Retrofitting MFH Funnels and Ignition System onto 45 Year Old 1:12 Tamiya "Lotus 78 JPS Mk. III"

[okazaki0511]

About the paint peeling issue, you can use sandpaper polish the metal or resin parts to increase the contact area. Before painting, please wash it. Dishwahing liquid is ok. I don't know this procedure is OK or not for Tamiya's primer, but it should be fine for the Gunze B527 grey primer. I used it several years, please try it.

[4knflyin]

On 5/6/2024 at 10:00 PM, okazaki0511 said:

... Gunze B527 grey primer. I used it several years, please try it.

Randy, thanks. Your compliment pleases me ?. And in keeping with your format:

John, thanks. This post is for you (and the nasty judges from lo those many decades ago) lol. Vindication.

And Chia-Hao, I've been using the B276 (black) for about a month now and do really like it. Thanks for your input. Please keep it up (he said very selfishly).

Tires and wheels can make or break a kit

That's a personal view, but resin/plastic, and even badly cast rubber tires, suck. There's something very satisfying about a model that looks like, with a couple kW, it could go 0-60 in nothin' flat. But if they're wrapping badly fitting wheels, it gives the kit a cheap look. The latter is one of the issues I dealt with.

Re: the seams on this model's tires, they're very unfortunate,very unfortunate. John got dinged by the judges on his build of this kit after making the absolutely correct assessment and call re trying to remove them. And now he can send a link to this post to prove to them, on top of the evidence he provided on their possible realism, that the seams can't be removed without putting the tires at structural risk. Or, to John's point back then, without removing the wear indicators in the process. 

The tires before and after:

This was the start. I attached a Dremel mandrel to the wheel and used my drill, because it's more controllable at low rpm, to spin them while holding an 1800 grit sanding stick to it. That was slow going. By the way, they spin like so-so balanced wheels. It was pretty good.

 

I eventually got to using an 80-grit stick. This removed some serious rubber that somebody else who's into dioramas could have made good use of as marbles in a corner. But I stopped here because those wear indicators were at serious risk. That's not obvious in the pic unless you look closely. But I do like the way it "freshened" the rubber, so I did the other one later. 

 

I was curious as to whether you could see the seam on the inside of the tire to know if it would ever disappear. Yeah, it would, but they would look like dragster tires in the end when you put even a mg of weight on them.

 

Finally, about the ill-fitting rims. It turns out by chance that I read another build of a different Tamiya kit from the same era, both in distribution and F1 car from the late 70's, and he said the later kits had in their instructions the suggestion to remove 1 mm from the rear wheel widths to properly match the tires. I removed 1.5. See the second pic in this post for a before and after pic of the tire on the rims. Here's the the wheels comparison.

 

And finally, I went through the torture that I anticipated it would be 45 years ago and painted the logos. In the end, I think the bad paint job look is better than the no-paint job look. Back then I was certain the reverse was true. The tire on the left was my first attempt, cleaned up. The one on the right was after switching to a better quality brush, which appeared to be the solution to my bad first attempt. It was about 3 am and I was too tired to do more than the 'G,' but I was convinced I was on to something. Completing this one and the remaining six sides proved differently. I don't get it. That 'G' was so easy to do, the paint just flowed to the borders and filled it in so nicely. I eventually moved to using a toothpick like everybody else.

 

Oh, and the wheels got a paint job, too, using 30-year old Humbrol enamel. I compared it to the Mr. Color gold I have and there was no contest, even after polishing the Mr. C. (Wow, I just notice how badly the tire paint is cracking and that's just a couple days old — Tamiya flat white lacquer. Any suggestions?)

[4knflyin]

I’m sitting here waiting at the pharmacy, something more painful than seeing my recent work. So, instead of showing you that, I’ll show you something that delighted me almost as much as your assistance: tire markings made easy!!

I still can’t get over how poorly my tire painting came out when I compare it to others’. I neglected to research it prior to starting, which I’m guessing would have helped. I would hope so, anyway. 

But in the meantime, these should help on a few of the kits in my queue. The pre-painted ones are going on a MP4/6.

They are heavy! The feel is so different from the Tamiyas. I feel like, for all centricity, I should etch full-wet grooves in them. They have that feel to them. Aside from the molding tab left on them, which are tricky to remove, they are gorgeous. A worthwhile, one time, ¥10,000 purchase.

Side by side with the Tamiyas from the McLaren box (no seam!):

Next up? The trumpets and ignition are as done as they’re going to be ?

Edited June 10, 2024 by 4knflyin

[Bainford]

Yeah, they look great. And I agree, tires/wheels make the model. The Lotus will smart in the new shoes.

[4knflyin]

1 hour ago, Bainford said:

Yeah, they look great. And I agree, tires/wheels make the model. The Lotus will smart in the new shoes.

Unfortunately, that sexy rubber is for the next decade’s — the 80’s — F1 cars. I have to say though, my fear 45 years ago that a bad paint job would look worse than no paint job were unfounded In the end, I think. Even with the cracking paint and paint outside the lines, I prefer it. 

The nice new shoes were bought with the MP4/6 sitting in my pile in mind. That’ll be a good use of them, no?

 

thanks for reading and commenting. It’s been a bit dry lately. I was thinking that, perhaps, I broken some unspoken rule. Lol ?

Edited June 12, 2024 by 4knflyin

[4knflyin]

Just for grins:

Last night I spent my time at my workbench applying the tabu, unerlaubt, sponsorship decals. The 1978 Type 79 is a Minichamps build, and the 1977 Type 78 is TSM (TSM even got it correct right down to the white seat!). Also, BTW, I bought the models in 2020, spent the next three years searching for and buying three separate 1:18 decals, none of which sufficed on it's own. It required having all three before I was able to complete the job. Let's not talk about the 18 months the three sets of decals just sat around wanting for attention. A large part of that was that between two cars and three decal sets, I had five distinctly different-colored decals. On the cars, you get away what seemed like it was going to present a serious clash.

That the two cars came with markings that were such different colors I thought was strange. Noticeable, the TSM coming closest to the wheaten of the 1:1 cars got the top prize. And all three sets of decals were different colors, one of them was even the offensive goldish yellow that Tamiya supplied in the kit that's the subject of this thread. From that set I used only the British flag for the Type 79. Yet somehow, five different sets of decal colors seemed to work okay. Either that or my eyes are worse than I know.

For your amusement:

I had to graft the 'S' and 'l' on the right side of the 1977 car to spell the whole thing out. Sheesh.

And now for one that shows something that has bothered me since I first saw it, and I wasn't even building at that time. Why is is that they have access to such beautiful actually wire braided lines and we have to put with cloth imitations?! Somebody needs to explain this to me before I have a heart attack one time when I'm reminded of it.

A comparison of detail. On top, the TSM has more parts to remove because they have more to share. There's really not much comparison in this department. Detail matters, even if we can't see it without some effort, as we all know better than most. We're a rare breed. As a reminder, the white seat is correct for 1977, and not only for Team Lotus. I was surprised to find this out.

And know the real comparison:

The TSM (look at the wild job the assembler did on the spark plug wires):

The broom bristles, in case you missed them. Shows how little they understood at this point in the car's development.

EXIT: Wow. That decal work looks horrible, even if I can be excused for much of it because of the poor quality of the decals themselves. But looking between “John“ and “Player“, I remembered that, last night, I thought it was was funky. So I worked on it with solvent abhairdryer and what all, and I just couldn’t get it to look any better.
 

Today, it looked like there was a hair trapped underneath it. Except I know better, and it was more likely excess carrier film.

So I grabbed the model and, sure enough, it was that junk this decal sheet just would not let me get rid of prior to applying it to the car. Here’s a pic after working on it for 10 minutes, not daring to go further o dry decals for fear of wrecking it all together. I also removed some gro

m the ‘JPS.’

Thanks for looking. Have a great day!

Edited June 12, 2024 by 4knflyin

[Bainford]

8 hours ago, 4knflyin said:

 

thanks for reading and commenting. It’s been a bit dry lately. I was thinking that, perhaps, I broken some unspoken rule. Lol ?

Not at all, Marcus. You've got a good WIP going here. There are probably many more people checking in on this project than you realise. For me personally, when I see a thread I am interested in, I usually comment early on, but on subsequent visits I don't make much noise unless there is something specific I want to comment on or a question I want to ask. Saying over and over again "Nice work" or "That looks great" gets a bit trite, starts to feel a bit silly. Fear not, this is an interesting upgrade on a cool subject and your WIP is looking good. Cheers.

[4knflyin]

49 minutes ago, Bainford said:

Not at all, Marcus. You've got a good WIP going here. There are probably many more people checking in on this project than you realise. For me personally, when I see a thread I am interested in, I usually comment early on, but on subsequent visits I don't make much noise unless there is something specific I want to comment on or a question I want to ask. Saying over and over again "Nice work" or "That looks great" gets a bit trite, starts to feel a bit silly. Fear not, this is an interesting upgrade on a cool subject and your WIP is looking good. Cheers.

Yeah, I get it. But while you're here, have you ever seen braided line hose like that? If I found it, I'd be buying that stuff in every size possible and in quantities that I couldn't explain. Was it ever available commercially?

EDIT: Oops, we were ships passing at night. I was posting at the same time you were replying, so you didn't see what I'm talking about. It's the last pic in the decals post directly above your reply.

Edited June 12, 2024 by 4knflyin

[Bainford]

There are a number of sources for braided hose. One of the most common is Protech carpartscatalog2 (protechmodelparts.com) . They have SS braided hose in several sizes at that link, and machined metal hex fittings, too.

Another option is de-soldering braid. It's a fine copper braid. It looks flat, but is really a tubular braid that is flattened. A plastic or metal rod of the appropriate size can be inserted into the braid to make it appear to be a round hose, and to hold what ever shape you want it to be. Being copper, it needs to be painted, but it has a great braided hose look.

 

 

There was also a discussion on the forum a few weeks ago about using the center braided shield from a communications cable. Apparently this stuff is available in many sizes and is very reasonable priced. Unfortunately I can't find that thread now, but it had some good looking options for SS braided hose.

EDIT: I found the thread. It starts out talking about glass beads, but soon turns to a discussion on braided hose.

 

[4knflyin]

On 6/12/2024 at 10:28 AM, Bainford said:

There was also a discussion on the forum a few weeks ago about using the center braided shield from a communications cable. Apparently this stuff is available in many sizes and is very reasonable priced. Unfortunately I can't find that thread now, but it had some good looking options for SS braided hose.

I could have sworn you recommended old routers. And, bingo!, I took apart an early-century Linsys and (ding, ding, ding) it had three antennas, all with beautiful steel braided ground wires. Then I moved onto a dell laptop from 2000, and it had a ridiculously long antenna with a larger diameter core than the Linksys ones, and with thicker steel (0.4 vs 0.2 mm). It's a simple matter to change the diameter of these because the core wire is so easy to remove. 

However, the bigger you go, the shorter the length of braided wire you have to use. For example, using the Linksys wires: The inner wire is 0.65 mm. When I inserted a 1.5 mm core, the length was reduced by almost exactly two thirds.

Excellent, excellent find. Thank you.

[4knflyin]

OMG, that fact that this site doesn't autosave. This is the second time I've wiped out a post that I'd invested a significant amount of my waning energy writing. I don't normally yell when I'm alone. Just now was an exception.

Hold on! What just happened. All of a sudden all the pics from the lost post got loaded into this one. Holy crapoly, if I'd have waited would what I wrote have populate this post? Anybody know?

The Exhaust

Here's where a month of this year went to pot. From overhandling, I broke off the headers on one side. I'd been using them like handles to hold the engine while I worked on it. The lasted months! Like so many other efforts in this thread, popping them off gave me the opportunity to do something I'd been thinking about for years: add weld beads to the collectors. Then I got the great (disastrous) idea to sink the headers into the collector, thinking it would ad a level of realism. My idea was drill out the collectors about 1 mm deep for each pipe. Like I said, it was a disastrous thought. Just awful, as it turned out, because my execution went terribly awry. With each day, I had more difficulty understanding how I got to the place I found myself.

It started innocently enough, the exhaust on one side, manifold-back, came of in my hand. This was an opportunity to add those long thought about weld beads, as well as erase from existence the battleship gray headers, not to mentions all the join lines, sprue ejection marks, etc., and do something I'd never seen done before... actually collect the header in the collectors.

The weld beads.

I tried several versions of the idea had over the years: imprint something, anything that look like a welder's ripple, into a piece of wire. My thought was to pound into the metal the face of a jewelers file. It's always disappointing when what seemed like a good idea, in practice turns out to be crud. More so when you've been holding that idea for, oh, twenty or so years. lol. I tried stainless steel rod, which is what I had pictured all those years. With just a sledge hammer on anvil, SS was much to stout and non-compliant. Brass rod was better, but far from presentable. SS tube was pretty close, but the sharp ridges didn't take to paint very well. But copper tube?... At last.

The copper tube was as close as I was going to get. But the whole concept was unworkable because I couldn't find anything useful to imprint and, once struck, to work with the result to create any that wasn't a circle of semi-circle. This was a good as it got:

The copper still didn't take to the primer and paint, but at least it didn't sparkle like the SS. Next up was the method I learned about hear in a post that had a link to, who else, Plasmo. In is typical fashion, it was downright simple. Scribe a groove in which to put some Tamiya regular putty. Make a "custom tool" out of a piece of a soda can and a stick. Put the putty in the groove and use the tool to make the welder's ripple. In practice it's not much harder than the explanation.

And the finished product:

Given that I'd never scribed anything except a few panel lines to practice, I wasn't to upset with the collateral damage. But then this happened, and it opened a can of worms:

And then this happened, the beginning of tens of hours steadily going backwards:

That last bit of damage was after drilling out the collectors and attempting to fit the pipes.

I'm going to post this now, even though there more to document, including what I think is useful method for lining up straight part... like an exhaust pipe.

More later. Thanks for looking in.