The most exotic of Italian Exotics

[Bugatti Fan]

This must be one of the most complex out of the box kits imaginable.

Added to which this particular build and paint job can only be described as superb!

I would like to know how Michael works all those carbon fibre decals over the multitude of compound curves. Maybe a Tips and Tricks thread for the future?

[mrm]

Very little left on my interior other than the door panels. That is the seatbelts. No suggestion of seatbelt hardware is to be seen in the interior, so I made some simple buckles from sheet styrene and painted them black with red for the release buttons.

 

Carbon decals were installed to the sides and backs of the seats, which I forgot to take pics of and then the seatbelt buckles were glued to the seats.

 

At this point I thought I was ready to attach the front and rear subframes to the monocoque, when I realized that I had not attached the oil tank and the air boxes to the rear frame. The oil tank has no back side, but that is no problem, because once assembled, the only thing visible from it are the two caps on top and the filler necks below them. I was thinking of boxing it, but decided it was a waste of time and material. 

When I got to the air boxes I was shocked. In this overly detailed and sometimes unnecessarily complex model, the air boxes must be some kind of blooper. They are a single part each, with shallow poor detail in their opening and no backing whatsoever. And yes their backs are visible once assembled. What is even more surprising is the lack of any connection to the turbos intake. It's like they took a break in the middle of designing the engine parts and then just forgot these parts and kept on.

I hoped the primer would help to find some detail, but there is not even much depth. 

 

So I drilled a hole in the recess of each box, which is shown from their back sides.

 

Then threaded my Swiss Jeweler's saw through the hole and cut out the box as much as I could.

 

The rest I carved out with my exacto knife and then sanded the inside as much as I could with micro files. 

 

Next I cut out some backing plates from styrene.

 

And then build up styrene stock on their backs, which was then filed into the general shape I needed.

 

They were test fitted

 

and then some rough paper with simple lines printed, was glued on them.

 

Now we have proper air boxes with visible air filters in them.

 

The boxes backs were then glued together, sanded smooth, painted black and covered in 1/24 scale twill weave carbon.

 

This is where I was starting to lose my mind and I had to put the model away and take a deep breath. I decided that I will probably do a better job tomorrow in fabricating the pipes that connect the boxes to the turbo inlets. 

 

So, stay tuned and thanks for looking!

Edited July 30, 2022 by mrm

[David G.]

It's a shame about the air boxes but it looks like you managed to address the issues quite nicely.

On the other hand, the interior looks great!

I love the plaid, I did something similar when I built my 51 Chevy convertible.

With such a visible interior, I felt that a little more eye-candy was needed so I created a plaid pattern using images that I found online. 

Thanks again for taking the time to share this wonderful build with us.

David G.

 

[mrm]

4 hours ago, David G. said:

It's a shame about the air boxes but it looks like you managed to address the issues quite nicely.

On the other hand, the interior looks great!

I love the plaid, I did something similar when I built my 51 Chevy convertible.

With such a visible interior, I felt that a little more eye-candy was needed so I created a plaid pattern using images that I found online. 

Thanks again for taking the time to share this wonderful build with us.

David G.

 

Thank you David.

Your plaid in the Chevy's interior looks great. I have never gotten around to designing my own decals. Then I will probably go completely mental. LOL. Altho I would love some of the typical punk rock red plaid on a decal. I would so totally use it in a hot rod or even an exotic interior. 

[mrm]

I did work on finishing my engine and putting my complete chassis together today.

First, I made some ducts to connect the air filter boxes to the turbo inlets. I made them simple, using heated sprue pieces from the kit that were bent to shape and painted metallic black.

 

I scratched my head about making the steps efficient. So I first attached the boxes to the frame, without covering their front sides with carbon. Then I attached the newly made ducts to them and the turbos. On this picture only the left one is in. 

 

After attaching both of them with 5min epoxy, I covered the boxes with large weave carbon to match the rest of the engine components. Note the hollow oil and water tanks. I decided to leave them, as you can never see their back. 

 

Here everything is completed and you can see the carbon boxes with the air filter visible inside.

 

Mock up teaser....

 

Starting to fit panels and prep them. I will start with teh bottom half of the car first. 

 

I have more to show, but have to upload the pictures first, so stay tuned and as always - thanks for looking!

[Street Rod]

Absolutely fantastic! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kit with this much detail out of the box, and your attention to the extras with fab, paint and decals are taking it over the top! 

[NOBLNG]

Very meticulous job you’re doing on this one. It looks fantastic so far!?

[David G.]

The engine photos are excellent! Seeing the filter elements inside the air boxes adds a nice touch, well worth the effort.

David G.

[mrm]

12 hours ago, Street Rod said:

Absolutely fantastic! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a kit with this much detail out of the box, and your attention to the extras with fab, paint and decals are taking it over the top! 

 

11 hours ago, NOBLNG said:

Very meticulous job you’re doing on this one. It looks fantastic so far!?

 

3 hours ago, David G. said:

The engine photos are excellent! Seeing the filter elements inside the air boxes adds a nice touch, well worth the effort.

David G.

Thank you guys. I'm glad you like it. 

[mrm]

Now here are some more pictures....

The AC vents were installed in the dash, followed by the steering wheel and the instrument cluster. 

 

Then the front and rear subassemblies were glued to the monocoque and the floor plate was glued to everything.

 

Now we have a roller. Altho the wheels need to be taken off and redone on the inside. They are typical Japanese kit wheels/tires, which altho superior to anything found in American kits, still tick me off with their ridge on the inside. They look great on a closed fender cars, which is the case 99% of the time, but on this model they are fully visible on the inside and those ridges have to go. 

 

The roof was fitted on to check for any potential issues, before the white was painted on it. It is drying right now and then it will receive a healthy dose of carbon on its upper side before everything is covered in clear coat.

 

Interior looking good.

 

 

The side body work was test fitted next. You may notice the circular cut outs I drilled right head of the latches on the bottom.

 

Those were made to accept magnets, which would correspond to magnets in the doors in order to keep them nice and snug when shut. At least that's plan but I am already unning into issues with it. More on that later.

 

Front and rear bumpers were primed and then sprayed with metallic black as a base for carbon fiber. 

 

Same steps were taken with the sides after puttying and sanding the magnets areas. 

 

After the metallic black had dried under the sun on my deck, the side was masked, separating what would be the visible monocoque under the body work (masked off areas) from the body work on the exterior (area left to be painted).

 

And the rear bumper and sides painted with the masking removed. Now all black area will be covered with carbon fiber before the clear coat. 

 

Thanks for looking!

Edited August 1, 2022 by mrm

[mrm]

There is a lot more to show, but I simply did not have time o upload the pictures. 

I just did one really quick, because I just had to vent out.

This is by far the most difficult, tedious, maddening, complicated, expensive, extensive and over all pain in the behind decal job I have EVER done. And I have done A LOT of carbon fiber in the past. Doing a Tamiya Ferrari Enzo or LaFerrari is a walk in the park in comparison to the amount of work involved here and the complications of it. 

 

[David G.]

Given the complexity of this kit and the amount of extra work you're putting into it, it's hard to believe how quickly you're progressing on this build.

It all looks fantastic too. 

David G.

[bobthehobbyguy]

Impressive work. Nice work on all the decals.

[Bronzekeg]

nice detail work.

[mrm]

5 hours ago, David G. said:

Given the complexity of this kit and the amount of extra work you're putting into it, it's hard to believe how quickly you're progressing on this build.

It all looks fantastic too. 

David G.

Thank you David. Altho after two full days of working on the two bumpers and two lower side panels (well, mostly) and still not being done with them, is not what I would call exactly a quick progress. LOL. It's quickening the process of my hairs getting white tho.

[mrm]

1 hour ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

Impressive work. Nice work on all the decals.

Thank you, Bob. 

2 minutes ago, Bronzekeg said:

nice detail work.

Thanks Ken. 

[mrm]

These are just part of the templates for the decals for just one of the side pieces. The problem is not just applying the decals, but creating a realistic weave, facing in particular direction. So not only all the pieces lined up in the same direction, but also matching the seams between the separate pieces, so it looks continuous. 

 

I wanted blue carbon and contemplated different ways of doing it. I was thinking wrapping everything in regular carbon and then spraying clear blue over it. Or putting blue pearl powder in the clear coat over those areas. Or in this case using Scalemotorsport clear carbon decals. These are new to me, because they greatly differ from their previous clear carbon I have used in the past. The main difference is that in the past the lines printed on the decal were the silverish portion of the carbon and now they are the black portion. The cool part about it is, that depending on the grey/silver you use under them, you can control how bright/pronounced regular carbon is, if tahst's what you're making. The down side is that before you could put them over black or gunmetal and have a cool effect, where now they just disappear over those colors. 

Anyway, clear carbon has always been a major pain to work with, simply because it's clear. So with regular carbon decals, you can overlap them and repair spots, manipulate direction of the weave and with enough heat and solvaset even fold the decals over on corners and make them smooth, with all imperfections disappearing under a good clear coat. With the clear carbon you can not do anything like that. if you overlap two pieces of decal you can see the weave underneath and even if you perfectly align the two weaves, the line is much darker at that spot. With regular carbon decals, when applied over black or gunmetal, if you have a little crack or gap in between two decals, you can get away with it, because the color underneath matches one of the two colors of the decal. With clear carbon ou have no such margin for error, as the color underneath shows through and it looks a lot brighter than when covered. The other thing is that you have to be very careful not to hurt the finish under the decal. With the regular carbon I can use a fresh blade exacto knife to trace and cut my templates right on the part. With the clear you can not do that or you will see the marks on the surface underneath. So not only your templates have to be drawn and then cut out, but they have to be absolutely perfect or the part you're "carbonizing" (I love making up words) would not look very nice.

So, here you have the parts sprayed with Tamiya Mica Blue, which is the exact same color as the brake calipers, with the clear carbon applied on the part in the middle. This gives a much darker appearance, which mimics the blue used on the interior pretty well. My original plan was using even darker blue, but once the decals were applied on it, the carbon weave all but disappeared. 

 

Making the templates almost feels like putting together a nice suit.

 

Making three totally separate parts with complex curves match the carbon weave as one fluid continuous part is a whole new level of PITA and worked out every nerve I had left in me. Stupidest thing is that I plan to display the model in fully open state all the time, which means that the matching weave direction is not even going to be seen, as the panels will not stay in the position like on the picture. But I know they match and that gives me a completely senseless and mazochistic type of pleasure. LOL

 

 

More to come.......

Thanks for looking. 

Edited August 2, 2022 by mrm

[mrm]

Finally, the first batch of parts to receive the first of many upcoming clear coats is ready. 

 

Meanwhile, this photo revealed a mistake which I will have to correct. The backs of the headrests are very visible through the rear window and their back sides should be in carbon fiber. The seats are already glued in place, but the roof is not so it shouldn't be extremely hard to do. 

 

There is still so much more carbon to do.......

[Mattilacken]

Wow! That’s some extensive carbon work! Great work!

[David G.]

Wow Michael, I had no idea of all the complexities regarding the use of carbon fiber decals. I mean I knew that it was tricky stuff, but sheesh!

I find myself seeing all this work you've done in a whole new light.

BTW, the blue CF looks positively electric!

David G.

[mrm]

7 hours ago, Mattilacken said:

Wow! That’s some extensive carbon work! Great work!

Thank you Anton.

5 hours ago, David G. said:

Wow Michael, I had no idea of all the complexities regarding the use of carbon fiber decals. I mean I knew that it was tricky stuff, but sheesh!

I find myself seeing all this work you've done in a whole new light.

BTW, the blue CF looks positively electric!

David G.

Thank you David. 

Yeah, carbon can be tricky to work with. The best tutorial you can get is probably on Scalemotorsport website. Still, it just takes a lot of experience dealing with it and you need lots and lots of patience. 

[mrm]

After the first coat of clear. some areas may need a little paint correction and be water sanded with some 2000 grit and receive a second coat of clear. Overall, I'm satisfied. 

More to come......

Thanks for looking.

[Timonator]

How did you do the blue cf ?

[Bronzekeg]

super nice!

[mrm]

1 hour ago, Bronzekeg said:

super nice!

Thank you. 
 

 

1 hour ago, Timonator said:

How did you do the blue cf ?

It’s all in the comments above.