Monday, October 31, 2016

Tyrell P-34 Final Shot

I made a small base, to represent the start line, for the car out of 5mm foam board. I think that it sets the whole thing off nicely.



You can click on the image to see a bigger version

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Tyrell P-34 finally finished

In August 2015, I posted a blog entry about the Fujimi Tyrell P-34 that I was building. You can follow the story HERE. I was not very keen on painting the body so I put the model away until I felt better about it. Well, that time has come.

I got it out of the box and tidied up the chassis. Then came the body. Well, I knew that I shouldn't have started. It went like this

  • Decided that the body covered all of the great stuff I had done so I would show the car with the body removed
  • Sprayed the body and the nose with AK Interactive Polymer Acrylic White Primer - great stuff.
  • Masked off the top of the body as this was to be white anyway
  • Sprayed the rest and the nose with Zero Paints Tyrell Blue
  • Took the primer off - usual mess of a line
  • Tried to clean it up - made it worse
  • Masked off the white (mostly) to respray the blue
  • Over sprayed the blue onto the white
  • Masked the blue and sprayed the white
  • Over sprayed the white onto the blue
  • Gave up and got out an Andrea blue (from their Shades of Blue set) and hand painted the body.
  • One coat of Johnson's Klear prior to decalling
  • Applied the decals
  • Microsol interacted with Klear and had some white patches
  • Retouched blue
  • 5 coats of Klear sprayed - useless
  • Tried Xtracrylix Gloss - useless
  • Three coats of Vallejo Air Gloss Varnish - job done
I then spent some time going through finding all the little bits that I had missed off, including some tiny decals.

Well, it is now finished. I am not happy with the body but I am very happy with the chassis. 

Warning: When fitting the dash, I broke off the steering wheel. I re-attached it but in some of the photos it has slipped a little. It is fixed in the last image!








I can't say that I enjoyed this build. The chassis is very complex with lots of small parts that broke very easily and the body was a right bother to paint. One sidepod wouldn't go in properly and the nose and bodywork are supposed to fit on pegs on the chassis so I had to fill them, which didn't go very well, either!

I used to have the 1/12 Tamiya kit but it got damaged in the garage of my old house so I had to throw it away. I would like to have another go at that if I can find one (and afford it).



Wednesday, October 26, 2016

What a mess! A sad episode with a Tamiya Mini-Cooper but success with a Tyrell P34

Rather than get a new kit out after making the BMW CSi, I thought that I might resurrect a model that I was working on last year and put away. This is my Tamiya racing Mini-Cooper, which I am doing in Cooper Car Company colours as I saw them racing at Crystal Palace.

I put this away because it was one of the first times that I had used Zero paints (British Racing Green - BRG) and I made a complete mess so that it ended up with a very bubbly finish. I got it out and had a severe go at sanding down the paint and then polishing the plastic before priming the body again and giving it a new coat of BRG. That went on well so I got back to work on the chassis. After some serious conversations on BritModeller about seat belts, I realised that the kit racing seat was from a later era. I managed to get it off and replace it with a standard seat. I then had an investigation into seat belts and finally decided that a set of grey belt that were anchored to the rear cross member would be the best and accurate option. I happen to have bought some seat belt material from Hiroboy so I was able to make a good representation. Then, disaster struck - but let's have some photos first.



I was not sure about the stripe along the side and the BMC badge but the instructions showed them so on they went. The problem came with the other side of the car. The number 1 of the racing number folded over and then the whole decal broke up. I managed to get the 2 back together but the 1 was shot. I thought that I could resurrect this by masking the number to the right dimensions and spraying it white. Wrong! I had been a bit clever first, because I gave the side of the car a coat of Johnson's Kleer to protect the decals that were already there. Wrong! The masking went ok but I got some bleed under the mask - and the masking tape pulled some of the side stripe off.

I went looking for sources as this stripe was bothering me. It turns out that these weren't on the car that I was trying to model so I had wasted my time messing around with them. I tried sanding the decals off gently but that failed so I now have to strip the body again and get hold of some racing numbers to re-decal the car. I might get away with leaving the bonnet but if I can't then I will have to get hold of some white decal sheet to replace the stripes. Anyway, this is what that side looks like.


Guess what. It is back in its box again! I will finish it.

I grabbed another box that has a partially complete model in it. This time it is a Fujimi Tyrell P34 6-wheeled Formula One car. I have the chassis of this complete but the body needs building. Having looked at how great the chassis looks, I don't think that I will fit the body as then all of the complex suspension, etc. will be out of view so I will mount the chassis and the body side by side.




I have given the body its first coat of primer.


More to come.




Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Can I list the faults in my BMW 635CSi Schnitzer Tamiya Model

It all started out so well. I enjoyed sorting out the seat belts and making all of the basics. But, somewhere along the line, I had to decal the body and paint the detail and that's where it has gone somewhat pear-shaped!

Here is the finished result. This is a Schnitzer BMW car that was decorated with decals showing what was beneath each panel.




I have purposely reduced the size of the images to cover up some of my mistakes. The basic decals went on fine. There were lots of them and they were very fiddly. Plus, in spite of being Tamiya decals, they were very fragile. I also made the mistake of fitting the middle decal the first to the side of the car. This meant that it was luck if I got it in the right position and, of course, I didn't so it was too near the front - not by much but that's all it takes. Hence the front decal was squashed in and the real one was too far forward. Never mind, if you don't know then you won't see. A Pirelli decalbroke up on the front spoiler and a Schnitzer decal broke up on the bonnet, plus I am still getting to grips with the wheel decals so these are a mess.

Enlargements of the original images show that the painting of the bumpers is less than good and there are scraps of the decal numbers (in red) on the boot lid. Oh, and I have just realised that I haven't fitted the real spoiler!

Still,to see most of this you need a 7mb photo file. It went together well,as all Tamiya kits do and it will look good on my shelf. I have the same kit but in Jaegermeister orange to do so the pair will look superb.