alpha model Ferrari Roma

[harti20]

Hi all

After having finished the Lamborghini Aventador Roadster it's time for another italian sports car, but this time it will be a prancing horse from Maranello. I had three different models to choose from: the Ferrari SF90 Stradale, Ferrari Roma and the Ferrari Monza SP2. I would have loved to start all of them, but had to decide for one of them. For the Roma I already had a color scheme on my mind and had the paint needed at home (both points would have been true for the other two builds as well). But the decisive factor was that the paint had already been opened for another build I finished some time ago and I had the impression that I had to use this paint quite soon. So of course I picked the SF90 Roma from the shelf... 😁

Up to know not much happened. All the resin parts have been cleaned (although I have to admit that there was very little cleaning needed) and the one piece that arrived already damaged has been fixed. After that all the parts have been primered so that I'll be able to handle them without the need of wearing gloves

The damaged part as it was inside the box

and after fixing and putting on some primer. I think the repair turned out quite ok

Finally I also put some coats of primer, followed by some thin layers of paint on the body. On the front hood I had to sand some dust, so I'll go over these spots again with paint and maybe I'll give the whole body some more layers before adding the decals and clear coat.

This time the carbon work will be on an absolute minimum, so that motivation should stay on a high level, not like on my McLaren Senna (yes, it does still exist) 😉

Wednesday I should receive the interior paint ordered, so I should be able to start with the interior next weekend
Urs

[kelson]

Looks good so far.

[harti20]

Hi all

On 1/15/2024 at 8:18 PM, kelson said:

Looks good so far.

Thank you very much

As mentioned in my previous post, the body had some spots where I had to sand it to get rid of dust, so I repainted these spots afterwards and after that was done, the whole body got two more layers of paint. Soon I'll apply the few carbon decals and the Ferrari badges

As the primer's grey was much darker than I had it in mind, I first sprayed the interior white, before applying Ferrari's Cuoio paint. I was so pleased by the color that I changed the color scheme of the interior to have more Cuoio and less black surfaces.

One of the seats has alreday been masked and painted on the backside. Now I'll only have to paint a small area around the headrest in semi gloss black and add the additional parts, then this one will be finished and ready for final installation
 

That's it for today's update. I think I'll be able to show more of the interior next week and maybe also a body that is ready for clear coating, with all the decals on
Urs

[dino246gt]

This will be so cool, I love the Roma and I love Alpha models, keep posting pictures please, ciao!

 

[SpikeSchumacher]

Very nice!

[harti20]

Hi all

On 1/23/2024 at 3:24 PM, dino246gt said:

This will be so cool, I love the Roma and I love Alpha models, keep posting pictures please, ciao!

 

Don't worry, I will continue to post pictures

On 1/23/2024 at 5:42 PM, SpikeSchumacher said:

Very nice!

Thank you

The last few days I applied the few carbon decals on the body. Also the PE parts for the Ferrari logos have been attached. Just in case the carbon is not that obvious in this picture: It's the splitter and the side skirt

After that, the diffusor received its last pieces of carbon and the first few PE parts. There would have been a decal for the unpainted spot, but somehow I didn't find out how to apply it correctly. In the only way it made sense to me, the pattern didn't match at all with the surrounding decals. So I decided to do without it and paint this area in black one the clear coat has been applied.

The rims have been painted with Alclad Magnesium first (rim at the left in the picture underneath), as I thought, Gunmetal would be too dark. But then I had the idea to apply some Hasegawa Mirror foil to the spokes, paint over it and remove the paint on the foil afterwards. But as you can see on the rim in the middle, there was almost no difference between the Magnesium and the mirror foil, so I decided to paint it in Alclad Gunmetal anyway. The (almost) final result can be seen on the right rim in the pic. It's only almost the final result because I had the idea to apply some nuts from a 1/12 MotoGP detail set. So far I didn't take a picture of the really final result 🙂 

Finally the seat has been completed. Whereat... it's only nearly completed too 😉 Just when I thought, I had it done, I saw that there is a Cavallino Rampante on the headrest. alpha model provides you with a red decal for that. But by looking at pictures of the 1:1 seat, the horse seems to be embroidered and therefore has a certain thickness. So I looked at my leftovers from previous builds and found two PE parts, which are a little too large, but still acceptable. As the embroidery on the original seat is a little darker than the rest of the seat, I'll use black primer before applying the same brown (Ferrari Cuoio) I used on the seat.

 

That's it for today's update. With a little luck I'll be able to finish body work prior to the start of my son's school holidays, so I could clear coat it  before
Urs

[Funkychiken]

Beautiful start to a stunning car!

[harti20]

Hi all

On 2/7/2024 at 11:16 PM, Funkychiken said:

Beautiful start to a stunning car!

Thank you very much

Unfortunately I didn't find that much time to continue this build this week as I would have liked, but there is some small progress I'd like to show you

Let's start with the pic where I had a minor shock moment when editing the photographs for this W.I.P. As you can see, the brown areas are of different size... 🤔
Luckily the reference pictures show that the driver's side is correct, so I'll only have to cover some brown with grey. The other way round would have been a little more laborious.

Then the Ferrari badges have been applied to the body. Therefore the body is now ready to be clear coated. With a little luck I will be able to do so upcoming friday

And finally the seats have been completed. As mentioned in my last update, the badges for the headrest are slightly too large, but in my opinion they're ok the way they are. And I think nobody will really notice it, unless he/she is a Ferrari Roma expert

That's it for today's update. I hope I'll be able to show more next time
Urs

[harti20]

Hi all

Unfortunately I had to postpone clear coating as my son caught a flu just before his school holidays, so he was at home on my intended clear coating day. And as this 2K stuff is quite aggressive, I only use it when he's at school to be able to give the whole apartment a thorough vent before he comes home. Now I think I'll have to wait until mid march for my next attempt at clear coating. But first of all nobody is pushing me and second there is enough other work to do on the Roma (and the McLaren Senna and a figure I started some time ago and an additional build which runs alongside and... I think I just have too many concurrent projects going on at the moment...)

First of all the painting of the rear seat has been corrected. After that the buckles for the rear seats and the first few PE parts have been installed. Additionaly the grommet (I hope it's called like that ) had to be removed because I noticed that i misinterpreted the instructions and these parts should have been attached to the inside of the body. The spot where I had installed it first won't even be visible once everything is put together...

After this work on the dashboard continued

And finally the door panels could be completed. Each panel consists of a total of 6 individual parts which makes painting much easier  

That's it for this week's update
Urs

[harti20]

Hi all  

Unfortunately I didn't have that much time to continue this build during the last two weeks, but nevertheless I reached a point where I can't continue without clear coating the body. I hope I'll be able to do so upcoming friday, if not then surley / hopefully / maybe one week later

First of all the floor mats have been painted. For the "Roma" lettering there are two decals provided in the kit, but only in red, which I thought wouldn't really match with the rest of my interior. So I decided to use some Tamiya Panel Line Accent Color Brown instead, let that flow in the lettering's recesses and wipe it off the surrounding faces with a moist q-tip. I only saw on this macro that I didn't manage to wipe it off completely in some spots. Also the black parts look much worse in this pic than in reality, as it is the case so often...

After that the steering wheel was completed, with a total of 5 decals, measuring only 1 x 1.5 mm partially. Usually I tend to do without such small decals as they almost aren't visible in the end and because they usually stick everywhere but in the spot where they should when I try to apply them. But somehow I must have had the luck of a good moon-/star-constellation as this time most of them went on without any bigger issue

The dashboard was completed too. Unfortunately I didn't notice that the large instrument-cluster-decal went on quite lopsided until it was too late. But as hardly anybody will be able to see it in the final model, I can live with that, even though it annoys me...

And finally the headlights have been completed and are now ready to be inserted in the clear coated and polished body, once I had the time to do so

That's all for now. Maybe there will be a larger gap until my next update because it's now depending on when I'll have time to clear coat the body.
Urs

[Dann Tier]

Sweeet!

[harti20]

Hi all

On 3/12/2024 at 11:06 AM, Dann Tier said:

Sweeet!

Thank you very much 🙂

The interior has been mostly completed. Now I'll only have to install the seatbelts, the seats and the middle console / dashboard.

The dashboard / middle console part has been completed

And on the diffusor the exhaust pipes and the meshes around them have been installed. The only parts missing now on the diffusor are two small red clear parts. But as I dropped every single piece at least 23 times yesterday before I was able to attach it to its position, I gave up and will attach them later...

And finally the body was clear coated and left to dry and harden for a few days. Now I'll soon start sanding / polishing it and once this is done, it will soon be time for final assembly

That's it for this week's update
Urs

[TransAmMike]

But i'ts not red😂.   Just kiddin'....looking great!!  

[beeRS]

Very nice work. It all looks stunning. 

[harti20]

19 hours ago, TransAmMike said:

But i'ts not red😂.   Just kiddin'....looking great!!  

I know, I know... it's my first non-red Ferrari... 😁 Thank you very much for your comment. Although I'm a little disappointed by the look of the paint, I was hoping to see more of the metallic effect. Maybe it will look better after sanding and polishing...  

11 hours ago, beeRS said:

Very nice work. It all looks stunning. 

Thank you very much  

[Bainford]

Looking great!  Very nice work. 

[harti20]

Hi all

On 3/27/2024 at 5:42 AM, Bainford said:

Looking great!  Very nice work. 

Thank you very much.

Today I only have a small update, but one that was quite time consuming. To remember again, how the body looked like after 6 coats of clear

After letting the clear harden for a few days, I started sanding and polishing the body to get that deep shine I am looking for. After about 2 hours of sanding with 3000 grit Tamiya sanding sponge it looked like this. The goal of this sanding step is, to get an even, flat surface which looks quite dull compared to before

After this I continued sanding with some 4000 grit sanding pad from GodHand

Followed by 6000 grit sanding pad from GodHand

Increasing the grit to 8000, again with sanding pads from GodHand

And finally with 10'000 grit sanding pad

As you can see in these pictures, the shine is gradually coming back. Every grit took me another 30 minutes to sand the whole body. After that I started polishing using the coarse polishing compound from Zero Paints

After this step I wanted to continue with the next step, the medium polishing compound by Zero Paints. Unfortunately I noticed too late, that the compound had dried out too much and made some deep scratches to the roof, so that I had to start over sanding the whole roof from 3000 grit all the way up to 10'000 and polish it again with the coarse compound. Happily it was only the roof, so I could finish it quite quick and then continue with the blue polish from Tamiya.

To finish the polishing process I wanted to give the fine compound from Zero Paints a chance, but when opening the container, it looked even drier than the medium one...

So, I decided to use the white Tamiya compound instead, which was still fine even if I bought it long time before I bought the Zero Paints compounds. That's the second time I bought polishing compounds from Zero Paints and the second time this happens (well.... the first time they already arrived like this...) 😒 However, after polishing it with the Tamiya compound it looked like this

Every polishing step took about another 30 minutes (well, the second one took longer, as I had to re-sand and -polish the roof). To finish the treatment of the body, I eventually applied some Tamiya Modeling Wax and that's the way how the body looks now. I have to say, I'm quite happy with the result

So much for today. I think that maybe I should be able to finish this build during easter
Urs

[NOBLNG]

It is a thing of beauty!😎 Nice work on the polishing.👍

[Bainford]

Yes, I agree. That's gorgeous. 

[beeRS]

Polishing is hard work, and you’ve made a fantastic job of it. That black finish really pops now. 

[harti20]

Hi all

Thank you very much for all your kind comments  

As I mentioned in my last update on Good Friday, there was a relatively high probability that I would be able to finish the Roma over Easter. In fact, I was able to fit the last parts this afternoon and complete the build. The assembly was actually quite relaxed from A to Z and was a lot of fun. The only exceptions were (as usual for me with the alpha model kits) the windshield wipers, where I still haven't found a clever recipe for how to assemble them, and the underbody. However, the problems with the underbody were self-inflicted, so I should have known better. Traditionally, the underbody of the alpha model kits is attached with screws. Just as traditionally, however, the holes in the body provided for this purpose are firstly too narrow and secondly too short for the screws supplied. As I'm always worried that the body might crack if I just throw the screws in, I always drill them out a little. Of course, I only think of this when the underbody needs to be attached, i.e. at the very end.

 One of the last things I did today was to widen the holes and fit the underbody. While drilling, I kept removing the chips from the drill bit and blowing away the loose ones. After the car was back on its wheels, I noticed drilling residues on the windshield, so I took the anti-static brush to wipe them away and found that they couldn't be wiped away because they had somehow gotten into the interior and were stuck to the inside of the windshield... 🙄 I didn't dare to wipe the window again, so now I have to live with the yellow resin residues lying around in the interior...

But enough talk, here are the pictures of the finished Ferrari Roma. As usual, better ones will follow the next time I was in the studio  
Urs

 

[Bainford]

Very nice Urs. That is a lovely Ferrari.

[tkzwolf]

Looks great.  i recently purchased this kit and appreciate following your build.

[stevez]

What clear paint did you use?