"Barn find" Italeri's Lamborghini Miura

[89AKurt]

How can you hate a Miura?  When it's a poorly done, sort of curbside kit that is eclipsed by the Hasegawa kit.  What can be done to improve such a kit, besides step on it?  I've done several models of such kits, as beaters or abandoned derelicts, because it's not worth spending months on it when better kits exist.  When I saw this PETROLICOUS: This Lamborghini Miura Is A Family Heirloom Barn Find article, I knew what to build.  Today in my search, found two other cars that were found abandoned, so it's a ripe subject.  There are some things that I could change to be faithful to the car, grip shift handle, custom air filters, steering wheel design, some plaques, but I won't.  So here goes, totally Box Stock, will not modify, switch parts, make parts, nothing but give it the crummiest paint job possible. ?

Box art is nice, with the 50th anniversary logo.

To be fair, most of the parts don't need much cleanup.  The wheels are nicely detailed, but one end has more flashing than the other end.

The body is reasonably accurate, mold lines are very minimal.  There is one booger that I *had to* fix.  If this was to be a contest model, there are some minor spots that should be puttied.

Glued together sub-assemblies.  Separating the body parts was dicey, could not use sprue cutters, so I sawed them apart.  Some parts that were elsewhere on the sprues, are Tacky glued near parts to be painted the same color.

First paint session.  Quick coat of Tamiya primer on the body.  Model Master flat black (this is sort of like watching someone die a slow death, what am I going to use when it's used up?) everywhere, the interior of the subject car is black.  Alclad magnesium on the wheels, polished aluminum steering wheel, headlights and spinners, (regular) aluminum carbs, engine bottom and hood hinges.

The chassis and interior are done.  I painted the air cleaner tops with Alclad white aluminum.  Testors canopy glue the headlight lenses and back window.  Flattened the tires before sticking them on the plastic shafts.

That interior sucks, look at the legroom! ?  So much wrong with it, but when the windows are dusted, won't see it.

Maybe I'll paint the body orange tonight.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I'm in for the ride.

Got a deal on a boogered one of these a while back, thinking I'd do a Jota.

Edited December 30, 2021 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[89AKurt]

It's going to be a short ride, blasting this one out.

Found the bottle of paint had self-destructed, good thing Hobby Lobby is near me, but $1.99 a bottle, I remember when .39 was the price last century.  Just Testors orange, drying booth is near the wood stove (6 feet away).  Note the color shift, LED "daylight" bulb in the paint booth, daylight overcast in the house.

[steveracer]

Kurt. Let us know the real build time.  I want to do a quickie but can’t get myself to focus and blast one out.  
 

I really like this idea. 

[cobraman]

Perhaps not a great kit but I bet it will look darn good when you finish it.

[Oldmopars]

Cool, I prefer the old beat up look, junkers, etc. With so many factory polished muscle cars, I just pass them by, but this has my interest.  

[Oldcarfan27]

How about a "ravine find" Lambo?

[89AKurt]

11 hours ago, steveracer said:

Kurt. Let us know the real build time.  I want to do a quickie but can’t get myself to focus and blast one out.  
 

I really like this idea. 

How does 14.5 hours sound?  This breaks a record for me.  I was depressed about having WIPs that have been sitting for months.

11 hours ago, cobraman said:

Perhaps not a great kit but I bet it will look darn good when you finish it.

It looks good from a distance, through the trees, at night. ?

10 hours ago, Oldmopars said:

Cool, I prefer the old beat up look, junkers, etc. With so many factory polished muscle cars, I just pass them by, but this has my interest.  

Thanks for saying that.  I admire and appreciate perfect and shiny paint jobs, because I have such difficulty accomplishing them.  Regular folks stop and look at these at contests/displays, and smile.

8 hours ago, Oldcarfan27 said:

How about a "ravine find" Lambo?

[...]

? You know how much time that would take? ?  One of my favorite movies, Italian Job.  When I had the MINI Cooper, the meet/rally shows would usually show this movie.

Masked and sprayed the louvers flat black, and used the Splash aluminum for the rocker (almost ruined it, started to craze but it adds patina).

The only thing I changed, the Lamborghini badge decal was bigger than the molded in one, so I used the aftermarket badge (found on eBay).  Didn't use the Bertone and tail badge decals, the molded ones are good enough to paint.  Simply glued the license plate on, it's obviously not representative of the subject car, but it's close in colors.  I think the headlight eyebrows are too big.  And having the exhaust tips on the bonnet is stupid, but there is no exhaust system.  The subject car has different badges on the side for some reason.  Used a fine pen for the jamb lines.

First weathering was in the cockpit and engine.

All the body parts are glued on.  The side windows are die-cut sheet plastic, but still needed to trim to fit better.  Instructions showed the mirror on the door, most cars have it on the fender.  Subject car has different mirrors, and two of them.

The photographs show some disturbance of the dust, tried wet toilet paper, and first try of the AK Interactive plastic putty intended for camouflage.

First session of adding the dust layer.  Used mostly Dullcote, with just a little of the other colors, first one color, then added another, which made the paint more opaque.  I broke every rule of laying down paint, started over the body which spurts globs, zig-zagged around, didn't stop/end away from the body, just had fun screwing it up. ?  Made sure I was aiming from above, not much from the side.

Because the bonnet hinge snaps in place, it had to be a pain, ended up getting a slight imprint of the paper towel in the "paint", so did another session with two different colors in the flat clear, just a tiny bit of olive drab.  This time I sprayed down on the wheels too.  The last paint touch-up was flat black in the rocker scoops (subject car has strakes).  So I managed to adhere to the Box Stock method, which was really hard! ?

IT IS FINITO!

 

Edited December 31, 2021 by 89AKurt

[Bullybeef]

Impeccable detailing!! 

[ChrisR]

Cool!!

[Cool Hand]

Great job all round, well done.

[slusher]

definitely looks like a barn find.    Fantastic work Kurt!

[70 Sting]

Very Cool ?

[89AKurt]

15 hours ago, Bullybeef said:

Impeccable detailing!! 

Appreciate your comment. ?

11 hours ago, ChrisR said:

Cool!!

?

7 hours ago, Cool Hand said:

Great job all round, well done.

Thank you!

3 hours ago, slusher said:

definitely looks like a barn find.    Fantastic work Kurt!

Good, that was my goal.  Just need to build the garage it was found in.  ?

3 hours ago, 70 Sting said:

Very Cool ?

?

One small detail I forgot to mention, used a needle file to elongate the rear holes for the axle, to drop the rear end.

Someone on Fakebook asked why I built it this way.  One reason was because the Hasegawa kit is much better.  I almost want to get the upgraded kit with photo-etch parts.

Took studio glamor pictures, so will post in Under Glass.  This has to be the most annoying angle, showing how the bonnet with attached exhaust pipes lift up the rear wheels.  Also seeing daylight through the engine is too funny.  Also seeing daylight through the front slot openings is annoying, easy to fix with black paper if I wanted to go beyond Box Stock.  The generic P7 tires are just wrong, the Hasegawa has correct Cinurato CN36 treads and profile ratio.

[beeRS]

Good job on getting this done so quickly. Sounds like you had a blast spraying the ‘dust’ on. Despite the kit, I think it looks pretty cool as a barn find. 

[89AKurt]

17 minutes ago, beeRS said:

Good job on getting this done so quickly. Sounds like you had a blast spraying the ‘dust’ on. Despite the kit, I think it looks pretty cool as a barn find. 

Thank you!  Yea, this has to be the shortest WIP topic on the forum. ?

[24JoeF]

I just finished building the same Lamborghini Miura model kit.  Please see the images below.  Thank you.

Edited December 5, 2024 by 24JoeF
To upload the images of my completed model kit and edit a word.

[89AKurt]

On 12/3/2024 at 2:21 PM, 24JoeF said:

I just finished building the same Lamborghini Miura model kit.  Please see the images below.  Thank you.

Hello!  Welcome to the forum, I see this is your first post.  😀   It is too clean. 😆

[24JoeF]

Kurt, thank you for the welcome!  Haha, yeah I did go sort of light for my first post.  But you are right, this particular kit was extremely challenging.  There appeared to be many manufacturing defects which I had to compensate for during the assembly process.  For instance, the instructions were so poorly written, I put the back wheels on the front and and front wheels on the back and when I realized that there was a problem with trying to make them spin, I saw that the instructions had not properly indicated which wheels to put where on the chassis.  I was able to remove the wheels and remount them to the chassis without any further problems/damage.  My main issues were with the windshield and front lights.  The windshield was not molded properly and curved away from the frame of the body too soon.  If you look really close, there is a gap.  I enclosed a picture from preassembly which really demonstrates the gap between the windshield and the body.  This made gluing the windshield in place extremely difficult.

 

Another defect I had to compensate for related to the front headlights.  I had to make brackets out of extra plastic trim to support the underneath of the headlight fixtures which otherwise without additional support simply fell through the holes in the hood they were to be inserted in during assembly.    

 

I have another picture showing how poorly molded the front headlight assembly was prior to making a bracket from scratch for it.  It literally fell right through the hole where it was supposed to be placed in for assembly.  Not photographed is how poorly designed the assembly was for the mounting of the body to the chassis.  I worked on a model car many years ago where the body was mounted to the chassis via four screws, one at each corner of the chassis.  That was not the case with this kit.  The manufacturer literally intended for the body to be glued to the chassis.  This was a difficult process and I had to put a thin bead of glue around the perimeter of the chassis/body and hold the two pieces together for an hour and then set it down to dry for a day.

 

There were many other issues with this kit.  But the last one that I will describe in this post created another issue when the time came to mount the chassis to the body.  The dash/console assembly as instructed interfered with properly mounting the body to the chassis.  The pieces were evidently not molded correctly and what happened was the body floated and rocked back and forth over the top of the dash, preventing the bottom of the body from fitting flush with the chassis.  Therefore, I had to detach the top piece of the dash from the center console, which I had already glued together per the instructions.  After I detached the two pieces, I had to sand down the edges of the center console (not the sides but the edges).  Then I had to reglue the top piece of the dash to the underneath of the front hood where the hood met the bottom of the windshield.  I also detached the piece of the center console where the pedal assembly was glued to from the chassis/interior where I had originally glued that piece to per the instructions.  I sanded down the edges of that piece as well and then reglued it to the chassis/interior.  After that I was able to successfully mount the body to the chassis by allowing the sides of the center console attached to the top dash/front hood to easily slip into and through the sides of the center console walls/pedal assembly attached to the chassis/interior.  Photos enclosed will allow for a better understanding of what I have described above.

 

The first photo I uploaded demonstrates the large gap on both sides of the windshield.  Although this photo only shows the gap on one side because I had to hold the windshield in place while taking the photo.  The second photo shows how the front headlight assembly fell through the hole it was to be inserted into on the front hood.  The next photos show the brackets I made from the extra plastic trim in the kit.  The following photo shows the dash assembly before it was originally glued to the chassis/interior along with the back window assembly.  The last photo shows the top of the dash/center console assembly after I detached the whole assembly shown in the prior photo from the chassis/interior and then glued it to the underneath of the front hood where the hood meets the bottom of the windshield.

 

Kurt, I hope this is the level of detail you were looking for in a post.  Please let me know if you need more information about my build.  I would be more than happy to provide you with the details.

 

 

[PatW]

On 12/31/2021 at 6:18 AM, 89AKurt said:

How does 14.5 hours sound?  This breaks a record for me.  I was depressed about having WIPs that have been sitting for months.

It looks good from a distance, through the trees, at night. ?

Thanks for saying that.  I admire and appreciate perfect and shiny paint jobs, because I have such difficulty accomplishing them.  Regular folks stop and look at these at contests/displays, and smile.

? You know how much time that would take? ?  One of my favorite movies, Italian Job.  When I had the MINI Cooper, the meet/rally shows would usually show this movie.

Masked and sprayed the louvers flat black, and used the Splash aluminum for the rocker (almost ruined it, started to craze but it adds patina).

The only thing I changed, the Lamborghini badge decal was bigger than the molded in one, so I used the aftermarket badge (found on eBay).  Didn't use the Bertone and tail badge decals, the molded ones are good enough to paint.  Simply glued the license plate on, it's obviously not representative of the subject car, but it's close in colors.  I think the headlight eyebrows are too big.  And having the exhaust tips on the bonnet is stupid, but there is no exhaust system.  The subject car has different badges on the side for some reason.  Used a fine pen for the jamb lines.

First weathering was in the cockpit and engine.

All the body parts are glued on.  The side windows are die-cut sheet plastic, but still needed to trim to fit better.  Instructions showed the mirror on the door, most cars have it on the fender.  Subject car has different mirrors, and two of them.

The photographs show some disturbance of the dust, tried wet toilet paper, and first try of the AK Interactive plastic putty intended for camouflage.

First session of adding the dust layer.  Used mostly Dullcote, with just a little of the other colors, first one color, then added another, which made the paint more opaque.  I broke every rule of laying down paint, started over the body which spurts globs, zig-zagged around, didn't stop/end away from the body, just had fun screwing it up. ?  Made sure I was aiming from above, not much from the side.

Because the bonnet hinge snaps in place, it had to be a pain, ended up getting a slight imprint of the paper towel in the "paint", so did another session with two different colors in the flat clear, just a tiny bit of olive drab.  This time I sprayed down on the wheels too.  The last paint touch-up was flat black in the rocker scoops (subject car has strakes).  So I managed to adhere to the Box Stock method, which was really hard! ?

IT IS FINITO!

 

Brilliant!

[Bugatti Fan]

Nice models. All you need now is a model barn to 'find' them in.

[PatW]

2 minutes ago, Bugatti Fan said:

Nice models. All you need now is a model barn to 'find' them in.

Yes plenty of coffee sticks!