Tamiya McLaren Senna

[harti20]

Hi all

As I still wasn't in the mood to continue work on my FXX-K, I'll start a new WIP. As stated in the title, I'll build the McLaren Senna. Additionally I will use the PE detail up set by Hobby Design and the carbon decal set by S.K. Decals.

I already know S.K.Decals from my Haribo-Mercedes, so I knew that the decals will stick to the part as soon as they touch and won't easily move afterwards. In fact I ruined the first decal I tried to apply  Happily the decal set offers to quite large areas of carbon fibre where one can cut out decals if something went wrong. Nevertheless I'm thinking about re-ordering the set to have some spare decals (just in case...). The part where I tried to apply the decal is the rear body panel which won't be easy to cover with decals anyway as it has a very narrow curve on each side. I didn't even manage to lay down a self made decal with some ScaleProduction stuff (which I usually like very much).

Then I assembled and painted one of the rear fenders. After the experience with the rear body panel I clear coated it (after that picture was taken), hoping the decals would be easier to move around.

Meanwhile the fender got some paint (which I will have to touch up later) and the first carbon decal. Additionally to the clear coating I added some drops of dish liquid to the water I soaked the decal in and have applied to the fender before hitting it with the decal. Neither clear coating nor adding soap to the water really did help, but as the shape of the fender made it easier to lay the decal down without too much wrinkles it turned out ok I think

Finally the seat shells have been painted and the first transparent carbon decal has been applied. Meanwhile this seat had its paint stripped as I noticed that I made a mistake when doing the stencils for the decals. Because the decal is transparent, it's not that easy to fix it, because I have to make sure that the decals don't overlap, because in the overlapping areas the pattern would be darker. Luckily a lot of the inner part of the shell will be hidden by the upholstery, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm sure there will be other challenges doing the rest of the interior.🤔

That's everything for today. I hope to have piqued your interest and am looking forward to your tips, critiques, suggestions and plaudits 
Urs

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by harti20

[mrm]

I have zero attraction to the real car. Where the P1 is a visual masterpiece of perfectly flowing and balanced forms, the Senna looks to me like an origami gone bad. Seeing the car in person (one attends the local cars and coffee somewhat regularly) didn’t help either. Besides I find the use of Ayrton’s name very gimmicky. 
  The model however picks my interest from time to time, more from engineering side of things and because the extensive potential for use of carbon fiber with combination of accent colors. I’ve seen a couple of these built at contests with great quality and I will definitely follow your progress on here. My local hobby shop has one of these kits on their shelf, but I never felt the urge to pull the trigger on it. Now, if Tamiya made the F1 or the P1 with opening doors to the level of detail of their Enzo or LaFerrari I would have been all over them. 
Perhaps your build can motivate me to get one of these. 

Edited August 22, 2022 by mrm

[harti20]

Hi all

On 8/23/2022 at 12:19 AM, mrm said:

I have zero attraction to the real car. Where the P1 is a visual masterpiece of perfectly flowing and balanced forms, the Senna looks to me like an origami gone bad. Seeing the car in person (one attends the local cars and coffee somewhat regularly) didn’t help either. Besides I find the use of Ayrton’s name very gimmicky. 
  The model however picks my interest from time to time, more from engineering side of things and because the extensive potential for use of carbon fiber with combination of accent colors. I’ve seen a couple of these built at contests with great quality and I will definitely follow your progress on here. My local hobby shop has one of these kits on their shelf, but I never felt the urge to pull the trigger on it. Now, if Tamiya made the F1 or the P1 with opening doors to the level of detail of their Enzo or LaFerrari I would have been all over them. 
Perhaps your build can motivate me to get one of these. 

Thank you for your comment  I'm following your Pagani with great interest. I always wanted to build a Huayra myself but was always discouraged when I read about the issues others had with the back of the car. Your build made me look closer at the original and what should I say... I removed it completely from my wish list, because I got the impression of a really ugly car (before I always only saw the box art or finished model kits of it). But I'll sure keep following your build as it's interesting nonetheless. Everyone has his own taste, I like the McLaren Senna and can't understand why others don't find it attractive 😁

But now the the progress of last week. Mainly I cut the parts for the interior off their sprues, made a mock up and had a look at which parts will need carbon fibre decals in the end. It will be quite a lot, but I think most of it shouldn't be that complicated. As I didn't start making stencils for the decals I refrained from taking pictures of these parts as I thought that wouldn't be of much interest.

Beside of this I painted and assembled the brake discs from the detail up set.

Each of these brake discs will still get 10 PE parts in the center (there where you can see the recesses in the black parts). But of course you can't just glue in these parts, they have to be folded by 180°. As I had some trouble finding a way to do this, I decided to show my way that worked out best for me. If somebody knows of a more efficient / easy way, I'd be happy to hear that.
 

That's how they looked like before bending them

To start, I pressed them down in my cutting mat with a Tamiya paint stirrer to get a bend

Then I held the part down with the stirrer and bent it to a 90° angle with the blade of a knife

After that the stirrer was replaced by a razor blade and the knife by the stirrer to bend it even more

Once that was done it looked like this

To continue I could slip it off the blade and position it like a advertising stand

To finish and close the gap, I slowly approached it with the chops(?) of a bending plier, trying to touch it on both sides at the same time, to avoid overbalancing it and then press it flat.

I only remarked now that I forgot to take a picture of a completed part. I will do it when I'll mount them to the brake discs.

Last weekend I had to wait on somebody to finish work, so I decided to start assembling the engine. So far all the parts that have to be painted aluminum have been assembled. Before primering and painting I'll sand the glue joints flush so there will be no visible mark where the parts meet.

That's all for today's update
Urs

[beeRS]

The Tamiya Senna kit is another wonderfully engineered masterpiece. I’m sure you will do another amazing job on this Urs. I’ll be watching. 
Thanks for sharing the PE folding process. It’s something I will have to do at some point. 
Was the SK decals your only option available for the Senna?

[harti20]

Hi all

Long time I didn't post anything on this build, but my priority in the last few weeks was to finish the Ferrari FXX-K and after that I hardly had any motivation to build models. But now I have some small progress to share. I didn't stick to the instructions at all, I only did what I felt like doing, so don't wonder if the parts don't really go together 

On 9/30/2022 at 7:31 AM, beeRS said:

The Tamiya Senna kit is another wonderfully engineered masterpiece. I’m sure you will do another amazing job on this Urs. I’ll be watching. 
Thanks for sharing the PE folding process. It’s something I will have to do at some point. 
Was the SK decals your only option available for the Senna?

Thank you for your kind words. I hope to do this kit justice as it is a really challenging one. By the time I bought the decals the SK have been the only option available. Meanwhile there is another full carbon set by Scale Motorsports but that costs about three times as much as the one made by SK decals.

First I assembled and installed the engine as far as I could. There will be more parts to be added later.

Then assembly of the front cooler has been done

And finally I needed some distraction from applying all the carbon decals on the body parts, so I decided to start applying carbon decals on the interior parts 😂

First a pic of the middle console which got some clear carbon decals on one side. I'm quite curious about that as this is the first time I'll use transparent carbon decals.

For the rear upper part of the middle console I used conventional carbon decals.

That's all for this update. I hope you won't have to wait another two months for the nex one on this build 😎
Urs

Edited October 24, 2022 by harti20

[Funkychiken]

It's coming along expertly, I for one have this in the stash and think it's a stunner of a cat... looking forward to more progress! 

[Andrew McD]

I've had this one sitting on the shelf since last Christmas when my daughter gave it to me.  I've recently moved it up in the queue of models to start and will be anxious to see your progress.

[935k3]

On 8/22/2022 at 3:54 PM, harti20 said:

Hi all

As I still wasn't in the mood to continue work on my FXX-K, I'll start a new WIP. As stated in the title, I'll build the McLaren Senna. Additionally I will use the PE detail up set by Hobby Design and the carbon decal set by S.K. Decals.

I already know S.K.Decals from my Haribo-Mercedes, so I knew that the decals will stick to the part as soon as they touch and won't easily move afterwards. In fact I ruined the first decal I tried to apply  Happily the decal set offers to quite large areas of carbon fibre where one can cut out decals if something went wrong. Nevertheless I'm thinking about re-ordering the set to have some spare decals (just in case...). The part where I tried to apply the decal is the rear body panel which won't be easy to cover with decals anyway as it has a very narrow curve on each side. I didn't even manage to lay down a self made decal with some ScaleProduction stuff (which I usually like very much).

Then I assembled and painted one of the rear fenders. After the experience with the rear body panel I clear coated it (after that picture was taken), hoping the decals would be easier to move around.

Meanwhile the fender got some paint (which I will have to touch up later) and the first carbon decal. Additionally to the clear coating I added some drops of dish liquid to the water I soaked the decal in and have applied to the fender before hitting it with the decal. Neither clear coating nor adding soap to the water really did help, but as the shape of the fender made it easier to lay the decal down without too much wrinkles it turned out ok I think

Finally the seat shells have been painted and the first transparent carbon decal has been applied. Meanwhile this seat had its paint stripped as I noticed that I made a mistake when doing the stencils for the decals. Because the decal is transparent, it's not that easy to fix it, because I have to make sure that the decals don't overlap, because in the overlapping areas the pattern would be darker. Luckily a lot of the inner part of the shell will be hidden by the upholstery, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. I'm sure there will be other challenges doing the rest of the interior.🤔

That's everything for today. I hope to have piqued your interest and am looking forward to your tips, critiques, suggestions and plaudits 
Urs

 

Try soapy water under the decal by brushing it on the part.

 

under the  d

[harti20]

Hi all

On 11/23/2022 at 9:48 AM, 935k3 said:

Try soapy water under the decal by brushing it on the part.

I already tried that, but with no success. Maybe I was just to closefisted with the soap, I'll try it again in future

Somehow the McLaren turns into a never-ending story. On one hand it might be caused by the fact that I want it to turn out as perfect as I can do it, on the other hand I will have to do some carbon work no matter where I want to continue with it. And that's the kind of work I can't really find the right motivation right now. Nevertheless some minor progress has been made, although it was more of a "one step forwards, two steps back" kind...

The interior parts have been painted in dark grey (here I will have to check again, as the paint looks quite uneven and grainy in this picture)

and green.

The green parts will mostly be covered with transparent carbon decals later on. The time I tried to make some stencils for the decals I ripped off the paint on almost every part. So I'll have to strip most of these parts, sand and repaint them. If I remember correcty I painted these parts without degreasing them first as I tried to get some motivation back and just do something to get it going...😒

Some parts of the underarriage have been painted

and the second rear fender got its carbon decals. Furthermore I noticed that there is a small spot which had to be painted in green, something I completley forgot on the first part. So I had to mask over the decals (which luckily have already been sealed by two thin layers of clear) and repaint the air inlet. Happily nothing got ripped off when removing the masking tape afterwards  Now there will only be some small spot repairs needed where you can see the white primer shine through.

That's all for today
Urs

[beeRS]

Ace work on the CF decals. It takes a lot of skill to make them look that good. 

[harti20]

Hi all

On 12/6/2022 at 6:30 AM, beeRS said:

Ace work on the CF decals. It takes a lot of skill to make them look that good. 

Thank you very much for your kind comment. In fact the decals by S.K. Decals fit very good and are quite easy to apply. The only downside is that you have to position them almost perfectly at first touch as they stick very fast to the surface.

It's been a long time since my last update. On one hand I was kept busy by other builds and on the other hand I couldn't find motivation to continue decal work on this one. But now I finally managed to make some progress on this build.

First of all a few parts that will receive carbon decals in the end have been primed in black

After that the first ones of them got their carbon decals applied. I started with an easy one, the diffusor (not yet finished)

and then some parts of the doors.

That's it for today's update. I hope it won't take another 7 months for my next update on this build
Urs

[Dann Tier]

Looking Fantastic!!

[Funkychiken]

The carbon decals are looking great!

Bad luck with the pair coming away with the templates... Still coming along nicely!

[harti20]

Hi all

Thank you very much for your kind comments

As I am quite busy in my new job and was knocked out by a flu last week there's not too much I could show you, but some small progress can be presented anyway

In one of my first posts in this topic I showed how I folded these fiddly little thingies for the brake discs and promised to show pics of the final product. I didn't finish with all four brake discs yet, but at least one can be shown, so here's how it looks like 

Additionally work on the carbon decals continued (at least on the outside). But if I look at my progress so far and how many decals are still left on the decal sheet, I think they'll keep me busy for the next few months (or even years??). Not to mention all the carbon decals needed for the interior... 🙄

That's it already for today's update.
Urs

Edited November 20, 2023 by harti20

[harti20]

Hi all

After having finished the Morgan and a Shelby Mustang it was time to continue with my McLaren Senna. In my opening post I wrote, that I didn't manage to add CF decals to one part at the back of the car. As this very part is quite large and therefore will be noticed if not decalled, it was crucial for this build to get this covered. Otherwise I would have had to switch to another color scheme for this build. So I first tried to finish this part. For this reason I made my own stencils a few weeks (or months, I don't really remember exactly) ago. Last weekend I tried it and was quite successful. The difficult spots are the ones in southwest, resp. southeast direction from the silver exhaust opening in this picture. The curve is so extreme that it's almost impossible to cover it completely. There is a small triangular spot on each side where there is no decal, but for the moment I can live with that. If necessary I think it would also be possible to cover that up with small patches.

As this part turned out so well, I decided to continue with more CF decal work on more body parts and finished some of the front parts

Then I masked off the monocoque and painted the upper part in gloss black. After that the first metallic sticker and the PE grilles have been applied.

That's it for today. I think that now, where the most complicated part (at least on the exterior) has been completed, the updates will follow in a more timely manner
Urs

[Noah H.]

This build is looking great. Impressive decal application.