Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Body painting started for F1-GTR long tail

More progress on this build. I've received Scalefinishes Gulf blue and orange paints. Painted body panels and wheels accordingly. Paints are base finishes and require clear coat for their final look. Also painted small items for dashboard and exhaust pipes. Decals were applied to steering wheel, dashboard, electrical boxes and small tank (air?). Beside painting I continued with assemblies. Worked on dashboard, pedals, small air tank and steering column. And assembled gearbox with drive shafts.







Small progress on MFH F1-GTR

A bit more progress. Worked on front suspension. Front section was permanently attached beforehand. I'm moving very slowly because each gluing operation takes 10 to 30 min. With all the pre-fitting testing and epoxy setting time, I cannot move any faster, unfortunately.


Tuesday, May 6, 2014

More progress on front section

Going forward with assemblies on front section of the model. Assembled and installed pedals. Assembled and installed items inside front crash structure. Attached fluid reservoirs to front firewall and attached front firewall to chassis. Installed steering column, gearshift cover and blank cover on the opposite side.




Monday, May 5, 2014

More progress on F1-GTR long tail

Little bit more progress on this build. Attached front sub-frame and assembled parts of front suspension. Also assembled engine parts. Engine looks great and is one of the highlights of this model, imho. Exhausts are in the opposite a bit of a let down. Spend over an hour fiddling with parts and trying to figure out a way to pre-assemble exhaust headers and middle parts and install them later. The one way I could see it could be done is if one installs engine, gearbox and rear cooling ducts at the same time. With all the glue that has to be added on that step, I certainly don't see myself been able to do that. So, plan for now is to go ahead according to instructions and have those ugly seems on exhausts. After all this is OOB build and I think I could live with those seems, no problem. May be I will build another Aoshima kit with modifications and corrected brakes later.



Assembly started for MFH F1-GTR

Lack of updates did not indicate abandonment of this project. Big step forward was taken 3 weeks ago when I put clear coat over body panels and all parts where CF decals were applied. I've been waiting for clear to dry and also distracted by work on Aoshima's long tail F1-GTR kit. At present all the parts of chassis for this kit are pretty much ready for assembly and I've started it last night. Not much to show, just attached rear firewall heat shield and rear fender panels. As assembly steps could be relatively small now, hopefully I will be able to spend more nights working on this model. Here are couple of photos to show that project is alive and well.



Saturday, May 3, 2014

Brush painting of details

Spent about 5 hours brush painting details. Not perfect, but will do for this model. Some items are separate and not too difficult to paint, but many details are molded on and not easy to pick out. I don't have detailed references for this car, so I've used Aoshima's instructions and my imagination to guide my choices of colours. This build is OOB and no modifications were done and no details added so far. I'm not so happy with detailing of brakes in this kit, but decided to leave them as is for this OOB build. Here are some photos before assembly starts.