jaymcminn

Isn't most of this car's market under economic sanctions right now?

My 1/12 Otaki Lamborghini Countach LP500S showed up today. Got it for a reasonable-ish price on eBay because the kit was unboxed but complete with all parts in sealed bags. Looks to be perfect. Definitely a project for fall/winter when I can spray outside without worrying about the humidity. This is going to be a fun one... I'm always a bit leery when some builders talk about how easy the kit goes together and others talk about what a nightmare build the exact same model is. I've never built an Otaki/Doyusha model either so I'm looking forward to seeing how it stacks up to 70's Tamiya standards. I don't think the "wings and flares" cars are quite as pretty as the early ones but they have a real magnetism to them that I'm looking forward to capturing, and it'll be an awesome companion for my recent 1/12 Tamiya Porsche 934. If I keep building in 1/12 I'm gonna need a bigger house...

Cobraman, here's my WIP of the Trumpeter/Magnifier GT40. Hope it helps!

Built about 8 years ago. Fit was good except for the warped rear clamshell. I narrowed the door gaps with styrene. There's no distributor in the kit and the engine detail is a bit clunky, but I was able to add that detail in and it looks good. I went with aftermarket tires because the profile of the kit tires is a bit too square-shouldered. I bought aftermarket decals as well for the #1 car. Paint is Ford Acadian Blue and I used Tamiya TS15 for the interior and engine bay blue. Overall it was challenging but there was nothing insurmountable in the build process, and the proportions are just about perfect. I'd love to link to my WIP thread, but for some reason when I try to insert the hyperlink to the topic it links to the main site page. I might post a response to my own topic to pop it back to the front page for you.

Absolutely beautiful. The EM 356 series might be my favorite model cars of all time.

My '95 Miata may as well be invisible to the hordes of SUVs and big pickups out there. I can't even imagine driving something half its size!

Much as I love that Birdcage, the Lancia Aurelia B20 behind it is the car in the Revs Institute I'd most like to own. So pretty.

Thanks Rob! Like most of the stuff I do, I mostly was just winging it, and playing off of the translucent plastic the kit parts are molded in. I mixed Tamiya clear orange and smoke acrylics and applied a fairly heavy coat with a wide, stiff brush. I then started stippling the finish, which developed texture and the mottled effect as it started to dry. I hit the engine components with a second coat of smoke with a little orange, since the engine bay parts seem to have more discoloration than the fuel tank on most 1:1 pics I've seen. A final coat of Mr Super Clear flat lacquer toned everything down and blended the colors. I was pretty pleased with how the effect turned out!

That is deeply unpleasant on so many levels.

Thanks Sonny! If you want the treaded tires you need to look for an earlier release of the kit. Mine was a mid-90s release. If you're looking for one on eBay, look for the Dunlop tire lettering on the box art car. The newest releases have the treaded Dunlops replaced by no-name slicks, which is actually indicated on the box art. The Dunlop sponsor decals seem to be missing as well... I wonder if Dunlop pulled their licensing. FWIW, I don't think new releases include the passenger seat either. Has treads... Has slicks...

I ordered a not exactly cheap watch from a well-known online watch retailer a few months back. They never updated my order status or marked it shipped and after a week or so I started getting a bit angry about it. I was unable to get anyone in customer service either by email or phone. That night I came home from work and the watch was on my front step and the site still didn't show any updates. The next day, while wearing the watch, I received the email notification that my order had shipped!

500-540k's tended to be over-restored, including the chrome wheels. A lot of what restorers would do was based off of customer expectations rather than the history of the vehicle, and people paying large sums for restorations in the 60's through the 80's wanted wide whites, chromed wheels and engine turned components that would originally have been left natural or painted. That being said, the period pics on page 1 of this thread show this car with chromed wheels, so there's at least some precedent. Sometimes you'd see painted wheels with chromed spokes as well, but most 500 and 540ks had painted wires with chrome wheel weights.

I'm the front office manager of a pet-friendly hotel. The number of people trying to claim their stroller-bound yorkiepoo is a service dog, solely to avoid paying the pet fee, is ridiculous. Invariably these "service dogs" get dumped in the hotel room alone while the owner goes out to dinner or the pool or whatever, at which point the dog starts barking (I don't blame the dog, it's scared and alone) and annoying everyone in the rooms around it. It's a shame when bad people happen to good dogs.

Why I rarely finish making the bed...

It's a box... and you can see out of it... it's like cat heaven!

I wish someone would do an AMG flared body for this kit like the WD car. Great work, those Monoblocs are sweet!

I think it's the gloss as much as anything else... I actually had bleed through on that same Lindberg '34 molded in yellow. Good idea to test the underside of the hood! I might try the silver paint trick too.

Starting the old Monogram Mercedes 540k coupe kit molded in lovely high-gloss maroon plastic. I'm planning on building it in a two-tone dark blue and light grey color scheme. Has anyone built a kit molded in maroon and experienced the bleed through issue you sometimes see with red and orange plastic? I'm not worried about the dark blue, but the light grey has me a little concerned. I usually prime with Tamiya Fine White or Gunze Mr. Surfacer grey and my top coats will be Tamiya TS paints decanted and airbrushed with TS13 clear.

I'm actually working on the Monogram coupe right now... a 1979 issue I got last week from an eBay seller. It's not as nice as the Jo-han 500K kits, but I'll have fun building a "phantom" 540k coupe with the flush spare tire cover. It's kind of liberating not having to "count rivets" on a build for once!

I agree that the kit is pretty rough and wasn't that good even in the 80's. But the shape is accurate and your build shows what someone with skill can do with it. Nice work!

I built the 500K roadster a few years ago and was blown away by how good that kit was. It still has its own display case instead of being in the cabinet because it turned out so nicely. You did a great job on yours!

Thanks! Coming from someone who basically has to review everything on the forum that means a lot! Thanks! I spent hours poring over pictures of these cars. Two of the Canepa Design cars for sale right now have Flickr pages with over a hundred photos each. Things like the license plate lights and the drip rails would be easy to pass over without putting in some research. Fortunately the Tamiya kit is so good to start with that the big stuff more or less takes care of itself. That Camel yellow is an excellent match for Porsche Talbot Yellow, which is a correct period color. It really works on the wild 934. Thanks man!

Nothing looks more like metal than metal. Just incredible work on this build!

Incredible what a real modeler can do with these old kits from polystyrene prehistory. Beautiful work and great photography to boot!

This is Tamiya's Porsche 934 RSR kit... the 1/12 scale kit from the mid-70's that helped cement Tamiya's reputation as a great kit manufacturer. This is a mid-90's release that I've had for a while. I didn't take enough pics during construction for a proper WIP thread, so I'm posting under glass with some of the construction pics included. The idea here was to envision this iconic car as a canyon-carving street car... not so far-fetched as shops like Canepa Designs have been converting these to street cars the last few years. The Jagermeister release contains treaded tires and a passenger seat to make that task doable. I started off with the body. I like to do a bunch of test-fitting and fettling right off the bat here so I don't run into any surprises down the road. I ditched the friction-fit door closure (basically a tab that comes off the soft vinyl interior door panel and pushes against the door jamb) and went with three neodymium magnets to help hold the doors closed. The doors needed attention to address some nasty gaps... I needed to do this on the Tamiya 1/12 240Z a few years back as well. Thin styrene square stock filled the gaps and I sanded the edges down to get an even door gap all the way around. Next I addressed a nasty fitment issue of the front bonnet. The bonnet bowed up toward the middle. Every body and bonnet I've seen from the 934/935s does this so I'm not sure where the problem lies. Issue shown below with a spare 935 bonnet... I clamped the bonnet down and trained a blow dryer on high heat over the back edge as well as the compund curve at the middle of the bonnet. This is the result... Next, I added the drip rail along the roofline using styrene stock. I also scored along the fender flare line to create a groove to flow flat black paint into to replicate the welting between the flare and body on the 1:1. It's a really noticeable detail that's missing from the Tamiya kit. Many 934's have the rear fascia removed below the bumper. I decided to do this to show off more of the turbo plumbing and exhaust. Photoetched saws are perfect for this kind of work. The body was then primed with Tamiya white primer and painted in Tamiya Camel Yellow, which is pretty close to Porsche's 70's Talbot yellow. I polished the yellow paint out without clearcoat. I didn't get any in-progress pics of the body paint process, which is kind of why I didn't do a full WIP on this build, so we'll just skip on... I used Scale Motorsports' Faux Fabrix paint for the interior. The only color it comes in these days is red. 934s came from the factory with carpeted interiors and a fuzzy dash to reduce glare. I masked off the semi-gloss black floorboards and sprayed the Faux Fabrix followed by flat black to represent the carpet on the dash and interior. I actually rather liked the seats in the red, especially against the black interior and yellow body. I used the kit harness parts as well as some 1/12 PE hardware for the driver's harness. The passenger... better find something to hold onto. The engine responds beautifully to some simple plumbing and weathering. I replaced the fuel injector lines with Top Studio turned metal fittings. Finishes are a combination of Tamiya acrylics, Model Master metalizers, airbrushed Molotow Chrome and Tamiya weathering master pastels. The fuel tank, like all the fiberglass pieces, was textured with mixes of Tamiya clear orange and smoke. Bolts are Scale Motorsports PE pieces. Fittings are Top Studio resin pieces. Luckily the terrible seam at the side disappears with the tank in place... Other underbonnet bits and bobs... I made the interior fire suppression pipes from 1/16 aluminum tubing. The ties were made from 1/32 Chartpak tape. I tried the Model Factory Hiro 3d printed zip ties and they were a pretty conclusive (and expensive) failure. Body and chassis getting closer... AAAAAAAAND......... Custom plate came from RC Plate Shop on a scratchbuilt mount. I'm torn over installing the front plate... I'm inclined to leave it off at this point. Fender rivets are Hobby Design turned metal 1mm conical rivets. License plate lights were scratchbuilt from sprue and sheet styrene. Hood pins are 3d-printed units I got from Spot Model. Overall this kit was incredibly fun, insanely challenging (the steering u-joint at the steering wheel broke as I was setting up the photo shoot; it's not something I'm not going to worry about at this point) and builds into a fantastic replica of one of the coolest cars of all time. As always, any questions and comments are welcome!