Brendan

Beautiful job on the kit and the decals. Now I'm going to have to buy another one of these cars and do that version. Very impressive.

Nice job on the paint. That's the hardest thing about this kit. I screwed up on mine a couple of times and had to redo it. Everythings looking good. But where's the red striping? I would have mine done by now.

Quick Skins made the molds for Mark. So yes, they are similar. But they are two separate companies.

Both bodies are primed. Need to do a little bit of wet sanding. And give them a wash and they'll be ready for paint. Should have the first coats of paint on in about 2 days or so. The front dive planes are a bit tricky to get into position. I need to make a small adjustment on one side to make it balance out with the other side.

Scalecoat II is great stuff. It acts quickly and doesn't leave on an oily residue. All you need to do after you strip it is to wash it, let it dry, and it's ready to paint. It will strip putty and body filler off. That's the only downside. With most paints it does take about 15 minutes. The longest I've ever had to wait was an hour because I had several layers of paint. It is worth the money, usually around $10 a bottle. It's non-toxic and after it's gone through its usefulness, you can flush it down the toilet.

That's kind of odd. I use Dupli-Color all the time and I've never had a problem with it being stripped. Sometime takes a little longer but it comes off in the end. Might have gotten a bad batch of Scalecoat. I know they have had problems in the past with it being diluted.

What paint are you using? I use Scalecoat II all the time and I've been able to strip everything with it except for vinyl or latex paint. Also are you straining the Scalecoat after you use it? It starts losing its power after about the tenth use of it. But what I do is put the model kit in a plastic bag and pour a quarter of a cup of the stripper in and shake it. Then put the bag into another bag just in case it leaks and let it sit for about 15 minutes. Then take a toothbrush to it.

That's the car I was thinking about doing. Very nice job on that one too. I just looked at Island Collectibles Site and noticed that he's using pictures of my Jaguar from BHP Enterprises.

yes

I have built every one of the 1/12 series kits that Tamiya makes and all of the kits are excellent. The ones I would suggest doing would be the Williams Renault, the Mclaren Honda, or the Ferrari (modern) if you can find it. Everything fits much easier than the older kits and they have a lot more detail. The Williams is a V10 so if you're looking for a V12, either go with the Mclaren or the Ferrari. But a lot of the older kits have just been re-released so you should be able to find them for under $100. The ones I mentioned above will be a little more with the Ferrari being the most expensive.

Very nicely done. I've done several of these kits and yours blows mine out of the water. At some point I want to do the car that flipped over.

The Aston Martin in the GT2 class was a Vanquish not the DB9, but I could be wrong. They've been planning on racing in GT2 and GT3 over in Europe. The car that race yesterday should be here for the full season. It's a privateer car with factory backing. Aston Martin is planning on racing in three categories this year. LMP1 which will be a Lola Closed Cockpit running a V12 as a full factory team. GT1 the DBR9 which will be both privateer and factory effort. And GT2 which will be a privateer effort with factory backing. To let you know the GT1 class was won by the #3 Corvette with the sister car several laps behind.

It's not a very big surprise that an LMP2 car won the race. Just look at the fuel mileage they were getting. The LMP1 cars are at a big disadvantage now with the way the rules are set in ALMS. The same thing happened with the GTP cars and the Camel Lights back in the day. It ended up killing the series. They did talk about the Ford GT a little bit but not a whole lot and that was before it crashed out. The front of the car looks like one of the old FABCAR Daytona Prototypes. I wasn't too impressed with it. The car is really meant for GT3 racing. The Ford was not the only American car racing in the category. There was the new Corvette as well as the Dodge Viper. The Aston Martin DBR9 that ran will be running the full season in the ALMS. It is a privateer team with factory backing. The car is an ex Prodrive car. There was also an Aston Martin running in the GT2 that was doing okay. I will not be surprised to see Ferrari get handicapped in the GT2 category to balance out the performance index. As for Mazda winning the Daytona, the performance index in that category is set up for them to win. Porsche and the other cars are extremely handicapped.

Got the chassis complete with all the goodies. Finished while watching the Sebring race.

I just looked up the Studio 27 kits. The kits are completely wrong. They are not even the right body design for the cars they are trying to make. First problem is there is no Mk IV Eagle as a GTP. The Mk IV is a Champ car. There's only one chassis that was built for the GTP cars. And they did all their modifications off the chassis. They were all evolutions of the Mk III. That's why they never changed the designation. I can see several issues right off the bat with the Studio 27 kit. The '92 season cars had a completely different aero package than what they are showing. Also the snorkle isn't big enough. It should be fitted in a different spot on the car. The headlights are not correct. Along with the rear end. The tunnel leading off the side of the '93 car is not shaped correctly. Also they're missing louvres on the back end of the car. Both of the kits look like the front end is way too long and flat. Those are just some of issues I see with the Studio 27 kit. I think I'll stick with the MS Hobby kit. Thank you for letting me know about this. Good to see that Studio 27 is trying to make prototype cars.

I'm putting up these photos to help show people how the pieces are supposed to look after being bent. The instructions don't give a good idea of how they're supposed to be since there are no diagrams. The pictures here are for the front dive planes that sit from the body to the chassis. Take your time folding since the PE is thick. They will break. It happened to me on one of them. They give you a template made of PE to help scribe lines into the High downforce wing for the uprights to slide into to help the upper wing element. These pictures show how to attach the template to the High downforce wing for scribing. Be careful not to scribe all the way to the front of the wing. Otherwise you may need to putty some areas back in...like it happened to me. I hope this is helpful. You can always PM me if there's any questions. Be glad to tell you the mistakes I made.

Got the chassis puttied up. Lot of injection marks, but easy to clean up. Also got the High downforce wing together. I need a replacement for the upper element as the resin was short shot. Just using it now for a mock up. Started work on the body last night. Should have it primered and ready for paint by late Sunday.

D and J Hobbies started going downhill just about the time I left (5+years ago). There were some major changes that were happening. Some departments were spending more than what their monthly allotment allowed. The model department was getting handicapped when I was working there since we couldn't order as much since the other departments were ordering more than they could sell. Al and I are really good friends. He left when I was working there, then came back. This last time he left was because they were cutting his hours plus other problems. I was at D and J when I went to the NNL West. They had moved the model department into the train section. Nothing organized in that department. The paint stock is in shambles and also they only have one section of car models. The selection they have is pretty pitiful. The people working in the model department do not have a clue about their products. They don't even know what they have in stock. I ended up having to help one of their customers find a kit and the paint needed for the kit after the employee told the customer that there was no kit of that car ever made. There were 5 or 6 of these kits on the shelves. Then the employee was telling him not to use this type of paint since it was not good. (Tamiya's paint) He was trying to put him onto a more expensive brand that he would need an airbrush for. The customer was a casual builder. At that point the employee was rather pissed at me. I would go back to them if they would get their department into better shape since I still have friends who work in other departments there. It just frustrating to see something go so far down since the time I left.

Some more work done. Got one of the dashboards finished. It's five pieces, including the dashboard that go together. Here is a picture of the wing mount that attaches to the transmission. It fits very well. No modifications are needed for this. Pictures of the low downforce wing. The kit has an interesting way of putting the end plates on. The kit gives you small pins that are used as rivets to attach it to the resin wing. Make sure when drilling pilot holes that you don't bust through the resin as I did. Ended up fixing that mistake. Just needs a light sanding and then ready for paint. My next step is to work on the bodies and the chassis. Couple of areas I need to do some filling in on but should go quick.

No problem. Also I just now did a quick Google search of the Toyota Eagle Mk III and came up with a lot of stuff. Thank you for the comments.

Those are the same areas that I had problems with. I've talked to Mark about it to let him know. As for pictures, here's a site you'll really like. The first link is Mulsanne's Corner and the other is a direct link to the Toyota Eagle. Click on the pictures in the Toyota section to get more pictures. http://www.mulsannescorner.com/ http://www.mulsannescorner.com/toymkiii.html Here's some pictures of the backend of my cars. Pain in the butt to clean. I was actually thinking about cutting the louvers out and putting in my own.

Some more work done on the kit. Tires and rims together. Used the PE stencil for the Goodyear markings. Tamiya's flat white acrylic. The lone rim was used only one time and was mainly meant for tying the car down to a transport. But it was used on one of the cars during the Daytona race. Still need to paint the center locking nuts. The fuel fillers come as either a resin or a two-piece PE. I'm going to be using the PE. I think it just looks better. I have attached the exhaust to the transmission unit. This is going to be for the High Downforce car. I try to heat stain the exhaust but not usually too good at it. More to come.

Is that a scratch-built frame? Or did you modify it? Looking good! Keep us posted. Would like to see what he sends you when you get it.

Here's a link to MS Hobbies web site. http://www.mshobbies.com Thanks for the comments.

Got some work done. Would have had it up sooner but lost internet connection. Here's the pictures of the gear box. It is a two-piece unit that fits easily together. Did run into a little fit issue with the transmission fitting onto the chassis when I was dry fitting it, but it is easily fixed with removal of material from the chassis's suspension arm as shown in a picture. Have not put on the photoetch for the brakes yet. These are a bunch of little pieces that are in the cockpit. The rims are painted with Alclad polished aluminum. There are two exhausts. The long one is for the High downforce car and the short one is for the Daytona car. They were painted in different shades of Alclad. (Jet exhaust and Burnt metal) Will have new posts up soon...need to do some filling in on the bottom part of the chassis.