Brendan

This is Tamiya we're talking about. At some point they'll re-release everything. And charge $20 more for it. I have built all the Alfas and they're great kits. Fun to build.

One of the coolest Porsches. The engine that was originally going to power the R10. Very nice job on the car.

The only transkit that I know that they make are for the 996. The Flying Lizard car is a 997. There was talk that he was going to do a kit with Lizard decals but I haven't heard anything else about it. I'm still waiting to see if he's going to do the S7.

The kit is a Profil 24 Mazda RX-7 LeMans 1981. Decent resin; had a lot of pin holes that had to be filled. Body had some minor imperfections but were easy to fix. I use a mix of Tamiya's TS line of paint to paint the body. The blue is a mix of TS-14 and TS-15 in a 2:7 mixture of black to blue. And used Tamiya's TS-12 for the gold. Paints were decanted and airbrushed. Decals were nicely printed but did not want to stick. Ended up painting all of the gold on since the decals did not match the gold paint that well. Overall impression is that it's a decent kit; just some things that the manufacturer should have done to make an easier assembly. Here's a link to the build. Feel free to comment. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=13693

Got the body onto the chassis. Kind of a pain in the butt thing in that you have to put the rear firewall in through the back window. Still need to put on the windows and the rest of the decals as well as a couple of small photoetch pieces. Plum the back the of car with some nylon braided line. Next you see this car, it will be in the under glass section. Thanks, everyone, for following along.

I would go but it's a 400+ mile drive for me to go up there. I'm going to Laguna Seca at the end of the month.

I use Tamiya's and 3M's automotive tape. I use the 3M's tape for going over a lot of rounded surfaces. It seems to stretch and conform to the surface better than the Tamiya's tape plus I can get the 3M in smaller widths.

The pre-race show on Speed last night wasn't very good. It seemed like they were doing a Nascar-style pre-race show that doesn't work for sports car racing. What they should have done was to show the cars out on the track and talk about the differences between the cars which I thought would have made it better. The only thing interesting that they had to say was Castroneves and his sister were indicted on federal charges of tax evasion in Florida.

Very nice clean job on the Ducati. I was thinking about getting another one of these and doing a street bike out of it.

Thanks for the comments. I wish it was black. It would have been easier to paint. It's a really dark navy blue, which I ended up mixing up from Tamiya paints. That would be a pretty cool paint scheme to do a John Player Special.

The stand that's underneath is what I use for painting. The reason why the car is on there is that I just shot clear over the decals. I make most of my stands to fit the cars I'm going to be building. When I'm applying decals, I usually have the model on a soft towel and move the towel to lay down the decals so I don't have to touch the model too much. Here's a picture of a couple of stands I've made. Real simple, $2-3 worth of wood.

Says it starts at 4 p.m. on the West Coast, which is about 10 minutes from now. It says it's a preview of the Petit LeMans.

Very cool little car. If you get a chance, pick up Tamiya's 1/12 scale kit. If you like the small one, you'll love the big one.

Got the decals on last night. And shot the clear this afternoon. The gold toned down quite a bit and matches the decals almost perfectly. Decals were kind of a pain to put on since they did not want to stick. Some of the decals are not scaled correctly, but it's hardly noticeable. That's compared to the reference photos of the real car. All I need to do now is let the clear cure and I'll get the body and chassis together hopefully by the end of this weekend. Here's some pictures.

There's Biodiesel, E85, and Hybrids which are gas/electric. The Hybrids cannot score any points, though, since there are no regulations in place for that class of engine/motor. Don't forget tonight, they're supposed to be showing some of the qualifying on Speed.

From the photos I have, it's spot on. Some of the races they ran with an all white underside of the car. But the photos I have show it being black and white. Looking good.

Is it the IMSA body race car that you're thinking of? It would have had box flares on the car and also a slightly raised cowling on the hood. I forgot who made the kit.

Peugeot had an accident which hurt the car quite badly, but they were able to get it up and running within a 24-hour period. The Audis are on top of the time sheets. Should be a very interesting race. Also there are several gas/electric cars running. They will not be able to score points, but they will be able to qualify for Le Mans.

That has been pretty typical of Studio 27. They do a really good body and then are kind of cheap on the insides. And then usually don't give you any photos of the inside so you end up having to look up photos of what they didn't put in. Half the time you can't see inside the car anyhow with the way the windows are. At some point I'm going to have to buy this kit. Just so I can have it sitting behind the LIzard car I'm going to build.

The rims are from the kit. They are 3-piece, two outside pieces and then the inside spokes. They supposed to be BBS, I believe. But I can't find any markings to tell me that they are from the photos I have. But most race teams ran with BBS back then. I still trying to find replacements for them. I do not like the way they look. They don't look right for the picture I have for the car. I was kind of hoping Fujimi or one of those companies would have a set, but it doesn't look like they do. I'm sure if you contacted Profil24, they might be able to sell you a set. Here's the email for them. www.profil24-models.com Also here's their contact email. contact@profil24-models.com Hope this helps if you are looking at getting them.

I bet that this is the motor that they're going to be using in their P2 cars as well. The motor they have in there right now will be illegal in two years. So I bet they're going to a smaller turbo charged V-8.

That's actually not a lot of boost. It's only about 22 PSI. Most race cars nowadays run at 40 PSI or higher. The Indy cars used to run close to 60 in qualifying.

Very nice job on the car. Hopefully we've converted you to race cars.

Well, it's gold! Little brighter than I would like. But I think it will tone down a little after I put a couple of coats of clear. Need to do a little bit of sanding; not much. Here's some pictures of the car. Here's what it looks like with tires and rims on.