larchiefeng

I love your build! It looks great and unless you have tried to build one of these with the Autograph transkit it’s really hard to appreciate how difficult it is. The instructions leave A LOT TO BE DESIRED!! As if it’s not hard enough as it is, the pictures and descriptions are rather vague! I was just taking a closer look at your Kevlar decals on your tub and I see that you had some of the same problems that I had with the decals silvering and tearing. I think that the larger pieces especially on the inside of the interior tub probably should have been done in more than one piece. Anyway, after seeing some of your patches I don’t feel so bad about having some of the same problems myself. Great work keep it up I’m now using some of your pictures as references. I may contact somewhere down the road to ask you questions if I can’t figure some things out. I did notice that not all of the numbered decals are showing in the instructions and pictures. I have adopted the attitude that I’m going to just put as many of the larger ones on and then see what is left. Also, now that I have clear coated the decals that are already in, I can now add whatever is left without doing damage to them. I’m glad that you are also back on your build! I would really like to finish the build in 2025!

BTW, Thanks for the heads up about Flickr to Brad and a couple other friends

Test for photos with Flickr. Looks like I can start moving my pictures from my camera to Flickr to upload. The pictures of the body show what happened to the paint when the parts were wrapped up in the bubble wrap. They were wrapped in boxes for almost four years so, not a big surprise that there was some damage. The main problem from the very beginning of the build was that I painted the car with enamel paint and I don't think that it ever hardened sufficiently. So, my solution is going to be be to sand the bad spots with the sanding sponges you see in the background. 2400 and 3200 grit will remove the bubble imprinting without removing the color coat. The parts are all clear coated but, in a couple of spots I did burn through the clear into the color only on the high points like on the sharp edges of the doors etc. Later on in the build log I will talk about my proposed solution for fixing the paint completely. I got some acrylic clear to spray over the interior Kevlar decals that started silvering. I also bought some acrylic black paint that I intend on using to respray some of the body panels or maybe all of them depending on the color match. I think that the best idea will be to sand down all the panels until they a re totally smooth and spray everything in acrylic. Like I said before, this is not something that I really wanted to because of my limited workspace. These pictures give you an idea of how crowded my garage is now. The plastic containers and boxes on the workbench all contain F40 parts. As you can also see, I still have my 91 Supra out there too! I really miss my man cave and work space from the old house. One last thing, I seem to be having trouble inserting text after the pictures are already on the page. I guess that I'm just going do one picture at a time with the text to go along with it. Anyway these pictures are from about a month ago and I have quite a few more that I need to move from the camera to the computer to be resized and then uploaded to Flickr. More to come

I was trying to post some pictures of the build to the forum and it looks like I posted a link to my blog where the pictures have been uploaded to. This is not what I intended to do and I'm surprised that it brought up all the pictures that I had uploaded to my blog a couple weeks ago. I'm going to keep looking for another hosting site that I can post pictures one at a time more selectively.

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1567122720788363287/3120637620686325403#

It’s good to hear from you Pascal! It’s been a while! I finally have a small space to work on the F40 and I’m going to have to get used to working in and on a smaller space. Right now I’m dealing with trying to get a new real car registered and the title transferred etc. that, and regular doctors appointments and just every day life. For all the hassle that my moving from California to Nevada has caused me, I almost wish I would have stayed in California! But for now I have found a solution to the paint issues that wrapping the parts in bubble wrap caused and just to keep things kinda simple for the time being I am working on getting the Kevlar decals down in the interior tub. As soon as I can get the pictures to a hosting site and upload them to the forum I will. I am working on the car and taking pictures as I go so there will be some photos of my progress hopefully soon! In the meantime it’s great hearing from you again! Are you working on anything new? If so let us know. Thanks again for the link to posting photos.

Random pictures to test inserting from my blog. Looks like I cannot upload any pictures from my previous method so, I'm going to have to find another way to upload pictures. At this point I'm open to any help you guys can give on who to use or how you are uploading pictures to the forum. In the meantime I will keep on working on the F40 and taking pictures as I go until I can get a satisfactory way to add the pictures. So any help would be appreciated. Thanks, W

Looks like 3200 grit is going to do the trick.

Yes, I had clear coated after the black had sat and gassed off for about a year. Keep in mind that I painted the car over 4-4 years ago. I know what the problem is and it’s all my fault for painting the car in black enamel and then I had no choice but to clear coat it in either enamel or acrylic. I again used enamel clear. The car body parts had sat not being handled for a good four years and when we were moving the paint seemed like it had cured by then and to protect the paint job I wrapped all the pieces in bubble wrap and packed them in boxes for the move and about two years of storage in the boxes still wrapped in the bubble wrap. It’s a transfer kinda like when model car tires are stored for a long time and the tires melt into the plastic parts in the box. Not exactly the same thing but it’s the closest thing to what happened. So, I have a plastic container that has water in it and I’m going to work backwards with my sanding pads. I’m starting with 4000 grit to see what happens and how much of the damage it removes. I don’t think it’s going to be enough so tonight I’m gonna move to the 3600 or 2400 grits and work with those for a while and see what I get. When I said work backwards, usually you start with the more aggressive grits and move to the lighter grits. I this case I’m trying to not have to get down into the color coat and then have to repaint the whole car again. Don’t want to do that. So I’m starting with the rocker panels to see what I can get away with. I think I might be able get things smoothed out and if it’s close to having removed most of imperfections then I’m going to shoot a clear coat and see if it can heal the damage. At this point I’m going to try whatever I can in order to avoid a complete repaint. I have some pictures and as soon as I get a little time I’ll upload them and then start posting pictures along with the text. Tonight it’s just gonna be working through some different grits of sandpaper. I’ll post some before and after pictures maybe tomorrow.

Starting to look like old home week with both of us resurrecting our F40 builds! What are the odds, lol? Your engine looks great btw. I’d like to see more of it. That’s where I left off but, I’m going to ease my way back into it by doing all the interior decals. I also have a rather large paint problem that I have to try and fix now from the bubble wrap leaving marks in the paint. Anyway, good to see you back at it too.

Quick update- I just unwrapped the body parts and every one of them except the main body was wrapped in plastic bubble wrap and the bubbles that were in contact with the paint on the body have left a round mark in the paint. I don’t know how or if I can get the marks out of the paint. The build is now part continuation and part rescue and restoration. I’m going to have to see what I can and try a few things and see what can be done. Not exactly what I expected to find.

Thanks guys, it’s good to back. Apparently I forgot how to use my email too. I changed my email address on the website here and I had to respond to the verification email to activate my account and new email before I could respond to everyone. I finally realized that Yahoo has a spam folder and since last night my verification emails have been getting dumped there. Anyway, problem solved and I can now respond to you all. So far this morning I have been sorting out through the large boxes of parts and getting them into the drawers. At this point they are really mostly in various sizes on plastic food bags and I’m just getting them in the drawers by size. Once I get everything in the office and out of the storage boxes I can refine what goes where. My immediate plan for actually starting work on the project is to finish up doing the Kevlar decals in the tub for the front and cabin. This is pretty much a no brainer and it will allow me to ease my way back into it. I know that as I get going I will start thinking about the next logical step. I still have a lot of reading to do to refresh my memory of where I left off and what the sequence should be. As I stated years ago, the Autograph instructions leave a lot to be desired! After looking at the Tomasso transkit and his instructions I feel like I’m building the early plastic Mercedes again. By this I mean differences between the two transkits instructions are night and day. But, it’s something that I’m throughly used to, it’s just going take a little bit to get back in mode. I just found what I think, are the rest of the boxes of parts. There’s 3- 18” x 3” plastic containers, two more 14” x 10” x 6” boxes, one 24”x 18” x 12” box left to carry in and sort through. Just finding and sorting through all the parts is going to be a project in itself so, you might have to bear with me for a few days while I get things sorted so that I actually get going. I am excited and happy about getting this long overdue project back on track. As soon as I can figure out how to upload the pictures again I will add them. I’m taking a few pictures as I go now to post later. Here’s a quick question for you guys. Has anything changed with regards to posting pictures on the forum in the past couple years? I have a blog that I used and I use Postimage to load my photos and then upload them to my blog. Then I just download the photos from my blog to the website to post. I assume this will still work. If anyone has a better idea please let me know. Thanks

Hey guys! Long time no see or post. A lot has happened since the last time I was able to post anything. I had to pack up the entire project and move. We sold our house and moved from the big house with all my work space. We moved from the mountains of California to the desert of Las Vegas. I have finally gone through all the boxes of models and I have found quite a bit of the F40. I’m still looking for the front and rear bonnets. All of my other models and larger tools are out in the garage and so are the remaining body parts. I have the main cabin and engine as well as a large number of small containers full of the detail parts. I originally had set up a workbench in the garage to work on the model but, I couldn’t work in the garage with the temperature ranging from 100 degrees to 112 degrees from the end of May through the end of September. And then, even when fall and winter come the temperature goes down to the 40’s and 50’s out there. Needless to say not ideal conditions for model making. Well, I was finally able to rearrange my small 12’ x 11’ office enough to hold my desk, rollaway toolbox, one home theater recliner and two four drawer file cabinets. And, even with all that I managed to set up a four foot square card table for my workbench. It’s not ideal and certainly not what I had in the California house but, it will work just fine and I will be able to work comfortably. And, more importantly I have my motivation back! I will be getting the rest of the parts out of the boxes and I will need to transfer them to a six drawer IKEA cabinet underneath the table to keep organized and handy. With the limited space in here I have to finish going through the rest of the boxes and get everything into the cabinet. I’m thinking that by the weekend I should have some progress to report on the build. I’m looking forward to continuing what has been a long journey with this build.

Pretty beefy suspension, it’s going to be pretty interesting to see how many upgrades to the chassis is required for the armored body. Great work as usual!

This is a project that Codger would have loved following! It’s a very interesting build and I intend to follow it once I finally get moved and settled in. It’s taken me over two weeks to inventory, take pictures and pack up all my models! I never realized how much stuff I had accumulated over the years. Of course, I also never envisioned moving either. Looking forward to watching this coming together. Having followed your other work, I know that it’s going to be pretty great!