Building the Bandai STP turbine Indy car 1/12 scale English

Cars

Building the Bandai STP turbine Indy car 1/12 scale

by Mark Laird © Modeler Site

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For years I wanted to build the 1/12 Bandai STP Turbine car. It is very unique piece of Indianapolis history, but the price that they were bringing was just more than I was willing to spend. I was lucky enough to find a complete kit on eBay for 200 US dollars. It was a “Buy it Now”, so I purchased it, and waited for it to arrive.

Editor note: Mark is an old Modelersite's reader and supporter. I discovered his amazing Bandai model at FB and he was so kind to share with us. I really want to thanks him for all their support and nice words he said to me.

The old Bandai kit

Upon its arrival, I opened it up and the first thing I noticed was that the instructions were in Japanese. I started going through the instructions and realized that although this is a big 1/12 scale kit, it lacked detail in many areas. It has no brake calipers, no rotors, no gas or brake pedal, the steering shaft went nowhere, very limited detail to the motor, no detail to the fuel pump, the fuel control unit, no fuel manifolds or external oil lines. It is an all-wheel drive car but has no drive shafts, no differential hookups, no u joints, and the only panel that was removable was the engine cover, so lots of detail work to bring this thing up to a decent 1/12 scale model. Lots of research pics to see what needs to be done, yet so few pics to be found for referencing due to it being over 50 years old.

I think that the chassis is the highlight of the car, it is very unique with the engine on one side and the driver on the other. The model when completed per the instructions would have the body placed over the chassis and the chassis would not be able to be seen. I wanted the chassis to be seen, and for the body to be able to be put on the car and removed.

Building

First things first, I decided I wasn’t going to open the bags until I could do the things to the car I wanted to do. I was lucky enough to have some old rotors from a 1/12 scale lotus 49 that had bought as a parts kit.