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Thunderbolt*1988

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    Christian Refakis

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  1. Hello! I very much appreciate the bump and the interest in this project. Residency has been very time consuming and I have not had much opportunity to get to the workbench. However, I have been devoting a bunch of thought to the project behind the scenes. Lots of research and mentally planning out this project. I have resumed construction recently and will be posting new photos. I have been in touch with Paul Raterink over the months, too. Very nice guy. We spoke in December. He sent me a bunch of parts that I also plan to use; among which are his really nice anodized aluminum rims: I am completely re-doing the wheels I built above. I bought a second kit ($140) for new tires and to have a full complement of spare parts. Paul's rims fit the kit and his own brake set, but not the PP set. Thus, I have asked him to use his machining equipment to modify my rims for me so that they can fit with the perfect parts brake components (essentially I have asked him to machine as per the PP instructions above). In my research, I realized there were several versions of the 641: the vortex diffuser on the front wing was +/- Prost and Mansell had their own windscreens and headrest cushions, as is made obvious by the kit instructions The cowling had airscoops near the rear wheels that were +/-. The example at the MOMA has these. A few rear wing types were used (discussed later). The outboard camera wing was +/- I am planning on building the version of the Ferrari 641 that Alain Prost drove when he and Senna crashed at the 1990 Japanese Grand Prix. To model this car, three major modifications will be need to be made to the kit: 1. The rear wing will need to be modified [1] by making the side wings rectangular rather than trapezoidal and [2] adding a custom AGIP logo on the lower wing, as well as adding an extra wing to the overall assembly. I am in touch with Indcyals about the decal. 2. Air scoops on the upper cowling over the engine will need to be cut out on each side. 3. A camera pod on the starboard side will need to be scratch-built. Thanks
  2. Thank you all for your welcomes! Sorry for the delay, but I am actually an MD/surgeon in training and will be rolling this out slowly by subassembly. I'm calling the wheels done. WHEELS: The perfect parts set above is an excellent improvement on the wheels and brakes. Specifically for the wheels, a 4 mm hole needed to be drilled through the center axle, then countersunk from the medial aspect with a 6 mm drill to accommodate the brake disk. For this, I need to have a perfectly centered drill, so I went to my local high school and borrowed the drill press for an hour to get perfectly parallel drilling. I wet sanded the tires using 200 grit sandpaper until the mold seams were no longer apparent. Before and after, left vs. right. 6 mm countersink Here I have attached the tires to the rims and applied decals. The stencils were painted using Tamiya fine primer through a 1/12 Goodyear stencil I managed to scavenge on eBay. The tires have yet to be weathered in the above picture. Wheels as finalized. I elected to weather the tires by scraping some paint away with a #11 blade and sanding lightly with 1000-grit sandpaper. I then applied thin layer of Tamiya X-19 smoke to de-whiten the logos. My camera is acting up today. CR
  3. Hi all, I am new to the forum and would like to introduce myself. I'm C.A.R, 28 year old male, from New York, and have been building 1/32nd aircraft for years. I would like to share my first F1 model car build with you. While I normally wouldn't venture into building cars myself, my 27 year old brother is a huge F1 fan and recently requested that I build something for him. When he showed me the Ferrari 641 in 1/12th scale, I had to oblige. I found the car gorgeous and the engineering of the 1/12th scale Tamiya kit to be an excellent starting point for a super-detailed build of Alain Prost's 1990 car. The biggest challenge (and expense) associated with building this model was somehow obtaining the two Perfect Parts detail sets (1. full set & 2. brakes), which have long been discontinued for at least 10 years and are extremely rare (several sets have sold on eBay for $200-$500 dollars each). Despite this, I was lucky to get both from a seller in England for $275 total. Though I have no way of knowing this, I suspect I bought one of the last unused sets in the world. I knew I had to work extra hard on this kit to do those rare detail sets (and my brother's build) justice. Regarding detail sets, the only other detail set supplier is a from a guy named Paul Raterink who runs Thundervalley F1. He turns out some impressive work but hasn't responded to my many emails. I initially tried to buy his stuff; when he didn't respond, I went on a wild goose chase globally to find the Perfect Parts sets. It was dumb luck that I was able to get both sets at the price I got them. As good as the PP sets are, they have inaccuracies. Mainly, the velocity stacks are completely inaccurate, as are the brake discs. Both are accurate for the McLaren Mp4/6, the Ferrari 641's rival car and counterpart Tamiya release in the early 1990's. I researched the car by traveling to the MOMA's example in NYC (below) and taking my own pictures of the actual car. I also used Tamiya's Ferrari 641 detail book and numerous google images. I also looked at the builds of others to see which judgments they felt were accurate in either/or areas. I tried to find engine plumbing schematics for the Ferrari engine, but could not find anything. I will probably roll out pictures by subassembly: wheels, brakes, torsion bars, wings, monocoque, engine, etc. In the spirit of improvement and/or accuracy, I invite you to be as critical as you like when leaving comments. CR
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