Tamiya Lotus 79 1979 WIP

Painted bunch of parts in black, Alclad2 PA, steel and aluminuim. Finish is not perfect in places. But I'm not going to sweat about it, as this is OOB build just to satisfy my hunger for Lotus 79 build and simple OOB. Model should still look nice from foot or 2 away.

Tamiya Lotus 79 1979 WIP

Primed most of the parts with gray primer. For body parts it's only internal side which is primed with gray, because it'll be painted black later. For external side, I will apply white primer next, before TS9. So body color is less affected by base primer layer. There were lots of parts to prime in one session. But at last I can start applying final layers of black and Alclad paint to suspension and engine parts. I'm glad I mainly passed that dreaded putty/sand cycle. Work from this point will be much more fun.

Tamiya Lotus 79 1979 WIP

Work continues on Lotus 79. Simple operation of washing parts and mounting them for painting took me between 5 and 6 hours. I like to apply decals and when kit falls together well, like Tamiya kits do. But operations in the meddle - putting, priming, painting, aren't that much fun to me. At least for this build after I paint all the prepared already parts, most of the painting work will be out of my way. And I will be able to go straight to assembly and decal application. Rest of the parts are small detailing parts and will require much less effort for preparation and painting.



PS: Sorry for the messy picture, but I kind of like to work in that well organized chaos ;)

Tamiya Lotus 79 1979 WIP

I've decided to keep WIP in my blog and not to post into f1m.com forum. There are probably hundreds of Lotus 79 build going on by other modelers. Mine is nothing special. So, here we go with first updates.

After removing parts from trees and sanding seam lines off. I've glued together parts, which need to be pre-assembled before primer and painting. I've decided to assemble monococque parts before painting, so I could putty some extra seams, which would be visible otherwise. Assembled main body panels, engine and gearbox. All need seams to be puttied before painting. Tamiya DFV engine shows it's age. It also looks like injection molds are getting old. Some flush plastic and resulted parts aren't as clear as rest of the parts from new molds. Now I can understand why Hasegawa DFV engine could be a better choice. I started to wonder if engine block from Hasegawa could adopted for Tamiya kits.



Next is preparation work. Hectic, but needed to get good looking model at the end. Used white putty on body parts, because I plan to prime it with white primer, so main color is less affected by primer layer. Rest of the parts could do with gray primer. Most of them will either have black base applied before Alclad paints or Alclad paints would be applied directly over primer. Only few Alclad paints actually need gloss black base - Polished Aluminium, Steel and Chrome. Other shades go fine over gray primer base.

Tamiya Lotus 79 1979 WIP

With all the work, troubles and issues with builds of multimedia kits I've decided I have to have one Tamiya OOB build going in parallel to keep me sane. I need a kit which just falls together by itself, like most Tamiya kits do and will only require painting from me. No modifications, no detailing, no troubles. And I always wanted to start Lotus 79 build. Super detailed build of 1978 French GP car is postponed for now until I develop skills and desire to do super detailing. That's just a mock up on the picture, of course. I love the shape of this car. I plan to put layer of white primer on and then paint it with TS9. I've sanded parts a lits to give primer surface to bite better.

MP4/22 rescue build

I've finally secured new set of decals and restarted work on MP4/22's body. Paint and faltered decals were stripped with 99% medical alcohol. Some of metal and PE parts were re-glued back in place. Fixed position and angle of "viking's horns" while at it. Doing putting all over again and preparing body for primer.