No longer got the blues

We'll I've done a ton of work again over the past few days. I'm almost done spray painting the kit. I got some different blue paint and it looks like a match to the real car.

Here you can see the monocoque and cowling masked


Painted blue


With the masking off, this came out real nice


Here is my disaster of a seat. I'm going to have to note to myself to spend more time and effort detailing the cockpit. I'll give myself some slack, as I didn't know how difficult my previous seat belt cloth would be to work worth. In any event, I had hoped the seat would look better.


I finished applying cf to the front wing end plates and diffusers


Cleaned up the cowling a bit and started assembling it. Here I've glued in a piece of the sidepod


Sideview of cowling


Total: 144h

seat belt drama

Here is a few shots of the cockpit so far






After grinding the molded in seat belts off of the seat and painting the seat flat black, I'm ready to put some seat belts in. I've got this scale motorsport kit. It includes adhesive backed cloth material that needs to be colored and cut, as well as photoetched parts. I've got a blue permanent magic marker to color the belt material.


To be honest, I'm not happy with the results. The belt material is very difficult to work with. It was essentially impossible to color the material evenly with the marker, and even more difficult to prevent the cloth from fraying. I think I'm going to scratch the belts and go for the photoetched parts included in the Studio 27 photoetch kit.


Total time: 135h

I've got the blues

I've starting applying cf decal to the underside of the wing

Here I've carefully cut templates out of paper and then traced them onto the cf decal sheet


Getting started


Let it dry for a day and then applied the larger piece


I've got the wrong blues. Looks like Tamiya TS-15 is NOT a match for this car


I'm going to try some stuff I picked up from Norauto


I've been doing lots of other work as well. Mainly finishing work on the sidepods.

Total time: 132 h

The Elephant in the driver's seat

The Elephant in the room


I haven't talked about it much. I've been completely avoiding the topic. The seat. How to remove the molded in seat belts. I didn't want to spend the money to do this properly. I tried different methods and failed, not even posting my progress on the blog, hoping to find a solution.


I got an elephant gun.


This Black and Decker was at the outdoor electronics market this weekend. For $30 I couldn't resist. I got some grinding attachments as well


So doing this the right way, I ground out the seat belts


Hand sanded and polished the seat


And primed. Not so bad, but a pretty pricey seat for a model like this. Thankfully I get the keep the dremel.


Cut down some 1.5mm ferrules which will serve as the connections between the radiators and the engine. Not really happy with my technique on this yet, more on this topic on the next model probably.


And finally started finishing the green painted parts. Here I've started applying carbon fiber decals to the front wing diffusers. Did quite a bit of polishing as well.


Not to mention lots and lots of spray painting. Primer, white, blue, we're really getting somewhere now!

Total time: 123 h

Getting wired

I know I haven't posted for a couple of days, but I've been plenty busy. Let's get wired!

Just a couple nice reference photos




The starting point is these Top Studio kits, and a drill.


After drilling through the connectors, painting them, and painting the wire id tags with Tamiya flat yellow paint, here are the results










Started working on the sidepods as well




This whole time I've been polishing and painting.

Total: 114 h

Hoses

Today, I'll be doing some engine detailing

Note the hoses I'll be replicating today. First is some sort of pipe on the engine that looks like it's wrapped in heat tape (on the left). Next are two hoses, one on each side of the engine, wrapped in black nylon, going from a component on the engine to the gearbox. If I had to guess I would say these are all related to hydraulic systems.


So, here is my starting point, braided wire with flexible metal rod inside, all from Detail Master


I'm going to gently and precisely cut the braid without cutting the metal rod inside


Here's where we're at so far


Because I only have 8 A/N fittings for this size hose and these hoses are very low on the engine, I'm going to skip the fittings and simply paint the mating surface on the gearbox.


For the brass-looking compression fittings, I'm going to use hit shrink tubing from this Top Studio kit.


Cut really small pieces of heat shrink tubing


Yeah, like that small


Slip 'em on to your hose


Get our your handy-dandy Alonso Bic


And there we have it


Cut the braid again, make sure to have the heat shrink tube on your part of the hose before cutting the braid


And that is what it looks like before painting


This red hose was a bit less work, just slipped the metal rod inside the insulation of a wire.


Little bit of work to form it right


And then covered it in Matte Aluminum Bare Metal Foil


Here are my hoses after painting


And after assembly




I also sprayed another coat of green paint. The monocoque is coming along

Total: 104.5