Pierre Rivard

Surprisingly...as it was initially sunk in a pool of flash and very brittle to deal with. I twice broke the part in the process.

A beautiful build Thomas. That deep red finish is gorgeous. The 87/88C was a brilliant car and if not for fuel consumption issues might have fought at the top more often.

Thanks Mark. Like I said this will not be representative of the real engine design but neither were the engine parts I started with. Still some work ahead to make these changes blend in reasonably well.

Thanks Daniel, For awhile I thought this would end up with a closed casket ceremony (i.e hood glued shut) but now I am gaining a little confidence with the engine build.

I do a mock-up for every build and sometimes many times during a build. Such was the case with this one which did not have defined attachment points for the "floating" fenders.

Taking the plunge on engine work...always something I am not comfortable doing. The kit part limited to start with. The cam covers ave very narrow relative to reference pictures so there is no room to add the fasteners. I'll try to imbed posts on the sides on which PE fasteners will eventually sit on. This will in no way be accurate but hopefully more presentable. Other fixes & adds? Relocating the distributor, ignition wires, coil, engine coolant take off and possibly a bit more detailing if phase one works out. If phase 1 fails? that's it for the little engine...⚰️

Very, very nice work Misha. What you have done with the cast wire wheels is pretty amazing. First time I see washes applied at the primer stage (chassis) so I'll be following with great interest. Always something new to learn.

Holy cow Martin, I thought the first pictures were real car reference material...awaiting the pictures of the 1/25 scale model to appear... and it never happened. What's the date...April 1? Seriously I have seen some beauties out there but never one that looks so lifelike. ?

It all looks wonderful and the engine compartment looks so realistic. A joy to follow your work Louis.

Making your own headlamps and door handles...beautiful craftsmanship!

Coming along beautifully. Not to add to your misery but since the subject is spectacular and you can now see you can make this horrible kit body beautiful... you should consider sanding off door handles and wipers and add aftermarket parts?

Chassis and engine look fabulous Phil. Wonderful build so far.

Thanks Daniel. I made a typo, they're actually 0.65mm but there is a range of size available, from 0.2 to about 1 mm. They might also work out pretty good to simulate rivets.

Thanks for the advice Andy. Adding to my to do list for the engine. Yup, Amazon, $10 CDN including delivery. 2500 of 'em in a jar. That's a lot of balls! Drum roll?

Trying something new. 0.56mm solder balls to simulate the snaps on the cockpit tarp. Small indents were molded in already so I gust glued them in. I lost a few along the way but no worries, that little bottle contains 2500 of them.

So while my engine consultant is assessing the situation I am noodling away fixing little things like decal silvering. Done by touching up with red paint. Before and after pictures

Thanks Andy, here's one more ref pic and 2 of my parts. The distributor is molded into the upper engine and sits in the middle of the head (lateral) where it should more to the right side. Unless I got something wrong distributor surgery will be needed.

But Pierre's Alfas will not have such beautifully and accurately detailed engines!

I like it! Have you tried Vallejo Rust. That stuff is also pretty good.

Engine on mine not started...kind of staying away as I have no clue what to do with it. Watching what you do with your's and might copy a few bits. I need an engine for dummies tutorial.

Thanks Mark. Early in the planning stage I decided to go the low/no gloss route as it appearrs more period correct to me. I want to add a bit of race weathering as tracks of the era were not pristine clean as today and cars spitted oil all over. How to achieve that is the big question...

Thanks Daniel. I'm happy with the direction I took with the rad grille. This resin kit is a big challenge (for me) so any little win adds up.

Ace, for tail lights you may want to check out GeminiModelcars. They have a variety of sizes available. Clear colored resin drops over PE.

Beauties!

Work on the front grill and headlamp assembly. The kit has a race number decal for the grille but I don't trust it can be made to conform so I decided to paint the number instead. I photocopied the decal and used that as a template to cut the number on masking tape, painted the number & black washed the grille after that. The headlamp covers are solid resin pieces and I wanted to imitate the clear red covers used by the period race Alfas. After primer I coated a mix of Vallejo cooper and dark red, then later a thick coat of Tamiya clear red.