Pete75

Hi Dave & welcome! You've come to the right place. Enjoy!

Fine work, sir! Great CF detailing ?

Beautiful work - very impressive ?

Excellent work, sir. Enjoyed going through your WIP thread so much I had to make an impulse purchase - at £14 it would be crazy not to! And I have the colour scheme all mapped out - I love it when a plan comes together...?

Howdy Mike - you'll like it here, I'm sure?

Hi guys. Been in full attack mode on this one. The bulk of my time has been spent on the shell: first wet sanding the clear coat, then polishing with Tamiya compounds. Annoyingly, because I didn't widen the panel lines during prep, a number of them were showing signs of the undercoat so I had to mask them off & brush in pinstripes of colour. (I will use panel wash later, but it doesn't disguise thin/worn edges.) Finally, I was able to do something not BLUE & got the window surrounds masked & sprayed. Next, some time consuming masking & brushwork on the front end. The light lenses are blacked out with lots of X-19 smoke. (They probably shouldn't be quite so dark, but I thought it looked badass!) It wasn't until it was too late that I noticed the (small) instruction to sand off the indicator bulbs on the corners. (This kit shares a body shell with that of the roadgoing GT-R which would have bigger front lenses covering everything.) After a few minutes of irritation, I discovered from my reference pics that other builders haven't bothered with this (including the example photo on the instructions!) & this area is commonly just painted black. I feel relaxed about it now! Quite pleased with the rear lights. I used the usual trick of running a black marker around the lenses & have now perfected a safe adhesion method using a brush & acrylic gloss varnish. The wheels were sprayed with Tamiya silver leaf, before brushing the tiny hex bolts with metallic grey & the centre nuts with gunmetal. The rims were finished with some dark grey wash around the edges. Tyre decals make me nervous, but I took my time & followed a useful YouTube tutorial. My best wheels yet, I reckon. With the exception of the seat & dashboard, everything is now sprayed up & ready for brushwork/gluing. (Then the decals, but I'm slightly dreading them & not allowing myself to think about them just yet!!)

Hi Matt. Yep, Fujimi ref 12627/RS-105. Seems to date from 2008, according to Scalemates ?

Nice work, sir! Trying to find a non-EM/curbside version of this at a reasonable price is proving tricky in a pandemic!!

Bueller... Bueller... Man, I love this! The colour is awesome, too. Looks nicer than the Revell ones I've seen, but then it's had the Dann treatment! I'd need an airbrush in order to do all that chrome justice, maybe one day!

Nice one, Atin! Cool paint job?

Cool subject & great detailing. Will be following.

Nice clean work! Not seen this kind of nanging bodywork assembly before - seems to fit together nicely. Cool magnet strategy! ?

Nice one! Cool kit - may have to make a purchase!?

More freaky skills! Hope you feel better soon, mate?

Thanks Dann. This makes me feel much better!!?

Thanks guys, appreciate it ?

Time to get serious about a kit I was given last year. The car was a big player in the Japanese Touring Car Championship in 1996, apparently. Not an area I know much about, but it's certainly an impressive (and very blue) beast, powered by a twin turbo, 2.5 litre straight 6, putting out 450bhp. I'd been putting it off a bit because it looks challenging, but after a few weeks of dabbling it's time to grab the bull by the horns. The first challenge encountered is that 1:1 reference photos are thin on the ground in English speaking search engines: I have a few (not great) pics, but I'll have to refer to other peoples models a fair bit. Anyway, here's one in the flesh: I started with the shell. The massive body kit on this thing renders the R33 almost unrecognisable, and needs a bit of gluing and a lot of paint! The primer went ok but I didn't do a great job of the colour (TS-44 brilliant blue), as the intended top coat wasn't "wet" enough, leaving it a bit rough. I ended up putting another coat over it & flatting it with sandpaper & polishing compound. In retrospect I might've done this the other way around, but it looks ok after the TS-13 clear coat & I'll repeat the flatting/polish before the decals go on. (The spoiler was an absolute pain and needed re-gluing twice, and goodness knows how much time to re-sand & touch up: I hate spoilers!) The last couple of sessions have been spent studying/organising & I feel like I'm properly on the case now. The chassis has been primered & the wheels stripped, and I'm starting to sort out the fiddly small bits. Gonna need to order some more TS-44 for the chassis: man, this thing really is BLUE...

Don't know anything much about DeTomasos, but I can see I've been missing out! Kind of like a Lamborghini Urraco/early Countach rear-ended a Ferrari 308! ? I definitely like the front skirt/body kit - makes it even meaner!

The missing sprue - which basically contains the running gear - has necessitated the purchase of a new kit: not the easiest, nor cheapest, replacement with the pandemic it seems! I eventually found one place in Hong Kong that had it in stock, so all I can do is keep my fingers crossed it gets here soonish. The extra kit means I'm going to forgo the brake fluid scrubbing & start a new body from scratch; and this time I'll be using white primer! Meantime, I've got most of the rest done: I have little idea what the underside of an S1 looks like as I could only dredge up a grainy reference pic of a dirty car that looked almost all black to start with! It seems the illustrators at Fujimi didn't have much more luck as the instructions only call for either black or silver! Oh well, I just did the best I could (not being terribly mechanical). I was annoyed with the masking template for the windscreen which turned out to be semi permeable: I got a misted tarnishing that almost seemed to be melted into the surface. (I decided to use a different spray for the rear partition glass & it seemed ok, so I dunno.) Although I'd already ordered the new kit, I went nuts for an hour with the polishing compound (in front of the TV) to see what I could do. I got 95% of it out, and I suppose I could redo it from scratch (not my favourite word at present) but I'm feeling windscreened-out & might just leave it at that. Time to recommence battle with a Nissan Skyline I was given for Christmas, so I've got something to show my sister by way of progress/gratitude! ?

Brilliant stuff. That intricate suspension work is a new one on me! ? Great choice of build: saw Gone In 60 Secs again the other day - forgot how good it is!

All good, thanks Dann. Got the body cleared & cured ready for a sand & polish. Not sure of the timeframe though as I'm wrestling with 2 other builds that have to take precedence. I did strip the MASSIVE wheels the other day - might do them next ?

Great job! Really like it ?

Took a while catching up with this one - just mind blowing!! ? I kept finding myself laughing because it's beyond anything I could imagine. Twice the normal size & twice the inspiration!

Thanks Sean. It'll certainly be slow; fingers crossed for nice! ?

Hey, thanks. Appreciate the support ?