McLaren F1

[Bengalensis]

I know I should rather be finishing my Golden Arrow instead of starting yet another project... But as I almost haven't touched my modelling tools for about four months I wanted to get going again with something easy . Didn't know what for a while, but then I was unexpectedly given this, the McLaren F1 road car, for a late Christmas present and the decision was sort of done for me.

This is a car that I think has become better and better as the years have gone by, and it's one of few so called "super cars" that really turns me on. It's so wonderfully purposeful and without any ridiculous gimmicks. Just what you need for a perfect inspirational transportation of yourself from point A to point B. The idea was a simple OOB build, apart from the tyres that looked all wrong at first sight. And probably some adjustment of the ride height and wheels arches.

During some studying of references I was pointed to a very tasteful looking car in a simple solid medium blue colour with black wheels, a combination that made it look much more racing like in appearance, in contrast to many others in their IMO often too fancy colours, and just like I would want it .

After two days looking in the box I had to order a larger set of photo etch as a lot of nice features cried out to be improved. So much for OOB, as so often... Then I saw what looks like a nice full engine resin detail set coming soon. I think I will want that to give some more depth into the engine compartment which is a bit visible under the rear screens... It could be lovely with all the metal colours, carbon fibre and reflective gold foil. I know I should keep this basic... well almost OOB...

Never mind. I started by doing some measuring and calculations of the wheels and tyres. Turns out the wheels are fine but the tyres at least 1 mm to large in diameter, both front and rear, apart from looking quite boring and with a funny pattern. I found suitable front tyres in my spare box, but no rears so far. This need to be solved, and perhaps I should not even start to build until I have the photo etch and resin with me, but I wanted to get going with what I could.

The kit comes with doors to be positioned opened or closed. I want them closed and well fitting, which means I would have preferred them moulded shut with the body. Now I have to adjust them and glue them in first thing, do some sanding, adjustments and rescribing to ensure they actually do fit well. The doors had some ugly looking sink marks, but they looked worse than they were, and were easily removed in a light sanding process.

I glued some thin Evergreen strips in the openings to give the doors something firm to rest against to be level with the bodywork. After a some dry fitting and adjustments the doors were glued in place.

Then the small body sections in front of the doors were glued. The fit wasn't that impressive, but since the whole area will be sanded flush and probably some adjustments of the wheel openings be done as well it doesn't matter much. I also filled the locating holes for the door mirrors as I will build a car that had the specially high mounted mirrors (actually from BMW Z1) fitted from the factory.

Windscreen and side windows where then dry fitted. The sides were a nice tight fit but the windscreen had a mounting tab under the roof that pushed it far too deep. This was cut off and then the screen was a perfectly smooth fit. I will have to adjust the corners of the front hatch, they are far too sharp like this.

As I have fitted the doors like I have, I had to cut down their interiors and only keep what's visible from inside to be able to fit them.

[Natter]

Jorgen and "a simple OOB build" were never going to go together were they?! Great to see you back - following your return with great interest.

[Mafney]

Looking like a great build already, will be watching this thread with interest!

[Bengalensis]

Thanks a lot guys. It feels good working on models again, much better than expected. I think I need it now. Yes, my OOB ambitions often fails for some reason...

The front suspension was assembled about 1 mm lower than Fujimi had planned here is test fit with the body and the front tires of the dimension I will use. The wheel openings need to be adjusted both in size and shape, and also the lower section of the body is too thin I think.

So I set about adding curved Evergreen strips in the openings to get some material to work with. I also added about 1 mm to lower body section. After some work and adjustments I arrived at this look, which I'm a lot happier with. Crappy pictures I know. I'm not 100% sure this is the final look, but I will leave it like this at least until I have suitable rear tyres to work with.

I also rounded the corners of the front hatch like this.

All other parts are cleaned up now as well, and I realize I must do some corrections on a couple of interior parts as well, like the top of the dash panel and the door interiors, not to mention the seat. More of that will follow.

[Riggers]

Ah....BRILLIANT! Jorgen is back in the full swing of things! Really chuffed you have picked up your tools again Jorgen.

Another masterpiece & instruction on how to do things right!

Look forward to another posting............ATB

[Bengalensis]

Thanks Riggers. Well, at least I'm trying to do something again...

The dash panel part probably was designed for a race car version and not changed for this kit, as the door panels. Those large recesses on either side are large covered areas on the road car.

The recesses were of suitable depth for my thinnest plasticard, so I carefully cut two covers and glued in place, rather than messing with filler, and after some light sanding the problem was fixed.

I mocked up the interior, and the seat looks wrong, it is ridiculously narrow in the centre. I will have to check this further, and if I go for the resin engine set it also comes with a new seat, which may be better, or not... I will have to sort some seat belt hardware as well, but I have plenty of such around so that shouldn't be a problem.

BTW, these are the tyres Fujimi wants me to use. Apart from having very plain and boring sides and a pattern I'm not convinced about they are too large in diameter when I calculate it, and that's also how they looked. Yes, the original F1 does have a bit of profile height in it's tyres, but not quite that much IMO. When mocked up from the box with Fujimi's ride height and tyres I almost got some off road feelings.

If nothing else works I will have to model my tyres in SolidWorks and have them 3D-printed, but I still hope to find something useful.

[Breaker]

Really nice work so far. One of my favourites, the 3 seat configuration always appealed to me.

[Bengalensis]

Thanks a lot. It's slow progress here at the moment. I'm waiting for my ordered tyres and also for the resin and photo etch. But I was given a set of mirrors from a stalled Revell BMW Z1 that I cleaned up from paint and scratched a missing glass for.

I now have to built up their attachment points on the door frames, they are supposed to sit something like this.

[Bengalensis]

My 3D-printed tyres arrived yesterday, so I could finally adjust and fit the rear axle. The colour of the material doesn't photograph well for me.

Here is the previously lowered front axle with material removed from the top of the wheel wells to give room for the tyres.

The rear axle was lowered about 1,5 mm to make the car sit right. That will necessitate some modifications later on to the engine compartment parts, but we'll see about that when the resin set arrives.

I had to raise the rear wheel openings a few 0,1 mm to match everything up. This is how it looks now when sitting on its wheels for real. I'm much more happy the overall stance now, I think it's starting to look like it should.

[lordairgtar]

Excellent job with the tyres. Does it cost a lot to have them done? The kit tyres resemble toy car tyres. Can't wait to see these finished.

[heloman1]

Fantastic Jorgen I've always liked the F1 and it looks like Fujimi have given us a good one excepting for the tyres. Surely they must have had soemthing better in their parts inventory?

I follow your build closely.

Colin

[Bengalensis]

Thanks guys. The tyres were about €65:- to print. It now looks as a McLaren F1 to me, instead of a model that I understand is meant to resemble a McLaren F1, sort of. The main problem with the look of the original kit, as I see it, is the tyres, the suspension height, the too large and oddly shaped front wheel openings and the lower sill line not being deep enough. All this cooperates to give the kit that odd look that didn't convince me at all when I saw Fujimi's first pictures.

Then there are details that can be improved a bit, like the corners of the front hatch, possibly sharpening the line that goes up from the bottom of the doors air outlets towards the rear wheels and perhaps the air intakes in the front bumper, and possibly other things I have missed so far, but that is a much lesser problem, as is parts of the interior. I certainly didn't expect it to shape up this well when I saw the first release photos. I'm now quite eager to see it with my new mirrors correctly fitted.

[Bengalensis]

Finally the two sets of photo etch and resin details arrived. The amount of parts is almost ridiculous and many things are not going to be used. They look fantastic and very well cast like this, remains to be seen how well they work. I have seen parts from this maker that are wonderful, and parts that are a 10% shrunk/too small resin junk... I hope the parts that made me get the sets will work well. I haven't opened any bags yet, so we'll see later.

[Bengalensis]

The resin set comes with a number of parts to detail the compartment under the front hatch. They look good, but I will probably not use them as the hatch will remain closed.

The resin hatch doesn't add any improvement in itself. It also doesn't address the too sharp front corners I have already fixed.

I decided to start sorting out the interior with what I will use of the new parts. The resin seat is a good and very welcome improvement.

The photo etched dash piece fits perfectly over the decal.

However it can't be pushed up high enough in the panel itself so it interferes with the steering column. That also means the decal won't fit.

I had to grind away a surprising amount of material.

With the edge smoothed out again all fits nicely.

The multi piece photo etch pedals are also a great improvement. The three piece parking brake handle not so much, it's too thin and lack detail on the top. I'll probably keep the kit part.

There are some crude covers to rectify the dash panel top, but they don't like what I see in photos. I'm much more happy with my previous fix.

The screwed frames beside the seat are also good and adds to the look.

The belt details for the passenger seats are limited. The details sets comes with some resin and photo etch for both the passenger and driver's seats.

I only use the parts for the passenger seats. The car I'm using as inspiration for this build has a more race like 4-point harness installed and also the cover over the rear mounting points is removed. I'm doing the same here, cutting off the cover section and making a flat surface with two mounting points. I will use parts of this set from Modeler's for the driver's harness.

There is a larger resin framework that replaces the kits engine insert. Although it's nicely done with separate clear rear windows it still does not rectify the area behind the passenger seats, leaving gaping holes behind them. I have to fill in the resin part with some additional scratch building.

I'm much more happy with this look.

I would have liked some parts to correct the door interiors, but there's nothing included for that. So that will be next to scratch I think.

[Bengalensis]

Well I couldn't get around this so it had to be done, even if it's not the most entertaining job. These were what Fujimi provided.

I cut off some offending material, glued in some sheet plastic and applied 2-part filler.

After some sanding to get smooth recesses and some more sheet plastic I had reasonably good door interiors. It looks quite easy but it took more than two hours. With some CF decal I hope it will be good enough.

The front bumper looks wrong in the Fujimi kit. The shape of the air intakes isn't right and the bars should be more horizontal. Hobby Design provide a resin replacement which is different. But not any more correct. After some concideration I decided the easiest way to a good compromise was to work on the Fujimi part.

The car I use as my reference doesn't have the two rubber strips, so they were first removed. I then reshaped the bottom edge of the openings making them more horizontal and sloping up towards the centre. Then the bars were repositioned, and some filler added so the bottom centre section could be made slightly softer in shape. It may not be perfect, there are still some improvements that could be made, but I'm much happier with this look.

The windscreen wiper. Fujimi's moulded part is a bit heavy, but could actually pass.

Hobby Design gives us a four piece photo etched design, which is a bit thin and flat. Why can't I have something that is the middle way, which would have been good? I will have to paint both and decide later.

While I was working in the area just in front of the windscreen I noted that Fujimi's section where the wiper attach is level with the screen. It should actually be a bit lower, there should be a prominent step there. This made me reconsider the resin front hatch that I wasn't going to use. As I looked at it again it turned out that Hobby Design might have given it some thought that their instructions fail to mention. When the resin frame for the separate hatch was cleaned up, installed and the windscreen modified to fit it turned out that this problem is actually corrected. Or even over corrected...

I added 0,5 mm plastic to the bottom to reduce the depth.

This is much better. I may reduce the depth a little bit more. I may even use the resin parts and detail the front compartment while I'm at it... not sure, we'll see.

[heloman1]

Excellent work Jorgen, supprising how many problems you find with any subject once you start workign on it. Especially a subjec tyou have apassion for. It's a pity some of the AM resin is not good enough to work with. Sounds like a European PE manufacturer. Looks like you may have paid a lot more for the AM resin set than the original kit!!!!

Colin

[bangle]

Nice work! The 3D printed wheels look just perfect. I feel your pain with the photo etch vs kit part debate, i've been having the same issues with my current build. The kit part doesn't look good at all, maybe you could add depth to the photo etch by adding a bit of plastic card strip behind?

Amanda

[Bengalensis]

Thanks a lot. Colin, I think the photo etch and resin is about four times the original kit, and then the new tyres. It's quite ridiculous when you think of it, but I don't mind, I do what I like and what I think is fun. To me it's a project well worth it.

I think you're right about the wiper Amanda. Today I found myself looking out of a window from the second floor, down on one of our cars with modern wipers, and it dawned on me how unrealistically thin they looked.

So, I decided to add the wiper spoiler from 0,25 mm plastic that could be shaped a little, and it looked better at once. I also added another 0,75 mm to further raise the ditch in fron of the wind screen. I now have deeper area than Fujimi's that looks quite OK compared to references.

I never see a deep line around the nose McLaren emblem, it always looks very smooth. So I filled the ditch. I also decided to clean up all the parts for the front compartment. Basically everything is there and is quite well done, but it doesn't make the compartment nearly as crowded as it looks for real, it all looks a bit small and sitting too low. It doesn't matter here as this didn't really interest me in the first place, but I hope the same doesn't go for the engine and exhaust, as I really want it to look right under the glass and all the vents.

[Bengalensis]

It's always best the check the fit of photo etch like this fuel cap early on.Yes, learnt the hard way a long time ago. It's strange with these AM PE-sets, they often contain unnecessary stuff, but not all that would have been good. Two piece door knobs could have been good here, but no, nothing included. OK then, it will be fine with what is moulded.

I then fitted the special mirrors and shaped their mounting points on the door pillars. I have looked forward to this as I think these mirrors are so much better than those fitted to most F1's.

The lack of detail on the body sides behind the doors has been a concern. The lines ends far too soon, or are totally missing.

I have avoided this for a long time, but sooner or later it must be done. So I started some careful scribing, some scraping and sanding and then gluing plastic strips for the middle lines.

After some work I ended up with this, which makes my eyes a lot more happy. There will probably be some minor finishing after a coat of primer but it shouldn't be much if anything.

With that out of the way I had to revisit the front. I had a discussion with a very good friend of mine yesterday about the front end, and after a good night sleep there was no way around it. I needed to lower the top edge of the opening towards the centre, and reshape the bottom of the centre corners. I started by gluing some plastic strip to get a rough outline.

Cut top shape and added some filler.

And some scraping and sanding later it looks like this. Yes, the first picture is crap as you can't see the line between the bumper and the bonnet section, but it's more visible in profile.

The rear end has given me a lot of considerations today. Basically I have two choices. Either use Fujimi's body parts and the photo etch set designed for those, or use the resin parts with their specific photo etch. As if it was that easy. After several hours of thinking and studying it turns out that the resin parts doesn't add anything useful if you want the body parts closed. Further more most of their associated photo etching are somewhat oversized, and the resin exhaust outlets are oversized and too far apart. Right now my thinking is to keep Fujimi's body parts and adapt them to use a mix of the two photo etched sets, then use the resin exhaust chamber with scratch build outlets placed according to Fujimi's part... Isn't that clear? No, I thought so...

[Bengalensis]

My time consuming and carefully made up plan for the rear end didn't last long... As I resumed work today I realized that the photo etch made for Fujumi's body parts doesn't include the six vents in the rear screen mid section! All others are there to be cut out and replaced, except those quite prominent ones. How weird is that? Somewhat annoyed I thought I'd replace that body part with the resin and associated photo etch and continued.

The photo etch vents for Fujimi's rear end comes in pairs and is a complex fold wich the fits from inside. I have never quite liked that idea. I did the first very fragile one up and made a test fit. It wasn't promising. It was all but impossible to find a perfect fold vs. fit, and the fit was also very tight, even without paint. Soon the first fold broke. I thought it might make the fit easier, but no, not much, and it didn't look good.

The photo etch vents that comes with the resin parts are all separate parts that fits from the outside into recesses in the resin parts. Knowing what I knew now that seemed like a much better idea. The whole plan was about to change.

I decided to clean up and prepare the resin rear section and see how it looked. Having done that to staisfaction the state on the work bench suddenly looked like this...

The size and fit of the three resin parts was close to perfect, quite impressive actually. I had expected a good deal of tweaking and modifying, but the original parts were just removed and the new ones almost fell in place perfectly. Some small cleaning up of the panel lines in the joints remains to be done tomorrow when the body have had a good rest over night.

[Séan Pádraig]

Fantastic attention to detail on this build I will be watching it develop with great interest, but with so much after market additions including 3D printed tyres I wonder was it even worth starting with the Fujimi kit at all. I dred to think of what it has cost... but at least you are doing it justice.

[Bengalensis]

Thanks. It sure is on the crazy side and the cost would certainly buy a good resin kit. Which still would probably need a lot of similar rework in my world. But the main problem is that I don't think there has ever been a 1/24 kit of the actual road version before, only a lot of GTR's and LM's and so on, and I have always wanted to do the original road car, not the others. I'm not sure if Aoshima is also doing the road car soon, if so it may be an alternative.

[Séan Pádraig]

In injection kit terms the lack of an F1 road car has been a glaring omission so I agree this kit is most welcome.... I pre-ordered it myself when it was announced but my skill level means I will be building it straight out of the box so to see what can be achieved is great.

[heloman1]

Good morning Jorgen. Great attention to detail, I was chatting with a fellow car modeller yesterday and he metioned the Aoshimi kit. I look forward to seeing it. Tamiy had mention of a road version back in the early days of the F1 but it never appeared...

Colin

[Bengalensis]

The Fujimi will not be a bad model built almost OOB. The worst point I think is the tyres, but with a little patience and open mind for some slight compromise one can certainly find good replacement tyres without expensive 3D print. With that done and a following adjustment of the ground clearance and wheel arch openings, none very difficult jobs, it will certainly look good without any resin, photo etch and larger scratch jobs.

Build it here and we'll compare. At a slight viewing distance I'm sure many will not tell the difference.