Tamiya RX-7 - my first car model

[stevebarry]

First post here so if I'm doing something wrong I'm sorry! This is the Tamiya 1/24 RX-7 R1 kit that I picked up a while back when I was looking for a change from building the grey jets that usually pass through my workbench. The RX-7 appealed to me because I used to have a '93 - great car, but in the end it was too small for practical purposes so it had to make way for a BMW 328i Touring (wagon). I'm mostly building this as Tamiya intended, straight from the box, but I will be making some changes to the interior, particularly the door cards which in the kit are pretty featureless.

Here's a pile of parts all painted up ready to go. The paint is mostly Tamiya acrylic thinned with lacquer thinner (sounds crazy but it works very well), Alclad II lacquer and Citadel acrylic metallics. Nothing is glued up here, just snapped together.

I didn't like the tailpipes on the kit, so they were chopped off and replaced with some made from aluminium tube.

The underside looks pretty close to the real thing when it all goes together. There's the odd fuel and brake line missing but that's mostly it.

The raised Mazda badge on the air cleaner housing was BMF'ed before the part was sprayed, then the paint over the raised part was gently swabbed away with a qtip moistened with thinner. Much easier than trying to paint it, and it looks quite convincing. I've done the same with the RX-7 badge on the tailgate.

I put a few engine details in - plug leads, throttle cable, TB linkage - but left the rest alone. Looks good enough for a first effort.

The gradient effect around the glass was sprayed using masks made from blu-tak rolled out and laid along the etched lines provided. The black was laid on in lots of thin coats sprayed at a shallow angle across the mask to get the graduated look.

Just had to try it all out to see how it looked built up.

Not bad. They have the ride height about bang-on. Next I need to micromesh the bodyshell back ready for clearcoat and that can go into a warm place for a week or so before polishing it out. The interior can get some work in the meantime, and I can try and figure out how to paint the heated rear screen.

[Demon9115]

Looks really good love the detail.

[whale392]

I don't see anything wrong with your build so far! You over on ARCForums at all?

[RS Sport]

Really good work Steve!

[Jon Cole]

Oh! That's your FIRST model?! That's so good, it's like skipping high school and going straight to Big Time U!!! Well done! Be sure to add more as it happens.

[RodneyBad]

"O" I get it.

Your first Model

Car..

Welcome to the world of Cars

Paint and detail Painting looks great.

[crazyjim]

Looking very nice, Steve.

[stevebarry]

Thanks for all the comments. This is only my first CAR model, I'm usually an aircraft modeller - there's some of my stuff here and here, but I'm finding cars a good change of pace from spending 10 months building a 1/48 Buccaneer or something like that. I haven't done much to the RX in the meantime, just micromeshed the shell back and sprayed a final wettish coat on that before lacquering. I've got a Fujimi Alpina C1 on the go as well for a group build on another forum, I'd better get moving on that I think. All this time not building cars and then I get a bench full overnight. Dragged a Tamiya NSX out of the stash this morning and I'm thinking of making a start on that too. I don't like the NSX so much, I find it sterile for want of a better word, but it's a nice kit for all that. @ whale932, I don't get on ARCForums much, I tend to hang out at Britmodeller and UAMF.

[whale392]

I thought I recognized your name from either Britmodeller or ARCForums.........I go there because I am building up both a Hasagawa 1/72 E2-C and the Kinetic Models 1/48 E2-C, as I worked on these planes in the Navy.

Your RX7 is looking good.......I can tell you are a plane modeller by the way you detail the car (not a bad thing, but just different enough to be noticed!).

[MrObsessive]

That's a real looker Steve! Excellent paint!

I've come to have a lot of respect for rotaries as I was nearly embarrassed by one years ago in my '69 AMX 390!

As far as the defroster lines.................try this. You can mask off each line one by one with Tamiya masking tape and use a black "Sharpie" to color in the lines. I don't know if they call them Sharpies in the U.K., but they're basically pointed magic markers.

It would take awhile.........but if you mask one line at a time and color in as you go, the results would look pretty good.

[stevebarry]

Bill - I had a look at doing it how you suggested, but the lines are a series of concentric arcs. I seriously doubt I have anything like the patience for that. Looks like I'll have to bite the bullet and strip the rear window back, sand off the raised lines, polish it back up and then cut some masks out of 40mm Tamiya tape with a compass cutter and mist on some paint through those. I could leave the moulded lines on, but I'm pretty sure I'd not be able to line my masks up with those and I'd end up with a nasty double line effect. Should be fun anyway. If only Tamiya had engraved those lines rather than moulded them raised it would have been so much simpler, just load up a 5/0 brush with Indian ink and run that in to the lines.

Mark - the Tamiya thinner we had was an alcohol based one, some sort of IPA in solution, but it's now virtually impossible to find over here. Come to that, the whole Tamiya acrylic range was withdrawn over here for a while because it didn't meet EU safety standards - they were afraid kids were going to drink it and grow two heads or something. Europe, eh.

On the plus side, I had to visit my LMS today for some groceries and I picked up a Tamiya Enzo Ferrari, the re-issue with carbon decals and metal transfers for the scripts and cavallini. The NSX has gone back to it's loft insulating role. That Enzo has to be one of the nicest plastic kits I've ever seen, I think I'll be settling down to that as soon as the RX is squared away.

[Jon Cole]

I did defroster lines once. Doubt I will try that again, a real pita. I laid down a piece of Scotch tape, and colored it with a brown marker. Then using a new #11 blade and a metal straight edge, start cutting ultra thin pinstripes. Eventually I got one stripe to lay down where I wanted it. I did get the window done eventually. Wish I had a pic. Can be done tho.

[jbwelda]

thats looking nice and great job on the gradient masking!

[stevebarry]

Well, I decided to polish out the raised lines on the rear screen and go with the masking plan. The screen is drying under cover now after being tinted with a mix of Klear/ Future and black and burnt sienna Indian ink. Don't want to spend a couple of hours masking to just have to strip it all off again because of a stray speck of dust in the tint so I thought I'd get that part out of the way first.

I got the dashboard sprayed in matt black and picked out some areas in satin varnish to simulate the different plastics used. The centre console got a coat of Citadel gunbolt metal acrylic, it's a good match for the graphite colour of the full size one. The kit decals went down nicely for the instruments, they had their clear covers added with Deluxe Glue'nGlaze - similar to Microscale Kristal Klear - after they'd set.

The body shell, spoiler and bonnet/ hood have had the last of their clear coat and they're going off to a warm place to cure for a few days before that gets polished out.

I need to work on the interior tub in the meantime.

[stevebarry]

Moving on to the interior with this, I wanted to get away from the flat door card look that Tamiya had moulded. RX-7s have a dished door card that provides some much needed elbow room. I started off by cutting out the shape of the dish from the tub.

The holes were boxed in with plastic card and the dishes formed from Milliput. The handles were made from aluminium tube. You won't see much of this work when it's all closed up but it's nice to know it's there.

Whilst the Milliput cured, I had another go at the rear screen. The raised details were polished out and the heater lines were masked off using arcs cut from some 40mm Tamiya tape with a compass cutter.

The lines were misted with Tamiya hull red, then the black graduated area was repainted and the whole thing was tinted again. The front light clusters were doctored slightly by drilling a couple of holes in each one and dropping in some old formation lights left over from a Hasegawa F-104. The clear covers weren't a great fit but it's too far along to fix that now. The grille mesh was added with some PE mesh I had, don't remember what it was for originally.

Moving back inside, the tub was painted up and assembled. The seatbelts were made from pearlised art paper with Eduard buckles. The seatbelt catches are pieces of Milliput on styrene rod stalks.

Everything got glued up then, and out came the good stuff for a final polish up. I also drilled holes to take the door mirrors that I modified to have a small length of rod in the bases to act as a locating pin.

Last things to go on were a home brewed number plate on the back end (you don't have a front one on your RX until you're told to have one), decals for the wheels centre caps and Mazda script on the rear panel and the wipers. The front wipers needed to be warmed up in some boiling water and reshaped to fit properly. The trailing edge of the bonnet/ hood also needed thinning down to almost nothing to clear the wiper arms. The bonnet isn't a great fit and is a little bit disappointing to be honest. Maybe I should drum up the enthusiasm to strip it back, warm it up and reshape it. Still, for the first car model I've built since a Matchbox Jaguar SS-100 when I was 9 I'm fairly satisfied with it.

I've learnt some new tricks and had to look at modelling in a different way, which is a good thing. Going to have to drag out that Tamiya Enzo Ferrari soon.

[crazyjim]

Looks excellent. Wish my first kit was even half as good.