to take over his car. Von Brauchitsch came in for his second pit stop on lap sixteen, followed by Seaman in second position. During von Brauchitsch's pit stop, a mechanic spilt fuel over the car which was then ignited by a spark from the car's exhaust pipe. This allowed Seaman to exit the pits in the lead of the race. When his car's fire had been extinguished, von Brauchitsch also left the pits, only to crash his car later during the lap. Seaman continued on to win the race, followed by Lang in Caracciola's car. Lang's car, being driven by Bäumer, retired from the race with engine problems.

E) Following the French Grand Prix, Mercedes-Benz travelled to Italy to contest two non-championship races - the Coppa Ciano at Montenero and the Coppa Acerbo at Pescara. For the Coppa Ciano, Caracciola was entered in an experimental car with a larger saddle tank and a shorter tail section. Pole position went to Carlo Felice Trossi in a Maserati 8CTF, but he retired on lap eight with engine troubles. Caracciola retired due to a punctured fuel tank, leaving von Brauchitsch to win from Lang. After the race, von Brauchitsch was disqualified for receiving outside assistance, which left Lang as the winner. At the Coppa Acerbo, Mercedes-Benz failed to win the pole position for the second race in a row; Tazio Nuvolari took pole position for Auto Union. In the race, Nuvolari retired when his differential broke, leaving Caracciola to win. The two other W154s of von Brauchitsch and Lang retired with engine problems. Lang's car caught fire after a conrod severed the fuel pipe to his car's engine; the fire burnt away all of the aluminium bodywork.

F) In its history, the silver arrow's W154 finished 1st 12 times; second 11 times, and 3rd 10 times. During the European Championship, Non-Championship, and Hill Climb.

My car is modeled after the car driven by Otto Wilhelm Rudolf Caracciola. He was a racing driver from Remagen, Germany. He won the European Drivers' Championship, the pre-1950 equivalent of the modern Formula One World Championship, an unsurpassed three times. He also won the European Hillclimbing Championship three times – twice in sports cars, and once in Grand Prix cars. Caracciola raced for Mercedes-Benz during their original dominating Silver Arrows period, named after the silver colour of the cars, and set speed records for the firm. He was affectionately dubbed Caratsch by the German public, and was known by the title of Regenmeister, or "Rainmaster", for his prowess in wet conditions. Racing for Mercedes-Benz, he won his first two Hillclimbing Championships in 1930 and 1931, and moved to Alfa Romeo for 1932, where he won the Hillclimbing Championship for the third time. He returned to the newly reformed Mercedes-Benz racing team in 1934, with whom he won three European Championships, in 1935, 1937 and 1938. He is remembered as one of the greatest pre-1939 Grand Prix drivers, a perfectionist who excelled in all conditions. His record of six German Grand Prix wins remains unbeaten.

And now the model kit; First, everyone should know that there are two version of the kit a) the plastic body kit with plastic wheels piled in one plastic bag in a box. The other version that I am modeling is higher end and has a pre-painted metal body, real metal wire wheels, and 3/4 of everything in the kit is cast metal, making it a very heavy model when completed. The preimum 1/20 Revival kit is packaged well. The body however was not properly prepared prior to paint and contained lumps, distortions, mold lines, and a large amount of grit in the finish:





The kit instructions are not what you would expect from a $100.00 kit, but rather nothing more than an exploded view of the assembly and in no specific order. For those who have built a Revival kit before, this is no surprise; but beware that it is not a beginners kit. In addition, there are no color references for the parts or assemblies, but there are a couple photos of completed sub-assemblies on the paper. This means some research will be needed to make it even close to authentic for detail painting. Here is a view of the chassis instructions:



Other than the rubber and little plastic you see here, everything else is made of metal (cast, brass, etc.). The small bags are individual sealed screws and such). I will get into the dry rot of the rubber tires in a later segment:



Because the parts are cast there is a lot of clean-up needed for the flashing and mold lines. Being metal that means you need to have your files, dremel, sanding, and polishing tools at the ready. Here are a couple photos of the raw and cleaned parts:





More to come in the next update.... till then your comments are welcome.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Sweet!!!!


My kit has the wire wheels and metal body too...the wheels are an absolute masterpiece

[DRUMS01]

Continuing on the completed build... I started on the engine and trans axle which are both all solid metal. As with everything else, there was some filing to do for flash and to true the edges. My apologies with the lack of photos on this assembly as my wife accidentally deleted them. Here is a photo of the completed engine with the instructions. The color picture is from the web. In the front of the engine are two superchargers and a massive throttle body:



This photo shows the completed and slightly weathered trans axle while behind it to the right are the cleaned-up but unprimed chassis rails:



The chassis is basically the two main rails and five cross members as well as the rear trans axle assembly. This photo shows the chassis partially assembled less the front suspension cross brace and the control brace for the foot pedals. The plastic pieces behind the engine are the central fuel tank and the integrated rear tank and drivers seat. The rear axle top links, shown beside the chassis, have been seen in real photos both solid (like shown) and with holes drilled to save weight (like in the web photo in the previous update).



The kit radiator was nothing more than two halves with some screen (completely see through). I decided to use some ribbed plastic to make an inner core and sandwich it between the halves; here is the painted results:





More updates next time...

[Panzergrau]

Beautiful!

Just beautiful. I keep wondering for years why no styrene manufacturer does the Silver Arrow series? Superb cars and a lot of interest behind them. The only notable exception is Tamiya's SL300, which I'm buying with my next order.
I'm all eyes on this thread. Not a big fan of metallic kits (the price is also repugnant) but a huge fan of Mercedes Wxxx series.

Cheers!
Gabriel

[DRUMS01]

Problems continued with the chassis build. One of the two lower training arms for the rear axle was missing as was both chassis mounts; a lower A-Arm and mounting block from the front suspension was missing too. I recreated the rear suspension chassis mounts from steel rod along with some spare parts from my stash. I then ended up replacing both lower trailing arms with aluminum rod and some metal jewelry bead ends. The front was a bit tougher; the kit strangely had an extra upper A-Arm which is different than the lowers, but with a file and extruded stock, I modified it for use. The front wheel hub mounts to the upper and lower A-Arm's with two very small pins. Upon closer inspection two of the four A-Arms ends where the pins push through were missing / broken. After more modifications and drilling, I was able to fix the front into a static position (it looked as though it was suppose to be a working suspension). Now came the tie-rod issue, ... it was too short and cause the front wheels to sit in a reverse plow position when straight. I cut the cast part and added a brass collet form them to slip into which allowed me to adjust them to an acceptable allignment. Then there was the upper radiator mounts which were severely bent and could not be recovered. I researched the actual car photos to see that they were not accurate anyway. I ended up replicating the upper radiator rods from stiff guitar strings steel. In the process it allowed the front end to sit properly in the nose and lower body.

Stepping back for a minute I forgot to mention that one of the tires came mounted on the rim. When trying to mount the other three tires over the huge metal inner-liner that is part of the wheel each of the remaining tires ripped / torn because of dry rot. One was shredded into four pieces, another torn in half and the other with various sidewall tears. Beside myself, I sent an e-mail to the address I had for Revival (in Italy) but did not get a response. I looked on the web but could not find anything accurate or in scale to replace them. So I thought I would try to reassemble the rubber on the inner-liner, nothing to loose, right?. I ended up cutting them in half down the center line of the tread and sandwiched them around the wheel liner. After some time weeping and yelling, I was able to super glue them together while aligning the tread pattern and various tears as best as I could. The final step was to fill the imperfections and then sand the sidewalls and tread profiles down then add a coating of flat black acrylic. If you look real close you can see a little part of the tire seams in the photos.

After that the remainder of the chassis was ready for priming and paint. Once it was painted in various shades of gray I added the engine, firewall, and other details. The tank straps are done with bare metal foil and the exhaust weathering was done by a dirty wash and then dry brushing with rust, copper, jet exhaust. The copper lines on the chassis are nothing more than raised detail that received a coat of dirty wash and then detailed with a copper permanent marker:







I should state that I have built a few other 1/20 Revival builds and loved them (had little or no problem). This kit was beating me into submission and most of the enjoyment was gone. I just wanted to finish it and show that it would not beat me. In the end, I was able to turn my frustration into a time to learn new things, stay the course, and adapt. Believe it or not, I am happy to salvage the results you see and will share the final build-up in the next installment.

v/r,

Ben

[Panzergrau]

Looking good, Ben! I agree with you that is much to learn from faulty kits, but also frustrating experience.
You managed well to overcome the kit's challenges so far. Well done!
Gabriel

[Twokidsnosleep]

What other Revivals have you done?? The older full metal kits were supposedly better
Some very cool early Ferrari racers were produced. I don’t suppose you have any old Pochers???
Three in the stash awaiting my retirement in 10 yrs or so

This was my Bugatti build....Warning long thread
viewtopic.php?f=465&t=16315

[DRUMS01]

Gabriel, thanks for the kind words. I always try to find the positive in things.

Scott, This kit is one of the early 70's 1st generation kits, and I was hoping for less drama then has happened too. So far I have built the Ferrari 1953 Ferrari 500 (plastic version), and the 1956 Ferrari D50 F1 Champion (metal). I also have the 1936/37 Auto Union dual rear wheel car (metal) still on the bench to build. Looking at your work on the Bugatti, all I can saying WOW! That was epic and with some great scratch building work to boot! Did you ever find a driver that you could modify for the car? Here is a highly modified driver I added to another Ferrari (he is steering and shifting). He came from a 1/25 scale Airfix WW2 fighter kit (a Stuka I believe). Perhaps something like that would work with modifications?



Some day I would like to get the following other Revival cars:
1961 Ferrari 156 Champion Shark-nose car
1951 Alfa Romero 159 car
1932 Alfa P3 dual wheel car
1958 Ferrari 246 Champion car
1964 Ferrari 158

Sorry but no Pochers, to big and time consuming for me (nowhere to put them when done). Here is a quick photo of the 1/20 Revival D50. Other than brake lines, fuel systems, and plug wires, it was mostly OOB.

[DRUMS01]

Well here is the last update on the Mercedes:

The body was stripped with carburetor cleaner and washed. Once bare metal, I noticed that some of the grit was in the metal and not just the paint. There was also bumps in the casting that looked like blisters. Once they were removed I smoothed the remaining imperfections with putty. It was primed with Tamiya Gray primer and the parts were then painted three coats of German Silver. The opening in the nose was painted Testors French Blue with a brush.

Prior to assembly I was hoping to make the body removable so the chassis details could be clearly seen. The body is made up of 6 pieces: the belly pan, rear main body section, engine bonnet, nose, and the right/left sides (by the engine). The rear bulkhead is plastic and makes up of the rear fuel tank and seat structure. They fit underneath the main body but did not have any alignment or guide slots. In order to make the seams flush and proper, I chose to glue them to the upper body which required some modification to the lower portion of the seat in order to fit around the floor controls. Those modifications meant I had to also modify the black rubber seat material. That was OK because it did not like laying properly without the changes. Looking at numerous period photos of the 12 car I saw the seat material in both black and tan, I chose black.

The center fuel tank mounted beneath the main body, in front of the driver and behind the firewall, by a single locator pin and glue. The center tank also acted as the structural support for the steering wheel. The front and rear fuel tanks were connected with a metal springs to replicate metal flex hose. Because of the design of these parts, I chose to permanently fix the body to the chassis. Now you can only see the chassis detail by very close inspection with a light, but it is there if you look.

The lower pan and main body alligned to the chassis very easy to my surprise and were attached together with numerous jewelers screws. The nose also mounted easy with some locator tabs and a couple screws. The side body panels were a different story. They had tabs on the lower area to align them with the belly pan. The problem was the tabs were too thick and had to be thinned to eliminate the body gap by the hood. They were also to long and needed the ends to be squared and adjusted to the nose and main body by the proper length. Last, they needed the exhaust holes to be shaped better to allow them to go through. Once properly aligned, I screwed the side panels to the belly pan and super glued them to the nose and main body. The engine bonnet aligned with the nose and main body, but would not lay properly because it hit the engine. I used my dremel to thin the metal beneath the bonnet but it still made contact before laying flush with the body. I ended up removing the two metal pieces in line on the radiator hoses and the hood finally fell into place. I may rework those hoses in the future, but they are what they are for now. A detail I added was the throttle linkage which can be seen in the last photo on the right side between the cam cover and body panel.

The kit decals were also dry rot and could not be salvaged. I located some proper numbers and german car badging (decals) on-line. Once they were applied I sealed them with clear acrylic. The clear plastic for the window glass was also missing from the kit but was easy to make with acetate. The louvers were shaded with a thin black permanent marker. Here it is, I am calling it D-O-N-E:













Several peers told me that this was the worst Revival kit to assemble and that it was not the same caliber of the others, I have to agree. With that said, if you want a silver bullet model, this still is the best out there for now. Patience and fortitude will get you through, but this is not a beginners kit. That is it, happy modeling and have fun!....... your comments are welcome.

[Twokidsnosleep]

Lovely work mate, really lovely...that Ferraris wow
Never did find a driver for the Bugatti, will keep my eyes open for one

[Panzergrau]

It looks stunning! I might be biased towards Mercedes but I cannot help . And If I just ordered the SL300 Gullwing it's partially your fault!
Good build and thanks for sharing!
Cheers!
Gabriel

[DRUMS01]

Thanks Scott...

Thanks Gabriel...