Nacho Z

Thank you for checking in, Pierre! I'm having fun so far. This is only my second resin kit and I want to do a good job on it. I am definitely going slow and taking my time on it. Thanks, Ken. It sure seems to be a nice kit. The body casting is amazing, IMHO. Please feel free to post pics of your Audi in this thread, I would love to see it. There is not a lot of guys building resin and even less building LeMans / endurance cars. I hear you, Mark. I'm with you on this and I'm definitely not one of those guys who make it look easy. I'm excited and intimidated by this kit. It will be one of those cases, "if I can do it, anyone can do it". Thanks for looking in and commenting!

I agree with you, Andrew. The good thing is that is the back side and will not be seen. The fronts look nice. They will not be very noticeable on the completed model. And don't worry about giving advice. I know your work. I will take advice from you all day long and twice on Sundays! Great advice, Steve! I have already thought of that. I will have to figure out if my home printer/scanner/whatever else it does, has enough oomph for the job or if I will need to look elsewhere. My decals look to be in great shape with no signs of cracking. The kit came with racing harness decals and I will experiment with those. You may have already shared your Panoz on here but feel free to drop some pictures in this thread. Would love to see it.

How about a small, Monday night update? As I mentioned above, I am really taking my time with this one, mostly due to the fact that it is a relatively rare kit at this point. Also, my inexperience with resin kits makes me question and evaluate everything I do before I do it. This update really will be about parts prep. All very basic stuff for you guys and gals here on the forum. However, maybe it will help someone. You have already seen the body and chassis. I have them cleaned up, but there is really no need to post more pictures of them. There are pour stubs to contend with, as well as minor flash and a few pinholes. I am in no way complaining about the kit or the condition of the kit parts. Not at all. I'm just showing what I am starting with. The other smaller parts all needed minor clean up and this has been done. In my next post I will show you some of these parts now that they are all cleaned up. Thanks for checking in!

Thanks for sharing yours, Eran! I thought about the strip of styrene underneath. I think it would work. You will have to be mindful of the boot hinges. The blocks that hold the hinges glue to the underside. I'm looking forward to seeing yours when it is done.

Fandamntastic!!!!!

No doubt the decals will be a challenge, Pierre! I can't wait to tackle them. I have never built a LeMans Miniatures kit before, so I don't know what to expect out of the decals. I will definitely study the decal directions before starting. There are no real directions, there is only a 2-sided sheet of paper with multiple pictures. You can tell the decaling sequence by looking at the photos. I feel like it will be very easy to miss a decal or two if I'm not careful. Hey, Buddy, I'm glad that you are following along. You have a ton of experience with these kits and I have zero experience. The best advice that I have received from my local building friends, (one in particular has a lot of resin kit experience), was to take my time and test fit everything a gazillion times...lol. To answer your question, I bought the kit when it was basically new. It may have been out for a year or two. I keep all of my kits in my basement which is temperature and humidity controlled. The decals look like new. No cracking that I can detect. The only spare decal(s) that I may be able to test on are the racing harness decals. Otherwise, I don't believe there are any spares.

Dale, decals are my favorite thing to do! I bought this kit, years ago, based on the fact of all of the decals. They appear to still be in good shape. I may come to rue my decision, we'll see! You are absolutely correct, Helmut. Decaling is very enjoyable to me. Let's hope this one doesn't bite me!

Thanks, Phil! Honestly, I had never heard of this car before being asked to build it. Maybe someday I will see if I can find an old race to watch. Thank, Eran! I readily admit that I had a bit of a bad attitude about this model. Mine fought me all the way. Do you have a WIP thread for yours? I would love to check it out. I hope your build will be trouble free. If you don’t have a build thread, I hope you will post pictures of your finished model. Feel free to post some pictures here if you would like.

Thank you, Ken, and a big Amen Brother! ? Everyone needs a kit like this every now and then to appreciate Tamiya kits! Thanks, Bruce! This was, and probably will be, my only Heller model…lol.

Pierre, you are far too kind! I wasn’t fishing for compliments and truly am embarrassed with the final product. I suppose it is true what they say; we are our own worst critic. I guess it is kits like this that make us appreciate good kits. ? Thank you, Bob, I appreciate it! This is my favorite reply! Thank you, Bill, you made my day! Before I start any model, I research it to see what others have done with it, what they have ran into, and what extras there are for it in the aftermarket. I Google it, I check here, I check FB, and I check YouTube. All I wanted to do with this was to be a resource for someone else. I would normally post a bit more of my WIP, but this thing deflated my enthusiasm so much that I just wanted to be done with it.

Thank you, Robert! The guy that I built this for just loves this car. He was a college student at the time and talked about how they would tear around town in this thing. He said it handled like a go cart. Thanks, Chris! Thank you, Helmut!

Thank you, Mathias! This was a tough kit for me. I appreciate it, Dave! Thanks, Jim!

I decided to pull the trigger and build this model. It is LeMans Miniatures' Audi R8 in the famous Crocodile Dundee livery. I will not do a rundown of this car's pedigree, a quick Google search will tell you everything you want to know about this car. The terms "rare" and "expensive" are relative, but this kit, as of today, is relatively rare and if you can find one, expensive. I have had mine for many years. After that doggone Heller Renault Gordini R8 nearly made me quit modeling, I thought I would build something that I liked. A slight departure from how I normally do my WIP threads, this time I am going to post current progress pics and ask for opinions, advice and comments. I normally post my updates weeks after the work is already done. I am hoping that you guys with a lot of resin experience will follow along and chime in often. This introductory post will just be pictures of the kit contents. I am really going to take my time with this one, not so much that it is particularly difficult, but because I will only get one shot at it. I will post more closeup pictures of the other bits and pieces as I get to them. I will source some tire decals. I may already have some in my stash. Again, anyone that can give me pointers and advice, I'm all ears! Thanks for checking in.

Rich, I’m so impressed with not only the quality, but the speed at which you are building this kit! I am loving all of these updates and the narratives with each photo. Thank you for sharing your work with us!

Ian, I just now had the opportunity to check out this entire build thread. I think that I may have seen it before, but never went through all of your posts. You are doing a fantastic job on this! I have all of the Top Studio items as well as the Thunder Valley items. I will be following your build with great interest. I wish you all the best on this project!

That is a great looking Ferrari, Germán! You did a wonderful job on it.

Very nice, Matt!

She is absolutely beautiful, Jason! You are doing a great job on it!

Only because I said I would, I am going to post the completed model of the Heller Renault R8 Gordini. I truly am a bit embarrassed to post it. It just isn't a good looking model. I have added a link to the WIP thread. If you want to know what a pain in the rear this kit is, please read the WIP thread. There are detail pictures there. You will also see why I built it, (it was for a friend). Here she is. Go easy on me!

Thank you, Carl! Thanks, Ed! Thank you, Alex, but you are far too kind. I know that I've said it several times, but these Hasegawa 962C kits really are among my favorites. I like to build them in between more detailed projects. I'll be keeping my eye out for your next one!

I think that this will be the last update. As I have stated before, this kit fought me all the way. If it were not for the fact that I was building this for a friend, I would have just put it back in the box and then put the box in the garbage can. The chrome trim that runs down the sides of the car came like this. I cut the bits off, stripped the chrome, cleaned up the parts the best that I could and painted them with Green Stuff World Chrome. In, what has been for me, typical Heller fashion, this is an example of Heller's work. This part, #12, came off the parts tree. When I went to install it, I quickly realized that the part wasn't going to fit. Yes, a simple thing to figure out, but also a simple thing to get right in the first place. One bright spot was the Tamiya paint came out like this straight out of the can. The re-popped kit has the same issue as the original and that is the tulip panel is terribly bowed. This messes up the fit of the boot lid and the rear glass. Please go back to the beginning of this WIP thread to see why I didn't attempt to fix it. The final insult was the rear glass from the re-pop. It was literally flat and not curved. Thank the Good Lord that I still had the original kit's parts. I had to use it to finish the kit. For fun, I laid the bad kit glass on the body, (see 2nd picture). Lastly, The carrier film on the decals was atrocious. I took all of the stripes and cut them out so that they were individual stripes. I had to be very careful with the spacing and how straight I laid them. Thanks for putting up with all of my complaining about the kit. In my defense, it is a steaming pile of ?. I will post a few pics of the finished model in the Under Glass section. I did not get very good pictures of it due to time constraints. Thanks again for following along.

Just fantastic, Rich!

Very, very cool! Both models are great! The group photo is too cool!

Michael, I really do appreciate all of your input. I hope you continue to comment in this thread. I did post on Sept. 23rd that the model is done and it is with its new owner. I built it the way he said to although I readily admit that he did not give me a ton of details about the car.

Monday nights are when I seem to do my updates, so let's get to it. Because it has been over a year in real time since I've updated this build, I will do a quick overview. The truth of the matter is that I really, really dislike this model. I'm not a fan of the real car either. If you ever have a chance to build this kit, don't. Run. Run fast and run far. The fact that I don't like the real car and the fact that the model sucks is why it has taken me over a year to build it. I kept finding excuses to stick it back in the box. I do appreciate all of the advice that I was given earlier in this build thread. My honest hope is that if someone else is building this kit, they will come across this thread and glean the information herein. OK, on to the build. A lot of the interior pieces as well as the roll cage was cast in a weird rubber / vinyl material. I cleaned the pieces up as best as I could and installed them. As pointed out in my previous posts, I killed the body of the original kit and had to buy a re-pop. Upon inspection, I thought the plastic was weird, or at the very least, different than what I am used to. Here is the body being backlit with a lamp. I did all of the bodywork that I had done on the original kit. I went ahead a shot primer on the body. Just plain ol' Tamiya White Surface Primer straight out of the can. I want to point out the track width of both the front wheels and the rear wheels. This will bite me in the backside later on. I also worked on the interior door panels. Once again, in true Heller fashion, the panel lines were non-existent. I did my best to mask off the various panels and painted it per the kit instructions. Here is a quick shot of the quality of the decals. These are the new ones. The carrier film on all of the decals was atrocious. I'll stop there for this update. There is plenty more heartbreak to come. Thanks for checking in!