jaymcminn

Pretty well. The kit doesn't make 'em easy, and the design's pretty complicated to begin with. I just realized I forgot to include a pic of the rear end... here it is!

And a few shots of the engine bay... As always, any questions or comments are welcome!

This is my detailed build of the reissued Datsun 510 BRE kit. The build thread is here. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=91937 Paint is Tamiya Italian Red over Pure White with TS15 Blue in the engine bay and underside. The kit oil and radiator lines were replaced with aluminum AN fittings and braided line. Kit chrome was stripped and sprayed with Alclad. A fair amount of correcting and massaging went into this kit to make it a little more authentic (removing molded-in windshield wipers, for example) and to clean up the flaws inherent in a kit produced from a 40-year-old tool. Overall I think it looks pretty sharp. Next Revell just needs to rerelease the 240Z!

So it's finished, and just in time for the show tomorrow. I was pleasantly surprised by the kit decals, which were opaque and thin and of much better quality than the old Revell decals. Final assembly was completely drama-free, even though the overly-complicated front suspension is a little fiddly to get together. Photoetched bolt heads were used on the windshield and rear window braces and the hood and trunk pins were adapted from a set of Detail Master pins. More pics in Under Glass soon!

Interesting... I like where this is headed.

The interior shots of #46 show that it does indeed have upholstered door panels... just not the ones in the kit. I didn't want to get into changing those out, so I let them stand. The interior looks to have been painted with trunk paint, which I replicated by painting the interior in Aircraft Interior Black and then misting it with Tamiya grey primer from the spray can. The dash was sanded flat and the gauges were replaced with MCG printed/photoetched gauges. Toggle switches were replaced with PE washers and fine wire. I deviated from the kit by switching from a four-point to a five-point harness (just had one on hand) and installed it over the kit's molded-in harness. Overall the interior came out alright... Here's the real thing: And here's my dash... and a couple of shots of the completed interior. The dash mounts to the body for final installation which had me somewhat worried, but it all comes together beautifully. It's in final assembly now- next post will be the final pics!

Mike, the silver can on the right is the radiator overflow tank. It still needs a PE cap, which I'm waiting to add so it doesn't get knocked off during handling. The oil filter is to the left mounted on the shock tower.

The thinnest line I used for the fuel lines is .017 from RB Motion. The oil lines are Detail Master #1 and the radiator lines are #4. Thanks!

I noticed that myself. Actually, I thought the blue in the engine bay was supposed to match the stripes and went off of that color. By the time I got my engine photo references together I had already masked and painted the area molded with the body shell in the dark blue and didn't feel like repainting it. Oh well...

I've been slowly but surely working on this build and am trying to get it wrapped up in time for the Table Top Nationals in Deerfield Beach next weekend. I'm closing in on final assembly, and have the engine bay finished. I went with Detail Master braided lines (not crazy about them- might try Pro Tech next time) and fittings. Wiring is from MCG, and I scratchbuilt a coil. I detailed the carbs with styrene and parts box intake trumpets. I scratchbuilt the radiator overflow tank to better match the online pics of the engine bay. Here we are before the engine installation... and after. It's pretty busy in there! Next, the interior... more pics soon. As always, questions and comments are welcome!

Or to people driving convertibles with the top down. Ask me how I know this.

Gotta weigh in on this one. I am the proud owner (for the last eight years!) of a PT Cruiser convertible- a car that even most of the PT enthusiasts don't quite "get". Mine is the "Turbo Lite" version, with the 190 hp turbo motor. I've done some upgrades over the years to get it just how I want it... it now has a mean-sounding Magnaflow cat-back exhaust, Enkei 5-spoke 17x8 wheels, and I debadged it almost completely (can't get rid of the Chrysler "wings" without major surgery, however). Basically, I look at it as an ongoing project that I can drive daily. It's a fairly low-spec car, so there are no fancy-shmancy driver aids like traction control and ABS (seriously- no ABS!). It has a ton of character and gets quite a bit of attention in a town full of exotics that cost as much as the average house. A lot of people might be embarrassed to drive it, but I think it's got a great combination of soul and personality. Let the people who worry about what others think about their cars drive beige Camrys- it just leaves more interesting cars for everyone else!

Revell' s Ferrari 458 and 599GTO. Excellent kits with great detail that nearly build themselves. Hasegawa's excellent Ferrari 250TR. Fujimi's Enthusiast Porsche 911s. Tamiya's Enzo. I'm psyching myself up to build the 1/12 scale Tamiya Lotus 72 JPS F1 car right now... that's a really impressive model when you open the box!

I'd like to shop there but I keep bursting into flames every time I walk through the door. Darn crosses...

Here's a quick update. The body has had the blue under the hood painted, as well as all the black trim. I applied Bare Metal Foil to all the shiny stuff and used The Detailer to pick out the detail on the side vents. I cannot recommend strongly enough masking those vents, as well as the taillights, off before primer and paint so as not to lose the detail. The kit does provide decals for the vents but it's not the same. The taillights were foiled (they're molded into the rear pan, BTW) and painted in Tamiya clear red and orange. I applied the first white decal over the red chin spoiler to test the opacity, and they seem alright. I might try doubling up on them. Next will be the engine bay- I've decided to go with braided line instead of the kit tubing. On to the pics! The extra attention to detail deepening the panel lines and rescribing and sharpening up the trim really pays off at this point... it almost looks like a new Tamiya tool! I washed the panel lines in a medium grey mixture- they look a little dark to me, but I think they'll look a lot better with all the decals on the body.

Beautiful work, Cato. I don't get why it's so hard for manufacturers to get the 300sl right in any scale. It seems like they all have pretty substantial issues. Can't wait to see more!

If, say, Revell were to rerelease the 1/8 scale E-Type with a corrected hood, photoetched scripts and detail parts and some revisions to the tooling, I might go up to $250 or so. I probably wouldn't spend more than that on any one kit, however.

It drives me nuts when every hose and belt under the hood is the same shade of black and every bare metal component is the same shade of silver. There's a lot of variation in these components in a real car that makes a big difference when replicated on your model. Interiors where there's no differentiation between carpeted areas and leather/vinyl surfaces are another pet peeve of mine. And don't get me started on body-color windshield wipers!

After my long, challenging Trumpeter GT40 build, I wanted to try something a little less involved. I could have gone to any of the numerous kits in my stash just crying out to be built, but instead I saw this little sucker on the shelf at my LHS and decided that it was just the ticket. The first thing I noticed when I cracked open the box was that the molds were a little tired, so I set about rescribing the faint panel lines on the body as well as fixing some of the trim and body lines that seemed to have vanished over time. While I was at it I removed the molded-in windshield wipers. Some of the trim, such as the very faint vents behind the rear quarter windows and the molded-in taillights, I masked before priming and painting to preserve the detail. Here's the body before paint... After Tamiya fine white primer and Pure White were applied, I masked the white areas off and applied the Tamiya Italian Red lacquer decanted through my trusty Master pistol-grip airbrush. Next I get to re-mask and spray the under hood area in Tamiya TS-15 blue, which will also be used for the underside of the car. Then I get to mask and spray the black trim. I thought this was supposed to be a quick project... The kit's chrome parts were completely unusable... I'm starting to feel that way more and more about kit chrome lately. The plating was way too thick and the parts needed major cleanup to be usable due to the mounting locations of things like the bumpers and wheels on the chrome tree. I removed all the parts, stripped the chrome, cleaned them up and painted them with Alclad chrome... I painted the centers of the American Racing Libre wheels in Tamiya metallic grey and gave the grille a wash with The Detailer black acrylic wash. Next I'll let the body dry before polishing ( of course I painted the hood and other body panels as well!) and painting the black trim and under hood blue. In the meantime I'll start cleaning up and mounting the other parts for painting. More updates soon and as always questions and comments are welcome!

I'm tempted... I'm going to start running into display space issues if I keep building 1/12 scale, though!

Very sharp so far. This kit is high on my "someday" list.

Very cool, James. I've just started this kit myself, but I'm going to do the BRE #46 car as shown on the box art. Can't wait to see the progress on yours!

Thanks, Mike! The paint is Scale Finishes Arcadian Blue enamel, and I really had to modify my painting technique to accommodate the enamel paint. I applied the paint, let it dry for a few weeks, and polished it out using only compounds and cleaner wax to preserve a little bit of orange peel and maintain scale gloss- different from my usual procedure with lacquers, which is to bury it in clear and let the polishing kit sort it out!

Thanks, Glenn! I think the kit itself is excellent. Parts fit is good, panel fit is alright after some tweaking, and the kit detail provides a very good starting point. Some of the parts, however, are out-of-scale and "clunky", especially the suspension and interior parts. Building this kit involves a lot of compromise... it helps to determine ahead of time what you can live with and what you feel you need to fix. If I had the patience, I could have spent another four months on this thing. As it was it took about three. I would recommend this kit to anyone wanting to push his abilities without going to the extreme of, say, a Pocher kit.