1/24 Lancia LC2 exhaust louvers

The Protar 1/24 Lancia LC2 that I'm building is a primitive kit, with many details that cry for improvement. The exhaust louvers also needed replacement parts.

Reference material

To be added.

3D CAD design

I had developed a method for designing louvers, so I could copy that for the exhuast louvers, and simply add a hole. The 'sheet metal' thickness may look excessive, but I don't want to risk too thin parts at this moment.

Here's the redesigned part, with doubled thickness (0.6 mm) but leaving the 'ends' of the louvers at 0.3 mm. Also, I chamfered the exhaust opening to 0.3 mm, to 'hide' the parts extra thickness. Hopefully this design will work better?

3D printed parts

Initial printing attempts failed miserably, and this was the best one! Shown here is an 0.3 mm thick design, that came out as 0.2 mm, with printing flaws: holes and warping. They would be near impossible to separate from the supports without snapping small chunks from the actual parts. That's why I learned later to add the support manually in the slicing software.

A much later print was near-perfect, and a great improvement over the kit part. I cannot wait to install it!

To be continued..

Notes

The Protar manual shows many more louvered panels inside the rear wheel bay, but I'll save these for later.

There are plenty of LC2 photos that show louver panels installed in the roofs of the venturi tunnels, at their extreme end. I think they are the same size and shape as the ones over the front wheels. However, I have yet to find a photo of the 1983 version with them, it looks like this was a 1984 update. Therefore I will not install them on my model.