cmatthewbacon Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 A great article in last month's Octane promoted this to the top of the build pile! It'll join the XJ220 and soon-to-be-built NSX in an "early 90s supercar" corner of the garage... The Revell kit is very nicely detailed, generally, but the mould is suffering, and this is NOT a car that likes to be packed in a flimsy box and sat on a shelf for years. Airfix/Heller do the whole cabin as a transparent piece that sits on top of the body, whereas Revell has gone for a roof and the flimsiest A-pillars ever committed to plastic. The body shell is also flimsy, and warped on my example, so I've assembled various "working" bits into one, much more solid, shell. The opening bonnet shows you little except the battery, but fixed in place it beefs up the front end nicely. And while it would be nice to have an opening engine cover, both it and the roof were warped. Fixing it shut lets me use the window between the cabin and engine bay as a solid "bulkhead" which pushes the roof and engine cover nicely back into shape... not quite figured out how the "wing" works yet. Heat shields covered with cigarette foil. They'll need a bit of fettling, but the texture is perfect... Wheels stripped of chrome. Lots of flash in the holes, so these are the "best of eight" -- I had a spare set from a donor kit I bough just for the tyres for £5, but the originals demonstrate how tired the mould is. It seems bizarre that they would chrome them in the state some of them were in, but there's obviously no intermediate quality check... The engine is nicely detailed, if a bit over complex -- I don't see a need to have the cylinder head in three stacked parts, especially when they don't fit very precisely, which can end up with your cam covers not aligned and not parallel, if you're not careful. If I was building another one, I'd set up (unglued) the base/sump part of the engine on the bearers in the big chassis part, and then glue on the block/head parts to the base, fine tuning their fore and aft alignment in the chassis, until I was sure that they run directly front to back, and then add the induction manifold and check that for alignment, all while the glue is soft. The blue detailing is prototypical, but there's a bit more to do to the throttle actuator rods yet... bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tarheellaw Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Nice use of cigarette foil. Great engine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbostream Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 Interesting build, good luck with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paolo Posted February 25, 2015 Share Posted February 25, 2015 nice one. also I have this model and really curious on how it will turn out when complete. Great start as usual for now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted February 28, 2015 Author Share Posted February 28, 2015 Thank you, chaps! Progressing steadily in several areas, but only this to show for it so far... That's about it for the engine now. The exhausts and turbos are fixed using very strong, but flexible, "Serious Glue" which should allow a bit of room for manoeuvre when it comes to attaching all the pipework, of which there is a LOT. All I've added is a throttle linkage and return spring -- a bit overscale but it'll busy things up under there -- and the blue hoses coming out of the sides. To start work on the pipe work, I'm using the engine bay as a temporary jig. I want to get the pipework glued together into usable chunks before painting and then assembling permamanently. As well as these exhaust pipes, there are some smaller diameter secondary exhausts that have to fit parallel and around them, and then the air intake hoses that come over the top inside the turbos. All are provided, which is pretty impressive. The fit isn't brilliant though, which is less so... Template for masking up the window in the firewall behind the cockpit. It's not all glass under there, so I needed two identical, symmetrical masks. I made this out of cardboard, folded so both sides were identical, and then drew around it to create two masks from kabuki tape. A fair bit of swearing later, they were on opposite sides of the window... Body in primer. I should get the French Blue on tomorrow, now I've got the wing sorted as well... bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 I have made a blue thing: Some small areas of other colours to add, and then it will be on with the SHINY... bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 (edited) Interior under way... A thing I did notice in pictures is how shiny (OK, "plasticky") the leather in the interior looks. Revell have also made some nice texturing on the seats. Outside, under lights, I know the shadows and highlights are overdone, but once they are inside a small and rather gloomy cabin, I still want the impression of texture to be visible. The dash is quite symptomatic of this kit. It has only two parts, yet OOB there's a big rectangular gap to the left of the binnacle which almost looks like a socket to glue something into. There's nothing there in the real thing though (or the kit parts), so I filled it with plastic strip and made it go away. On the other hand, there's some beautifully detailed engraving on the dials and controls, which comes up a treat when you paint and drybrush it. There's a decal, but I had no confidence of getting it to settle down over the detail, and I figured I could paint a better "burr walnut" veneer than the pixelated version on the decal. The wood effect is hard to see because the highlights from the gloss mask the grain, but I used Vallejo Woodgrain (transparent browny-red) over Cavalry Brown. A bit of research showed plenty of white labelling all over the instrument panel, which busys it up nicely. Won't be long before the cabin is finished now... bestest, M. Edited March 2, 2015 by cmatthewbacon 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Belbin Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 How do you get on with them so quickly?? Another great start . . . Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 Thanks, Nick... I cheat! A lot of this was done while I haven't been posting pics, because it takes a few stages to get each part to the point where it's worth photographing. When it comes to putting it all together, it all happens very quickly! et voila! My owner has decided on a non-prototypical walnut gear shift knob, for a bit more colour in the grey, grey and grey cabin... Now, back to the body and engine (one day I'll build a model in the order the instructions suggest, but... this is not that day) bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hamden Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 That interior looks stunning! Love the walnut dash Roger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 Thanks, Roger... Brake discs waiting to go in. Look carefully, because you will never see these again once they are inside the wheels! ...and now I have a shiny blue thing. The Zero 2K is "dust free" now, and I'll stick it in the airing cupboard to cure hard overnight. The rear spoiler bay and diffuser section are Zero's "Graphite Grey" -- I think it's carbon, probably, but on the pictures I have there's no visible weave pattern at all. bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
06/24 Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Wow About to start a car build for the first time, as a hairy stick Matt paint user the idea of trying to do lush shiney paint fills me with dread, yet you make it look so easy! Much skill in evidence. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 3, 2015 Author Share Posted March 3, 2015 Thanks! (I'm a Matt painter, too.... ) I've been playing around with some settings on the camera, just to see what happens, and used this as a test subject. You can see the colour properly, and get the impression of the wing in place. It looks lower and sleeker than I expected... Wheels done. Contrary to what I expected, you can actually make out the brake callipers, if you look REALLY hard. As so often in this kit, their are little touches of detail that are amazing -- you can actually read the "BBS" logo on at least two of the wheels. Shame that the plastic sagged a bit and filled with flash in places around the "spokes..." I hope these will help some intrepid future modellers battling this beastie. The spring, drive shaft and frame are a really tricky fit. You need to make sure that the frame is firmly rooted and square onto the undertray (which meant, in this case, removing some really weirdly located ejection pin towers inside the "shoulders" at the base of the frame which should fit neatly over the inner corners of the moulded wishbone). The drive shafts need to go well up into the sockets in the frame. And I had to slim down the upper spring locating pin considerably to get enough room for manoeuvre so that the spring didn't foul the drive shaft and lever the whole thing apart. The fit of the upper wishbones is really unclear from the instructions. I have no idea what, if anything, is going to fit onto those two pins on the top edge of the frame, but it ain't the wishbones. They clip into place with no inboard/outboard positive location, so just make sure the wheel carriers are vertical. The steering link goes with the ends angling towards the front. Oddly, although the shaft on the wheel carriers have "flats" to orient the wheels, the brake disk collars that fit onto them don't... And this is where I'm at tonight. I wanted the engine and exhaust silencer to be really firmly fitted to give me some solid anchor and reference points as I start trying to get all the tubing plumbed in around the engine, so they are glued in with "Serious Glue". The lolly stick lets me clamp the engine down firmly with tape while avoiding any pressure on the turbos lurking underneath... bestest, M. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spookytooth Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Looking good Matthew, you are right about the speed in which these kits can be built and photo`ed. Simon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 Thanks! Thanks, gentlemen! I have been hard at work with the cigarette foil (after a wander round the neighbourhood with eyes peeled to find some last night -- if you build cars, any time you see a discarded packet, grab it, take out the foil and bin the packet like the previous owner should have but you're glad they didn't...) I put the rear suspension bits in now -- the instructions would have you wait until all the engine pipework and cabin interior are in place, which to my mind is a recipe for undoing lots of hard work as you wrestle the upper wishbones into place! A triple whammy from Revell to watch out for here... 1) The instructions are badly drawn, and miss out that big ridge running fore and aft that you can see at the outboard edge of the opening in the wishbone 2) The parts have their numbers reversed on the instructions -- that ridge needs to go underneath, other wise it interferes with the springs which need to come out at an angle to reach their sockets in the wisbone 3) The pins that mount the wishbone are too long, so they don't fit horizontally out of the box As always, trial fit and adjust is the answer. The springs fit into sockets in the bottom side of those two blue and silver parts you can see on the pillars outboard of the rear of the engine (that's not clear on the instructions either). If you trim the pin on the wishbone that goes into the open slot towards the front of the car rather than the socketed one at the back, you can achieve a firm press fit by shaving a bit at a time until it slots in place. It's very hard to see whether you've got the wishbone horizontal in both planes. Bizarrely, Revell have moulded two fine lines on the interior surface of the wheel well, which are almost but not quite where you'd want them to be to line up the wishbone in two axes against them. Unless of course the instructions are wrong again and the wishbone SHOULD be angled... Getting started with the pipework. Owing to snappage as I was finely adjusting the relative positions of the pipes, I had to pin the outer pipes with to the inners with wire. This turned out to be a great idea, and I'd advise doing it from the beginning! I superglued the pin at one end, and used "Serious Glue" at the outer pipe end, so the pipe was free to rotate a bit for a few minutes. I also left the connection to the silencer as a press fit, so I had a bit of "wiggle room", but otherwise firm support. It's a testament to whoever designed this kit that with the mounting points held firmly, and that small amount of freedom of movement, the pipes dropped into their sockets on the turbos with minimal wiggling required. Four down, 12 to go... (there are two thinner exhaust pipes that thread between these, two intake boxes to the sides which connect to the front of the turbos, and two "overhead" air pipes which go on last, inboard of the turbos, and each one has to connect to two turbos...) Now I'm going to leave those pipe to set firmly for a few hours, and take a good look at the body for any polishing out of dust specks that's needed... bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nick Belbin Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 Great update. Nick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 Thanks, Nick... The next pair of pipes is these thinner ones that thread between the paired main exhaust pipes. The engine bay is not symmetric, so keeping track of what's what is really important, especially since the left hand one of these is made of two pieces. Don't assume that the routing on one side is just a mirror image of the other. At the turbo end, the pins locating these pipes face forwards horizontally. I decided to get them fixed at that end first. Since the pinning had worked pretty well for the other pipes, I drilled for wire pins at the rear end -- I figured that with the turbo end fixed firmly and set, the thin pipe would give enough to allow me to flex the pinned ends into place, and the pins would hold them instantly while the glue set. Thank goodness, that worked! Another 4 down... Meanwhile.... The usual hour of masking for ten minutes spraying. These are the areas that will be black on the final car. Though the A pillars of the body are thin, the surround on the windscreen part is quite chunky -- as it is on the real thing. Two more sets of pipes in place. The next pair are the four air intakes that come from the boxes at the sides by the firewall. I drilled out the mounting points slightly to give a little wiggle room but, amazingly, these actually press-fited into place and adjusted themselves. In the end I decided to take advantage of the serendipitous trial fit, and dropped a little super glue onto the pipe end and mountings rather than taking them off and gluing again. Then came the two fore-and aft tubes just outboard of the engine. These are the only ones that have really positive locating pins, and I'd already drilled out the holes in the turbos to fit properly (Thanks Mr Alan Sidney for a set of many sizes of tungsten carbide PCB drills which cut superbly with minimal torque on the part...) The dropped into place, and the final cross brace over the top at the back completes the plumbing! Tricky and step by step it may have been, and the fixing points could be better engineered, but full marks to Revell's designer for getting this spaghetti junction of pipes so that it does all fit in place. And I think we can all agree that it's a pretty good attempt at the complexity of the real thing. If I was Mr Tamiya making a state of the art kit, I'd find a way of engineering the four exhaust header bundles that exit the block as one single piece that locate the turbos precisely in space around the block, and make the turbo mountings to the headers equally a lock fit which holds their orientation precisely in 3 axes. Just a little more to do now around the engine bay -- notably the shields that will cover up most of that pipework ;-) And finally... ...I think I'm starting to regret locking the engine cover down! Still, it's been a learning experience, however much you can see at the end! bestest, M 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 5, 2015 Author Share Posted March 5, 2015 I couldn't resist a little test mock-up to find out what you WILL be able to see... Not too bad, I reckon, especially if I make sure the windows are as transparent as possible! bestest, M. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 6, 2015 Author Share Posted March 6, 2015 The chassis is now complete, and ready to squeeze into the body: ...the body, however is not yet ready! bestest, M. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 7, 2015 Author Share Posted March 7, 2015 The inside's inside the outside. As you can tell from the tape, there's a lot of inside to get inside... Interesting popping and clicking noises as it flexes into place, but I don't think anything critical has fallen off. One important point: if you do as I did and fix the front bonnet into place to beef up the structure, before you glue it, tape the body shell down on a tile or glass sheet to ensure the base is completely flat. On mine, the "nose" ahead of the front wheel arches droops slightly, which makes it harder to get the front of the undertray in place. I don't know if this is a result of gluing in the bonnet panel, or just another example of the potential for warping this fragile bodyshell in the box. Now to leave this to set very solid for a good 12 hours. bestest, M. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alan R Posted March 7, 2015 Share Posted March 7, 2015 (edited) That is quite some model. I'm impressed. It doesn't seem to be available from Revell any more. At least it wasn't on the website when I looked the other day. Looks like a visit to EBay ... Cheers, Alan. Edited March 7, 2015 by Alan R Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbostream Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Excellent work, can you recommend this kit? I have been looking at it a couple of times but never bought one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 8, 2015 Author Share Posted March 8, 2015 Thanks, guys... Can I recommend it? If you want an easy way of getting an EB110 on your shelf, no -- buy a diecast. If you want a kit that is challenging to build, whose ambition exceeds the capability of the toolmakers to deliver, but ultimately produces a satisfying replica, then yes. The engine bay is a lot better than the Airfix/Heller alternative, and the issues caused by the fragiity of the body and the complexity of the pipework can all be fixed. I've explained above what I did to fix them, and a few places where, on reflection, I think that there's a better alternative. I was helped, in the end, by the fact that the original kit came from eBay with no tyres, so I bought a cheap half-built (badly) second kit, which had some additional parts so I could choose the best parts of both kits (for the wheels for example) and also have some spares to experiment with. Overall, it's not Tamiya -- it's one of the most challenging car kits I've built -- but it does make up into a pretty convincing replica. To get there, you will need to clean up the parts, test fit everything, fettle where needed, and take your time. Oh, and know when to ignore the incorrect instructions... bestest, M. bestest, M. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmatthewbacon Posted March 8, 2015 Author Share Posted March 8, 2015 (edited) Because I had two kits (one bought very cheap for spares to get some tyres) I could use the two headlight covers that fitted best, by flipping one over. I also noticed that all the photos I have show the EB110 with funky split side windows. These are made from electrician's insulating tape, using a single card template flipped over to ensure that they are identical one side and the other... Proper photos in Ready for Inspection to come in the next few days. bestest, M. Edited March 8, 2015 by cmatthewbacon 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shood23 Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 (edited) The finish of the body is upto your usual best and I may be wrong with this but I am pretty sure I read somewhere that it was this car that effectively almost killed the bugatti off due to the offset of manufacturing cost compared with what they were selling them for. It was that or something about them buying lotus in around 95 Shaun Edited March 8, 2015 by shood23 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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