Small parts painting for F1-GTR

One more long painting session. Mounted, primed and painted many small parts: brake calipers, steering rack and rods, engine accessory pipes, pedals and suspension parts. I don't have proper paint to represent bright gold/yellow colour of some suspension parts and shocks. I've experimented by spraying TS34 yellow as base and covering it over with Alclad transparent yellow. Ended up with orange/red like colour, which I don't think is correct. I've sprayed gearbox with Alclad Steel, as contrary to instructions, it seems to be the colour on real car. Exhaust pipes were sprayed with Alclad Stainless Steel. In my opinion it represents colour of unused exhaust pipes better. Now I need to come up with the way to make them look used. Some kind of weathering is needed, I'm just now sure which. On the photos there seem to be not to many parts, but because of many colours involved, constant air-brush cleaning and air tank re-filling, it took about 4 hours to complete. Here are couple of photos.

Started painting for F1-GTR

Started painting parts, which do not require any more preparation steps. Mostly painted semi-gloss black as base colour before Carbon Fiber decals can be applied. Some parts will stay SG black, because there is simply too much work to cover all parts which should be covered with CF decals. Painted engine and gearbox parts in Alclad aluminium. Also painted some suspension and brake parts with shades of gold and burnt metal. I still have more small parts to prime and paint. Body panel will have to be checked for surface imperfections, puttied and primer with white primer, before body colour paint could be applied.

Priming started for F1-GTR

Finally had a chance to start priming F1-GTR parts. Not much visual progress, but important step. For me priming usually signifies the end of part modifications and test assembly. There still be some filling and sanding done on body panels and some other parts, but many parts are ready for paining now. Semi-gloss black will be used the most as base for Carbon Fibre decals. And there is a lot of CF on this car. I've run out of Zero 2 part etching primer and will have to source some in local auto paints store. Hopefully they have some good quality 2 part etching primer available. Here are some short right from my paint booth while parts are still drying. Black'ish colour on chassis is just not steered properly primer. Rest of parts were sprayed later after I properly steered and mixed more primer.

First sub-assemblies for F1-GTR

More progress on this build. Had a pretty productive weekend. Ran magnetic tumbler last Friday for about 4 hours and got most of the parts cleaned. Only big parts remain to clean manually, because they wouldn't fit into tumbler. I've permanently assembled engine and gearbox parts, before painting. I was tempted to leave them as they came out of tumbler - shiny. But on real car engine is aluminium color and gearbox is steel color. So, will have to prime and paint these 2 sub-assemblies and other parts. After clean up number of imperfections appeared in metal parts. There are also imperfections in resin parts, I will have to fix. They cycle of priming/sanding/priming can take long time. So, it could be a while before next updates in this WIP appear.

F1-GTR's gearbox and rear suspension

Worked on gearbox and rear suspension parts last night. Almost finished. Test fitted most of it, but could not get parts, which connect gearbox to body to stay on for test fitting. So, I've done partial tests and I think it is good enough. Will probably have to do minor adjustments when I reach final assembly steps, but I don't imaging there would be any major issues. Going to start cleaning up parts in magnetic tumbler tonight.

F1-GTR's engine parts prepared

I had only few hours for modeling this weekend and spent them preparing engine parts. Started couple of parts from gearbox as well. It's all held up by gravity only, so I couldn't move it from my work table. Fit of parts is pretty good. MFH cleverly designed many pins and tabs to help align parts and held them together. Final assembly shouldn't be an issue. Not too many parts are left to prepare before all could go into tumbler for cleanup. But severe lack of modeling time slows progress down.

Some progress on P34

I've returned to this build after a while. My worst fears came true. Exhaust headers were huge P.I.T.A. They just didn't want to align properly. Big contrast to the exhaust from their recent Lotus 79 kit, which were easy to assemble and attach. I've spent an hour on left side and 2 more hours on right side headers. I've initially planned to putty seams, prime and then paint them. But I've changed my mind. I don't think it is worth my time to make them any better. I'm going to just shoot TS29 onto them and put them in place.

Also worked on radiators, rear suspension and details of rear firewall. Studio27 PE set includes front and rear faces for main radiators and oil radiator at the rear of the car. I've decided to skip faces for all the internal radiator surfaces, as they don't add much to appearance, if anything at all. I've only attached 2 external faces, which are visible from outside, as well as faces on rear oil radiator. Last, I've installed rear shock absorbers, rear of gearbox and attached pedals to floor.