A Porsche by Any Other Name
Le Mans MiniaturesDauer Porsche 962
By Kurt “El Secundo” Moser
In the early 1990’s the Porsche 962 had gotten long in the tooth, and its days as a Group C contender were done. Thanks to a loophole in the rules, the door opened for the 962 to return to Le Mans in the GT class. All it needed was an existing legal street version, and Dauer Racing stepped in to fill the gap. Now with a leather interior and capable of carrying luggage, the Dauer-modified Porsche 962 met the minimum requirements to go racing as a GT. Though it lacked the pace of the Group C cars at Le Mans, its larger fuel cell allowed under the GT rules meant that it could run longer without pitting, and those tricky fellows in Stuttgart stole the overall win at Le Mans with their lowly GT car. Le Mans Miniatures pays tribute to this bit of Le Mans history with its version of the1994 Dauer Porsche 962.
After tuning, the Dauer 062 ran neck and neck for an hour with a Slot.It Porsche GT1 98, certainly no mean feat. Stock, flat-spotted tires, stock slim can motor, and a hefty 107 grams of resin, plastic, and metal, versus the Slot.It Porsche with a 28-gram advantage, motored down and running with aftermarket tires, and somehow these two ran lap after lap to an hour-long dead heat on slippery Carrera track.
Before giving a false impression that the 962 is all sunshine and ice cream, remember that this is still a Le Mans Miniatures car, and when it comes to LMM, nothing comes easy. It took a good five hours of fiddling, so if you’re considering tuning this car, bring along an extra measure of patience. If you’re superstitious, rub a rabbit’s foot, put on a rally cap, throw some salt over your shoulder, knock on some wood, sacrifice a live chicken…do whatever you need to do. Hell, a stiff drink or two wouldn’t hurt, but get yourself into a ‘long haul’ mindset. Straight out of the box, this car wouldn’t travel more than six inches (no exaggeration) without popping out of the slot, and after 10 minutes of fooling around, it could consistently travel all of three feet before requiring marshal intervention. Yep, it was time for another LMM wrestling match.
Now, before we panic and run off to buy another Scalextric, we should take a moment to remind ourselves why we bought this LMM car in the first place – the outstanding detail. The bodywork is beautifully executed, with a lustrous yellow paint job, black canopy, and flawless clearcoat. The lovely young lady in the driver’s seat shows her details nicely, right down to her painted fingernails. Painted brake calipers, mounted on fixed hubs so they don’t rotate with the wheel, peek through the spokes of the wheels. For a road car, she has spectacular on-track presence, and it’s this presence that brings LMM fans back time and time again in spite of the numerous flaws in the chassis and running gear.
Fantastic and lovely, isn’t it? And with that out of the way, on to the crap! Let’s start with the guide – way too shallow, and braids that are way too stiff. With thick braids like this, it’s no surprise that the car just pops out of the slot. As an added bonus, the car was wired backwards, so the car travelled in reverse straight out of the box. This is easily rectified, so eight body screws later, we were looking at the guts of a Dauer 962. As we’ve come to expect with these resin beauties, even this simple task doesn’t happen without drama. After removing all these body screws, the car still wouldn’t open. With LMM’s notorious frailty, cracking the car open can be a nervous affair. When the chassis finally pulled away, the rear exhaust detail stumbled against the surrounding bodywork, and tore one piece off. Easy fix, and invisible when reassembled, so no worries there. So, why wouldn’t the chassis pull away from the body? It turns out that wet paint makes an excellent glue, and the wet paint on the car’s interior had glued the interior to the chassis. Once the paint seal is broken, separating the body and chassis should be an easy matter, right? Not so fast, mister! The motor leads have been routed up and over the interior, so you can’t separate the body and chassis until you have either pulled out the interior, or pulled the motor leads out of the guide. If your model has the lead wires soldered in, take out the interior. This model didn’t, so pulling the lead wires out of the guide proved to be the better option. It’s a roll of the dice with this company – sometimes the leads are soldered, sometimes they aren’t. If Le Mans Miniatures had a catchy slogan, it would be “Le Mans Miniatures: consistently inconsistent”.
Don’t panic, this is perfectly normal – normal for LMM, anyway. Now that the car is open, here are some other things you shouldn’t panic about:
1)The inline motor shaft isn’t even remotely pointed toward the rear axle. Don’t panic.
2)The front axle isn’t secured in any way by the chassis. Remain calm.
3)The front wheels bind horribly in the bodywork. Locate that stiff drink suggested earlier.
4)You spent over a hundred bucks on a car with plastic wheels. Drink that drink. Don’t stop until you see the bottom of the glass.
Honestly, as bad as it all sounds, it’s not all doom and gloom. The chassis and body were both surprisingly straight (a bit unusual for LMM), and there are a few things you can do to improve the car tremendously. First, get the thinnest sheet of styrene you can find. Cut two tabs the length of the guide flag. Glue them to the sides of the flag, making sure that they extend an eighth of an inch beyond the bottom of the guide flag. This leaves a nice gap down the center of the guide, which can be filled with 2-part epoxy. When the epoxy cures, trim and/or sand so it doesn’t bottom out in the slot. You will have a guide flag that sits properly in the slot without popping out at the slightest provocation.
The other critical item involves setting the front axle at the correct ride height. This needs to be perfect – there’s just no room for the front axle to flop around, or the front tires will bind on the bodywork. With no axle stops built into the chassis, a chassis-based solution would be problematic at best. Rather than mucking about with the chassis, you’ll be better off securing the front axle to the body. A piece of 7/32” styrene tubing can be placed over the axle, then fitted to the body. Once the wheels are in the correct location, secure the tubing with hot glue.
Wait, there are three more things you’ll want to do. First, in the pictures, do you see where the wet paint stuck to the chassis (picture above, upper right-hand corner)? This turns out to be very helpful, because it tells us where we should route the lead wires. By gluing the lead wires outside this yellow box, we keep the wires from getting pinched by the interior. Second, grind off the lower side of the interior’s forward edge. This gives the lead wires somewhere to sit so they don’t push upward on the body. Third, the back of the inner fender wells need to go. Grind them down a bit with a Dremel, so the wires won’t get pinched. Now the front end will sit properly when you button it all up again.
Fantastic, you’re done, and finally ready for the track. So just a little tire truing, apply a little pressure, and voila! Your wheels fall off. Glue them back on, quit yercryin’.
Once reassembled it was back to the track, where the Dauer 962 immediately raised some eyebrows with smooth acceleration, comfortable braking, and competent handling. Granted, the magnet remained snug in its magnet pocket aft of the motor. Even so, the drive on plastic may remind you more of the big boys, with more punch out of a corner than a Carrera, and with handling (and sound) similar to a Ninco with a mid-mounted magnet. While not the fastest magnet car we’ve ever seen, it was reasonably quick and quite fun – not nailed to the track, but solid enough to give the driver confidence. It was so nice, would a magnet-ectomy be in order?
Of course it was. So, the magnet came out, and the on-track battle with the Slot.It Porsche began. To be fair, the LMM’s lane was a tick or two faster than the GT1’s lane, but seeing any LMM car pacing a smooth-running Slot.It is a little unusual, for sure. When I finally got around to loosening the motor pod, the Dauer Porsche gained another 0.2 seconds per lap, and from that point on, the Slot.It would only see the 962’s taillights.
In reality, this model may have the least detail of all the LMM cars ever released. As such, it may be the best model for new LMM initiates. With relatively few parts to break off, with no tire decals to rub off, and with its simple road car paint job, it’s one of the easiest LMM cars to handle and modify. If you’ve ever considered taking a chance on this brand, here’s a great place to start. The techniques above aren’t particularly difficult, and when you’re done, you’ll have a unique car that you’ll be proud to own, and happy to drive.