jaymcminn

On to the greasy bits. Tamiya didn't go the full-engine route here, instead going with a plate-type chassis and engine top insert. This works well given how little of the actual engine can be seen on the 1:1. Chassis plate after painting and then after weathering with Vallejo washes... And with the suspension and exhaust built up. Everything went together beautifully. Exhaust was painted in Vallejo chrome and top coated with a mix of Tamiya orange clear and smoke. I used the PE brake disc faces from the HD detail set. To replicate the carbon composite material I painted them in semi-gloss black with a mist coat of light gunmetal. Gold calipers were not a factory option but they look right! The engine compartment installed on the chassis plate. Yes, the intake plenum is white on the 1:1! Per Matt Bacon's suggestion, I applied the chrome transfers to clear decal film to allow for repositioning. Once they were in place I gave the whole intake plenum a shot of flat clear. The strut tower brace got a carbon fiber decal to match the corner braces. Interior mounted to chassis plate... And this is where we stand right now. The next update will probably be to close out the WIP with some under glass pics and final thoughts!

Life has gotten a bit busy in between post-Milton cleanup (minor landscaping stuff, fortunately Naples didn't get a direct hit), work stuff and a road trip to St. Augustine for a Vampire Weekend concert. I did get a fair amount of work done on the body. The glass has been installed, as well as Scale Motorsport carbon fiber decals under the bonnet and on the rear diffuser. The decals are amazing and respond really well to Micro Set and Sol and a blow dryer. I made rough templates for the diffuser decals from Tamiya tape. I haven't done CF since I built my LaFerrari several years ago and it's easy to forget how fiddly it is, but I rather enjoyed it. Of course the CF effect on the diffuser is almost invisible since it's almost exactly the same color as the body! The kit PE grilles fit nicely with a few challenges largely due to my decision to install the front end before painting. I painted the grilles in Tamiya Light Gunmetal for contrast against the metallic black. PE logos are from the Hobby Design detail set. I haven't installed the DBS badge on the boot lid yet as it's in a vulnerable place. It'll be installed as the last detail. Installing the rear diffuser was a bit of a surprise... the fit wasn't great. I had to take a bit off of the body sides where they meet the diffuser to keep it from popping out. Even then there aren't any robust locating points. Surprising from Tamiya. I airbrushed the wheels with Tamiya Smoke with a top coat of semi-gloss clear for a "shadow chrome" effect. Center caps are PE pieces from Hobby Design. The valve stems are teeny tiny USCP 3d printed pieces. The carpet monster ate about five of them. Good thing they give you a lot! On to the pics! A note about the wheels... The center caps are actually polished and the lug nuts have been painted with Molotow chrome. The camera has trouble depicting this for some reason. The bottom left wheel in the pic of all four is probably closest to how they look IRL. Next up is a big airbrushing session for underside and engine compartment parts. More updates soon!

We should take bets as to whether this comes out before the Italeri 1/12 Stratos that's been "coming soon" for two years now!

The Scale Motorsport ones are definitely the same as RMCoM. From their site: "Originally created by the genius of Norm Veber at Replicas & Miniatures of Maryland, this set of concentric rings provides unparalleled detail applications. In fact the guys at the Newburgh Model Car Club were so devastated when Norm announced his supplier could no longer manufacture, they immediately turned to Scale Motorsport to see if we could bring this sheet back to model builders"

I built this shortly after the kit came out. It's honestly a fantastic kit. The nice thing about it being basically "shake and bake" is that you can concentrate on finishing and customizing without worrying much about the basics!

It's always great watching someone apply modern techniques and a lot of skill to one of these very early kits. I'm enjoying this build a lot!

Interior is finished. Carpet is a mix of embossing powders, it looks a bit too "green" under bright light but it does contrast nicely with the "leather". The Hobby Design detail set offered up speaker grilles and the gauge face cover. Pedals are kit PE pieces. I decided to represent the optional "piano black" trim for the door caps and center console. The interior of this kit is Tamiya quality at its best. It's a shame they never did a Volante (convertible) version! Work on the body is continuing, next update will be of that process. Wheels will be the kit wheels with a few coats of Smoke to tone down the shine a bit. On to the pics!

Mini update... I mixed a green I like for the interior from Tamiya acrylics. Here it is under indirect sunlight. Maybe not an exact match but it looks nice with the black. More interior parts airbrushed... As you can see, the color is very dependent on the light. Next will be spraying a coat of flat clear and masking the center of the dash and the door panels tops for the gloss "piano black" finish. More to come soon!

Thanks Sonny, the plan is to paint the Hobby Design bits in flat black and then dust them with gunmetal and aluminum. Calipers are going to be gold.

That was the plan... I just finished a challenging build that fought me hard most of the way. Something state-of-the-art and shiny is a nice change of pace. I am adding some of the Hobby Design PE set to kick it up a notch... can't make it too easy! Interesting, I had no idea about Jay Kay's Enzo. Of course I had to look it up. It's funny because I've used the metallic black on one other car... the Tamiya Enzo!

Bought this kit new and promptly forgot about it. Pulled it out a year ago and laid down paint. At that time I decided to order detail parts and carbon fiber decals, put it back on a shelf until the parts came and promptly forgot about it again. Well, now it's time to finish it. I painted it in Tamiya Metallic Black last year and hit it with TS-13 clear before polishing it out. When I packed it up I wrapped the body in cotton flannel, which did a great job of protecting it from scratches in the box. I refreshed the body with another application of Meguiar's Ultimate Polish and applied BMF, which is where we stand right now. Gotta say, it looks pretty good... I've decided on something a bit unconventional for the interior. Instead of red or burgundy or tan I'm going with this... The color is called Wimbledon Green and it's an unusual choice to be sure. I think it'll pop like crazy against the metallic black. Stick around for more updates coming soon!

Once you get the stance right the rest is gravy. That sits perfectly!

An incredibly fine build of this old kit. Beautiful!

That Type 59 is an impossibly pretty little car.

Thanks Pierre! Coming from you that means a lot! Thanks David! I like to break out the DSLR and fancy lighting setup for the 'Under Glass" pics. These came out maybe a little dark, I should have added a bit more overhead lightng. Weathering is all about recognizing that you need to surrender yourself to the element of randomness that comes with applying imprecise techniques to what is often a very precise hobby. What the military guys do with it is amazing!

I know that Splash paints are fairly hot and will craze and lift prior coats if sprayed "wet". They also like a little more time between coats than some lacquers. I bet it was applied too heavy and too soon on the final coats and the whole mess pulled away from anything that wasn't a flat surface. The first time I used Splash there was a bit of a learning curve, but they're excellent paints once you get them mastered. They absolutely require a clear coat... I use Tamiya LP clear thinned with Mr. Leveling Thinner. Below is a Tamiya Caterham Super 7 done in their Bentley Racing Green...

Thanks Dave! My next build will definitely be shiny! Oh, I was worried about it too. I was about 50/50 on stripping and redoing the body without the salt chipping at the beginning. Once I foiled the trim I realized that the more detail went into it the more the abused paint became part of a whole and decided to stick with the original plan.

I've recently gotten interested in the idea of preserved, as opposed to restored, vintage sports and racing cars. It's a fascinating topic discussed at length in Miles Collier's book "The Archaeological Automobile" and is probably most succinctly summed up by the phrase "It's only original once". I've become more interested in modeling this aspect of the collector car hobby lately. I still enjoy building shiny things but it's fun to shake things up once in a while! This is the rare Italeri Ferrari 250GT SWB kit. It's a later development of their 250 series kits (the 250GTO and SWB California kits came first and have been rereleased several times) and is a pretty decent representation of the shape of a later SWB. There are glaring inaccuracies in other areas of the kit, though. The seats are atrocious, being incorrect in shape and detail as well as being closer to 1/32 scale in size. The engine bay is okay, but short of detail. The chassis is good and the stance out of the box is excellent, however. It's not modern Tamiya, but it's not bad at all. Certain elements will always make or break a build. The kit wire wheels are acceptable but there are better alternatives out there. PE wires are an improvement but the latest generation of 3d-printed wire wheels are a game-changer. The units here are big & little Borranis with Dunlop racing tires by Jack Modelling. They fit the kit's spindles perfectly with just some spacers needed between the brake disc and wheel back to push the wheels out a bit. The seats are Revell Shelby Cobra units modified to represent stock racing buckets with Tamiya 2-part putty and wire. I've said it before but the thing when you take a build like this on is that you can't have a weathered body and a pristine interior and chassis. When you start down that path prepare to walk it until the end. So you're not just painting every part... you're painting, then applying a wash, then dry-brushing and maybe even applying pastels to basically every single part. Lots of work, but it's a lot of fun. The weathering technique on the body work is a combination of many things. Salt weathering was used to expose the aluminum under the paint. Basically you apply your base color (Vallejo Model Air Aluminum) and then moisten the surface and sprinkle with kosher salt. Once that is dry it forms a fragile mask. Apply your top color (Tamiya Maroon) and once that's dry, brush the body to reveal the bare aluminum underneath. I then masked and painted the roundels and numbers, and scratched cracks into the white paint using a dull X-acto blade. I then applied Vallejo washes to the panel lines and to tone down some of the too-shiny exposed aluminum. The interior, unfortunately, doesn't show well in the finished pics. I used a combination of washes, pastels and scratching through to a base coat to represent worn and faded leather. THe quilted area behind the seats behind the seats is thin leather I had on hand from a previous project. The quilting was added using a pizza cutter, which was perfect for embossing the pattern into the leather. See below WIP pics... I added a fair amount of detail to the engine bay but ran out of room to add the radiator hoses Italeri forgot. THe most annoying fit issue I had was that the radiator fouled the hood hinges and needed to be moved back quite a bit, leaving no room for the radiator hose unit I was going to adapt from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. It looks pretty good though... The chassis is appropriately rough and ready as well. And some more pics... The final details: License plates are decals from Warbird from their California license plate set. I mounted them to aluminum printer's plate so I could bend up the front plate. Pastel weathering on the body is Tamiya soot and oil stain Weathering Master pastels. The exhausts are "SNAP" exhausts from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. They were a popular period aftermarket exhaust for racing Ferraris. The windshield decals are from VRM's "Number Circles and Things" sheet and tell the fictitious story of the early life of this car. It was raced in the Targa Florio in 1962, imported into the US and ran the 12 hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965. As always, any questions or comments are welcome!

Every restoration has to start somewhere, right? I actually might hit them with another wash. They're a bit shinier in pics than in real life, though. Thanks guys, it was a fun build overall. I lurk on some primarily military forums and enjoy the techniques the military guys use. It's always interesting to pick up those techniques and apply them to the subject matter I love. I've gotten into the habit of alternating shiny and weathered builds, so the next build will definitely be something shiny!

I broke out the DSLR for "under glass" pics, here are a few to close out this build. Final notes... the exhaust tips are "SNAP" exhausts, an aftermarket/homologation exhaust that was popular on racing Ferraris. These came from the Fujimi 250GTO kit. The windshield decals came from VRM's "Number Circles and Things" and speak to quite a history for this car... it was sanctioned by the Palermo Auto Club (for the Targa Florio), the SCCA, and ran the 12 hours of Sebring in 1964 and 1965. I'm picturing a car that would have been imported in about 1963 or so and raced until the late 60's at which point it wound up under a tarp in a barn. Final weathering was done with the usual Vallejo washes and Tamiya pastels. Honestly, this kit was a bit of a pain. I was expecting an easy build... I've built the other iterations of the Italeri 250 and never had a problem, but there were some changes and challenges in this final release that made it a bit tough. Of course this was probably exacerbated by the changes I insisted on making to the interior, the new wheels, etc. Anyway, here are a few pics... more to come in the "Under Glass" thread probably tomorrow!

If you can get your hands on the new(ish) Tamiya LP clear lacquers they're even better, with more even coverage and a shorter drying time that allows for multiple coats for better depth of color.

Getting ready for some proper "under glass" pics, but I wanted to do a quick plug for Warbird Decals' California license plate decals. You get sets for 1963-2013, both front and rear plates. It's VERY fiddly getting the separate characters onto the main plate, but the result is fantastic. Here they're applied to aluminum printer's plate, for reasons which will become obvious...

Very clean build, while still keeping with the spirit of the ancient Merit kit. The magazine cover presentation is brilliant as well!

Can't stomach diet soda, my favorite substitute is "Spindrift" flavored sparkling water. It uses a small amount of fruit juice for flavoring and a hint of sweetness, which leads to a nominal amount of sugar calories per can (5-15 calories per can depending on the flavor). The blood orange tangerine and lemon lime are awesome.

Thanks all! The interior is something I'm especially happy about and the techniques I came up with here will definitely be used for future projects (looking at you, Revell 427 Cobra!). The engine bay is as done as it's going to get. I took a swing at Ferrari's trademark yellow fuel lines by wrapping thin wire around 30awg yellow wire. The kit coils were enormous and crude so I scratched new ones. The battery was a parts box addition. I cut down the kit's air box tray a bit and foiled it. The black "foam" around the edges is 1/32 Chartpak tape. The bad news is the lack of radiator hoses... Italeri doesn't provide them and I was going to swipe the part from the Fujimi 250GTO kit but I discovered in the innumerable test fittings that the radiator needed to be moved back by about 3/16 of an inch to avoid fouling the hood hinges. Ferrari 250 radiator hoses are actually an extremely complicated assembly and if I tried to adapt the Fujimi part it wouldn't have looked right. At this point I decided you have to draw the line somewhere. On to pics! You can see the shims I added to the engine compartment sides to raise the body a bit and provide a better gluing surface during final assembly. Next the body and chassis go together and final details will be added, including the lovely 3d printed Borrani wheels. More to come soon!