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Dick Johnson Ford Sierra Cosworth

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wixwacing
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Posts: 1871
Joined: Thu Jul 10, 2008 9:22 am

Dick Johnson Ford Sierra Cosworth

Post by wixwacing »

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I have to openly admit I have a week spot for these cars. When they were first released for public purchase in 1982 they were to supersede the Cortina and Taunus and just about anyone you spoke to said Ford had made a seriously bad mistake! The new aerodynamic shape was too much of a leap from the conventional. Sales fell way below their expected targets and it was only by virtually giving them away as ‘Fleet’ cars that kept them just above high tide. The Sierras were not nice. Their outward appearance was too radical for those days and inside was a mish mash of old and new technology. Old engines, and new suspension also dogged their progress. The Sierra was still a rear wheel drive car and almost all the rest of the world had gone front wheel drive. The faithful still rallied round but this was not a happy time for Ford Europe.

It took some severe catch up and alterations to the first Sierras before the conservative car buying public would buy it in quantity. In 1987 Ford resized the glasswork and tidied up the front end appearance and started a general tidy up campaign but the writing was on the wall and in an endeavour to make up sales lost to Japanese manufacturers, in 1993 the Mondeo was released.
Incarnations included a pick up version built in South Africa and in 1987 a Saloon/sedan version was eventually produced. Then the RS500’s would be developed.



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The Sierra was built at several places around the world but the bulk of the output was from Britain, Belgium and Germany. In North America they were sold as the Merkur and emphasis was on performance and competition. It seems strange that the sierra was an also ran in motorsport for several years before fame and fortune came its way whereas, the Mondeo was to be almost an overnight success and was readily adapted to the track.


Ford Merkur


The Sierra’s most famous incarnation was the Cosworth Turbo RS500. There were only five hundred of these made world wide and they left their mark on international motorsport. Here in Australia it must have seemed that the best of local cars were being abandoned for these foreign interlopers. Almost never before in modern times had there been so many foreigners on the grid. Many true blue famous names deserted their trusty homebuilt mounts in favour of these giant slayers. Peter Brock and Dick Johnson, being at the top of the gladiatorial ladder locally were to change camps too and go head to head with these cars. That is how much they influenced decisions of the track! Instead of racing more parochial equipment they decided in the name of motorsport that the worlds best was only the way to go...... while the rules allowed it!! It was inevitable that the rules would change and change they did; and the change swept all before it and Australian motorsport settled back into a comfortable ‘local’ challenge, driver AND car!!!



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It would be silly not to acknowledge the contribution the Sierras made to world motor sport and with their passing, a chapter closed and as the cars were relegated to special events and club racing and collections those to follow quickly assigned them to history.

At Dick Johnson’s premises in Stapylton, South East Queensland, there is space for half a dozen or so historic motor cars. A couple of my favourites are away being currently restored. These are the Greens Tuf Falcon and the Palmer tube Mills ’85 Mustang. At the time of writing there is the True Blue Falcon, The Geoghan Mustang. The Channel Nine Z28 Camaro and a couple of more recent Supercar Falcons and unassumingly nestling between them is the Sierra Cosworth, resplendent in its red and yellow Shell Ultra HI livery. Still carrying major and minor sponsor details.



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So it was inevitable that, after already doing the Mustang, I would need to give the Sierra a serious looking at! I already had the SCX McRae Sierra and was pleased with that model, both as a fairly faithful portrayal and also as a competitive model in its motor range both on plastic and non magnet board. Of course, it would take a little more body tuning for board track racing but that wouldn’t be a problem. The problem was to bring the McRae Sierra up to Johnson spec!!



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Firstly, the car was the wrong colour. Not a massive problem but with modern tampo techniques it was going to be hard to remove all the tampo. I tried immersing the model in various cocktails of solvents and paint removers to no avail and my final effort was a particularly strong mix of caustic soda. Far stronger than I have ever used before. It was a bit scary when the mixture temperature went from tap cold to positively hot in a few minutes!! But still no tell tale signs or bubbles telling me the caustic was working? After a little while I called it off as it was obvious that even with wearing rubber gloves and scrubbing the body with a stiff brush, the tampo was going no where!! So, accepting defeat and knowing that a strong caustic solution would soon start eating into the plastic itself, I called the event off and decided to go for a full repaint leaving the tampo in place!!



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The body was rinsed thoroughly and dried and prepared for its first undercoat. I normally try and match the undercoat to the top coat. This ensures that when the top coat goes on, there are no transparent patches of a different shade peeping through. Getting the gloss on in one coat also ensures the thinnest paint covering possible too. A thin coat of paint is less likely to chip in a scrape. Unfortunately, the tampo showed through the flat red coat both in colour and in thickness!



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The blue and black bands on the roof appeared as dark shades under the red and the tampo had depth, which caused a step in the paintwork half way along the roof where the tampo finished!!! Mmmmmmmm?? Not good, so I stripped the red undercoat off and repainted the model in flat grey, this is the most opaque of the acrylic range, and after letting it dry for a day or so, I rubbed back the paint to a flat finish where the tampo was. This inevitably rubbed through but a second dusting of flat grey saw the tampo eventually covered and flattened.

Next was the flat red coat. The grey would show through the gloss red causing me to put several coats on so I went straight to the fix and applied a medium flat red coat. Left it to dry and after rubbing back with a piece of cotton sheet to remove minor blemishes, I gave the model its top coat of gloss red, Hallelujah!! Success!! A Sierra body with a nice even coat of gloss red all over. No tampo bleed, no steps in the paintwork...... Pheew!! Now I could get down to the more serious aspect, applying the decals!



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The decals sheet was another good set from Bruce Paterson. This sheet carries enough detail to do two full models plus a host of left overs to complete variations of the model at different periods in its history. The decals are prone to disintegration if they are soaked for too long, and sometimes if they are not. Patto advises coating them in a particular product, the life of which I can’t recall. All I do is to thin some clear finish and with the decal sheet laying flat, give it an even coat and leave to dry for a couple of days. This will make the decals more resistant to tearing when being handled off the sheet!

The model had its first coat of clear. This, like the decals, was a thin coat for no other reason than to keep the overall thickness of paint to a minimum for reasons of chipping in a crash. When the clear had been dry for a day or two, I armed myself with a luke warm dish of water. Some small sharp scissors. a sharp modelling knife, a piece of quarter dowel sharpened like a pencil, several cotton buds and a medium glass of local shiraz or merlot!! I then removed myself from the garage to the study with all these items where an exhaustive collection of ‘Dickie Johnson Sierra’ photos reside on my computer!

As mentioned in previous model ‘walk throughs’ In general I apply one side’s decals at a time. In this case, I applied the roof and bonnet decals first and then the left hand side. This was then left to dry for several hours to avoid damaging them when doing the other side. One extra decal not supplied on the sheet was the black plastic strip on the front and rear bumpers! Freehand paintbrush job? I think not!! Masking job, Uhh-uhh! Some deep thought took me back to a Ford police car I made out of a Scalextric Mk111 Escort a long while ago.


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I had bought some Letraset type rub on letters to create the word POLICE for the side decals of the escort. A search for the letter sheet showed it had a set of thin black lines as part of its content. The lines were transferred to some unused decal paper and given a mist over of clear acrylic. A couple of days down the road these were cut out and soaked.



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After twenty seconds, I dampened the area of the model which was to receive these lines and then using tweezers and a piece of pencil sharpened quarter dowel, I carefully slid the lines on to the bumpers. It took a steady hand to get them in place and straight but once happy, starting one end I carefully rolled a damp cotton bud (q-tip) along the line removing excess water.



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There was still plenty to do while the decals were drying, too! The Dick Johnson car has a couple of extra aerofoils. Both are at the rear. One is attached to the existing wing and the other sits atop the rear edge of the boot. Both are a polymer material and are finished in black. The SCX model has the large wing but not the small one. This I fashioned from some thick plastic card I have, and when happy with the shape it was painted and epoxied to the boot lid in much the same way I fix classic open topped sports car screens. Why didn’t I do it in the early pre paint stages?



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The truth is I wasn’t going to do it at all as this model was supposed to be a rendition of the instead of a replica! As it happens, it has fallen somewhere between the two and I decided that some of the more obvious detail would be noticed if left off!! So one bespoke spoiler was attached after the paint job!! The door mirrors were another conversion. The s protrude greatly and there was either the risk of loosing them in a deslot or running without them. Mmmmmmm? As the DJR mirrors are small circular mirrors attached to the doors my final decision was to cut them in half at a slope. Drill into the outer halves and insert some music wire. The door frames were drilled and the mirrors superglued in place. These had a coat of satin black when the doors were re-done.



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Another job to be done was the interior conversion. Was it to be lifelike or was it to be a token interior. Well, once again, somewhere between the two would be the end result. The dash was going to take a fair bit of work and the rest of the model was still calling out for modification and reworking. The dash was cut away from the drivers tray, trimmed and refitted to the right hand side,


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The rest of the dash complete with new hole had to be filled and sculptured in plastic filler. The whole was painted with flat grey and sanded several times to get a smooth finish and while all this was going on, I experimented with gauges by creating paint circles on some blank areas of decal paper and free handing some dials.




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The interior was painted red and so too was the roll cage. On the real thing, believe it or not, the car has the door trims. These contain the vital parts like the door handles and window regulators. Also, the dash is the grey vinyl piece! The steering wheel also has a grey grip to it so these things were painted flat grey to conform. The fire extinguisher in Dick’s car is yellow. I suppose it would be hazardous to have a red extinguisher in a red car!! Last detail for the tray was to paint the spare tyre red! The Rally version has the spare here but there is obviously no call for a circuit racer to carry a spare and by painting it red, it reduces the visual impact on the interior. A small finishing touch was to remove the left wiper blade and set the right one in the vertical position.



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Next up was Dicky himself. This was to be a bit trying but I battled on to get what I was looking for. Dick raced with an open face helmet much like other drivers of the day. The only helmet I could find with a semblance of a match was the Fly open faced helmet. The problem here was that the Fly helmet is open faced but the driver is wearing goggles!! What to do?? There are times when I regret some discissions I make when it comes to slotcars and this was nearly one. Why? I decided to carve a new face on the driver!! I have modified other parts of drivers over the years and felt a bit bullish after deciding to go ahead. I honed a pointed modeller’s knife blade to razor sharpness and proceeded to map out what was to go and what was to stay. Not only did the face need a rework, a new nose, eyes, mouthed etc. (Can I now call myself a plastic surgeon?), the goggles strap had to be removed from the helmet.



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I carefully reduced the goggles and facemask to realistic contours and once it was looking close I made some eyes and trimmed the cheek bones. The nose was still looking a bit Roman so that got remodelled. Too much off at this stage would be a catastrophe. The surfaces and seams were scraped with the edge and point of the blade and finally a coat of flesh pink was applied. This showed up any minor defects and these could be reworked and painted again. When I was happy with the head in general I decided to put the first layer of paint on. In between drying heads I worked on the body.



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This had a coat of flat red applied and eventually the bands around the chest and arms were created by painting over the red with matt yellow. This enabled me to get finer red stripes without using a three haired paint brush. The driver was left in this state through the rest of the fit out and didn’t have its second coat until the drivers tray went together. I did notice on a photo in a Bathurst book lent to me by a friend and fellow slotter that Dick raced this period mostly wearing sunglasses!! Had I seen this a fortnight earlier I could have incorporated them and saved myself a bit of heartache!!



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The body eventually had two more clear coats and the front screen which had the name visor decal fitted got a coat too. The light lenses and front grille had previously been painted and were now refitted to the front and the front light electronics were reinserted. The roll cage was superglued back on the driver’s tray and the tray was refitted to the body. The rear light lenses were refitted and the chassis offered up to finalise the fit. This model has the four pin floating engine pod and I had decided to maximise this feature and keep the chassis screws tight. The holes that the pod pins run in were tidied up with a small round file and elongated a little to improve float. The chassis was removed and the pins on the underside of the driver’s tray which limit the rear axle movement were trimmed by about one and a half millimetres. This allowed extended movement and still stopped the tyres from hitting the arches.



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Almost finally, the model was weighed and at 87 grams I decided to increase it by about eight grams which was added to the underside of the chassis on both outer edges. I made a couple of refinements to the model, both of which make the model a bit more drivable. One was the ‘Wixle” front end. This allows the wheels to rotate independently of each other reducing front end drag in corners while maintaining a rigid front axle to give a bit more stability in non magnet situations.


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The other mod was to shim the guide carrier. SCX guides are still notorious for side slop. I cut a small ring of plastic and fit it between the guide carrier and the chassis proper. Depending on its thickness, this reduces the side play to a minimum. A light application of Vaseline should also reduce its wear rate.

So the DJR Sierra is finished, Yeeeaaah! Pleased, Very much so. As mentioned earlier, this wasn’t meant to be a replica but a close likeness. The wheels that come with the model are eight spoked and the DJR Sierra is seven spoked. The real thing has a bit deeper air dam to the front and as this will go on the track and apart from the extra work involved I suspect it could have become a casualty early on in the piece. The one to one also doesn’t have driving lamps in the front bumper. These I left on as the headlights are blanked out, this will be the only source of light to the front. Important?? Patto supplied a superb set of decals as mentioned before but I noticed that the traditional flag and accompanying names were absent from the decal sheet. I contacted Bruce and he told me these were available as an item on another sheet!!! Reluctantly I have left these off as I feel that another $14.00 plus postage was not worth it for two tiny decals. Besides, I can possibly overcome this a little further on. The only other missing part is a huge exhaust that sticks out under the driver’s door. Possibly another early casualty on the track? Apart from that, to me, the model looks the bee’s knees! All other aspects are great.



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So this one will get a workout on the track too and will do it for real. No holding back. If it takes a few knocks then so be it. I’ve done it all once now so the next time should be easier. Perhaps I might just upgrade the last few points.


Many thanks to tose who contributed with photos and literature. It all helped greatly.
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When I'm not racing slotcars,
I'm out in the back yard, burning food!!

When I win, it's because of my talent, not my car or my controller!
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