jaymcminn

http://www.ebay.com/itm/IMR-2014-Limited-Edition-1-24-Scale-Passenger-1-for-Tamiya-or-similar-/161437750026?pt=Model_Kit_US&hash=item259670930a I don't get this. Is this a thing now? This is more than I pay to register my 1:1 car, and I get cool plates with a shark on them!

Beautiful work, John. I really enjoyed following along with this build!

It's clean, conservative and just wild enough to be recognizable as a Lamborghini. The interior is breathtaking and the technology is on par with the LaFerrari and the Porsche 918. There's hints of past Lamborghini greats like the Espada and Miura in the styling. I love it.

The nice thing about Tamiya is that you can order parts, such as tires, without resorting to the subterfuge of "losing parts". The cost of their parts service is reasonable and if they don't have something in stock they'll eventually get them in from Japan. I've got the new wheel trees for the 1/12 Datsun 240ZG on order now. Beats buying the kit again for the custom parts!

The Hasegawa kit is an extremely nice full detail kit that includes a photoetched fret. I haven't gotten around to building mine yet but it looks like it should go together nicely. Interior detail is very good and provides a good basis for superdetailing. Alex Kustov did a beautiful build of this kit on his site at www.italianhorses.net. I can't speak to the accuracy of the Fujimi kit but their kits from this period are a mixed bag at best.

One day I will own one of those 934 kits. Hard to believe that Tamiya designed that masterpiece 35 years ago.

Hmmm. I guess I'll have to try the Spaz-stix. That VHT looks like it might come in handy for polished aluminum too. I have good luck with Alclad but there's no harm in giving another product a shot.

Thanks, John. I've been following your thread pretty closely and the detail you have put into yours is amazing. Glad I didn't splash out for the Acu-stion detail set then. The Tamiya set has most of the stuff I want anyway. I agree about "Big Boyz" not getting the attention it deserves, but there are sections of this forum I don't visit either so I guess I understand. I'm sure I'll have questions for you, especially as I start getting into that DFV engine!

Beautiful work. I've been thinking about getting one of the Hasegawa racers to go with the Fujimi Enthusiast Stradale I built a few years back. The Stratos is one of my favorite cars... there's just something about the cartoonish proportions and overall insane nature of the little beast that really appeals to me.

So I went ahead while doing the cleanup on the rest of the parts and got the body panels assembled as much as possible and sprayed. This marked the first time I used Tamiya white putty and I was pretty impressed... it's the first lacquer-based putty I've ever felt that way about. The trick was to preserve as much of the surface detail as possible with the large number of separate parts and seams. Paint was Tamiya TS-14 Black with no clear coat and polished out with Meguiar's Ultimate Compound and Polish- no polishing kit was used to get this finish. The result is just a tiny amount of orange peel, which looks like the real thing, and a nice deep gloss. The kit decals are extremely nice, but fragile... fortunately Tamiya includes extra pinstripe decals for when you mess one of them up, which will happen. The F'artifice decals are nice as well, but a little thick and with less gloss to the finish. The color matches the kit decals perfectly. I decided to do Emerson Fittipaldi's 1972 Italian GP car #6. PE pins on the cowling are kit pieces. The JPS decals on the sides are a little too far back, but I'm not worrying about that at this point. You can see how bare this kit would look without the JPS logos... they're everywhere! Rear view mirrors are Tamiya TS-21 Gold, as are the wheels. End plates on the rear wing and front winglets are PE metal and look amazing when painted and installed. Even the intake gets the logo! And finally, what's Fittipaldi's car without Fittipaldi? This is the vintage 1/12 Racing Driver kit, which is pretty clearly molded to look like Fittipaldi and includes decals for his suit. The helmet decals came from the seated driver figure in the kit. I sculpted the hair with Dremel and files to look less like Ronald McDonald's and did some pretty careful shading and drybrushing to bring the figure to life. I haven't done any figure painting in nearly 20 years and I'm pretty pleased with how he turned out!

I'm trying to not go too overboard on this build...I was ogling the Acu-stion PE set as well as the RB Motion intake trumpets/injectors, but 1/12 detail parts start adding up pretty quickly if you're not careful. That being said, I have some valve stems from RB Motion on the way as well as some hose clamps from Tremonia. In addition, there's some stuff left over from my GT40 build that I can work with.

So I decided to take the plunge and try my first F1 kit... since I usually don't do things halfway I decided to start with the classic Tamiya Lotus 72D in classic JPS livery. I ordered the most recent issue of the kit, which includes racing haresses and a beautiful photoetched fret, but unfortunately no JPS sponsorship decals, because apparently small children will be driven to smoking (John Player Specials are a brand of cigarette, BTW) by the sheer awesomeness of the black and gold livery. Fortunately, a company called F'artefice produces a beautiful set of replacement decals for the missing sponsor logos. This is the Lotus 72 in all its glory being piloted by Emerson Fittipaldi in Bahrain in 2010... Ironically, the prep work on this model almost drove me to start smoking again... I thought the Trumpeter GT40 was bad, but that was a walk in the park compared to this. Every single part (and there are a LOT of parts) required cleanup of mold lines, ejector pin marks, etc. Every single round cross-section suspension part needed prominent mold lines cleaned up, and since it's all on display there's no hiding any of it. Everything is mounted on toothpicks and I'm in the process of painting it all now. To give you an idea, here's the majority of parts for this model all ready to go... A lot of these pieces are actually subassemblies involving several pieces, such as the working shocks and engine block/transmission. I didn't try to do all this tedious prep work all in one go, as I actually wanted to keep my sanity, so I got the bodywork started (as well as another little project) while working on this prep work. I'll post up pics of the painted and decaled bodywork (and that other project) soon!

Ambitious, but (not) rubbish! I love it!

Mike, I get how frustrating it can be working with this stuff when you first start out. I definitely recommend priming anything you're going to paint, be it with a brush, airbrush or spray can. The Tamiya rattle can primers are the easiest and most forgiving in my experience. The Tamiya brush paints can definitely get "gloopy" (that is the correct technical term, btw) but can be thinned to brush out more evenly with the Tamiya thinner or rubbing alcohol. You may have to apply a couple of coats if you thin them. Make sure the paint dries completely between each coat. Definitely practice on a kit you don't care about until you get a feel for how the paint flows out. It might take a while, so don't get discouraged... brush painting is the first technique most modelers learn, but is very difficult to do really well. You might also want to try the Testors Model Master acrylics... I find that they're much more forgiving over large areas than the Tamiya paints.

Monogram Mazda RX7. Also the old Monogram Corvette America (the 4-door Corvette).

Thanks, Dante. The braided line is Detail Master #1 and #4. Probably wouldn't use it again as it doesn't take bends well. Fittings are Detail Master and RB Motion.

It looks like a bad photoshop or something. Are those 10" wheels?

I didn't really frequent "Big Boyz" until I started my 1/12 GT40 WIP. Now I check it out every time I visit the site. There's some truly inspirational work going on there. My next WIP, which I'll post up in the next few days or so, will be there as well... the 1/12 Lotus 72d JPS.

No outdoor pics, but I did this '58 Impala in White Lightning over Inca Gold with fades a few years ago. It's an excellent pearl white... maybe even better than Tamiya!

First thing I thought when I saw it. Everybody's too clean and no actual work seems to be going on here. Looks like something from a Hollister catalog.

Just amazing, Cato. My suggestion would be to acquire another Pocher Rolls kit so you can display both the bare chassis and the finished model... should be a piece of cake after building this one, right?

Oooh. Cool idea. Bet this will look wild with the McLaren wheels... will they fit?

The Japanese manufacturers rerelease kits all the time. Most of Tamiya's F1 kits have been reissued, most recently with things like PE parts and seat belts. Some of the Aoshima kits are 40 years old, having been issued by several manufacturers. Most of the old Fujimi Enthusiast kits are still sporadically produced as well. It all depends on whether or not the manufacturer feels the demand is there.

I removed the kit's molded-in wipers with the intention of replacing them with PE wipers, but most of the detail pics I saw online showed them removed. Since I hate fiddling with PE wipers I decided to take the path of least resistance!

I don't begrudge the buyer one cent of the purchase price. If I had real honest-to-God "f-you" money this is the first thing I'd buy.