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1/20 Tamiya - Lotus 102


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While taking a break from my 312T4 (in desperate need of purchase a magnifying lamp, as I'm having real trouble focusing on the wiring and tubing) I thought I would make a start on another of my favourite cars the Lotus 102, it wasn't a good car and had a part in Lotus's final demise but what a livery.

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I hope you enjoy this thread and apologies already for any rambling and pointless photo's taken to describe this build.

Shood23 has already built a fine example of the car last year and I just hope this will be half as good as his. While doing my research I bought a build guide from the Modeler Site website by a William Chan which highlighted the changes from the Tamiya 102b kit, I also had a large a number of photo's of the chassis #4 car that was on show during the Classic Car show I visited at the Excel earlier this year so hope I am as primed as I can be. I shall, near as possible be reproducing the chassis #4 car of Derek Warwick, in my opinion one of F1's underrated drivers who never really had the car to challenge for the top.

The good lady bought me the Tamiya 102b kit for my birthday and I had already purchased the Studio 27 PE upgrade, Shunko decal sheet and the Camel yellow paint from Zero all from our friends at Hiroboy. There is a Studio 27 white metal brake disk upgrade which I've only seen available from Belgium and I'm still not certain whether it's worth the extra £22, I'll probably wait to see how the car progresses before I make that decision.

Also both Shaun/Shood23 and William Chan decided on a roadside kit due to the great difference of the kits Judd engine to the actual 102's Lamborghini engine. I did like the idea of having the rear cowling removable and hope nobody mentions the engine but while having an initial dry fix I noticed how bad the fitting of this section was, I've been working on a Tamiya, Williams FW13 kit and the fitting is much crisper so I may opt for a roadside kit after all but I'll delay this decision until all the alterations have bee completed.

Anyway, the main modifications are to the bodywork with a pointed nose and raised section near to the cockpit, a slightly smaller and more angular air box and reduced bodywork around the engine. I also noticed, from my photo's, the rear diffuser was completely different all of which I have decided to alter, William Chan's guide doe's give some good examples of how to do this but as he had a resin nose and used the rear diffuser from a MP4/5, all of which I do not have I had to botch something together using poly sheet and tube.

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The nose was removed slightly in front of the actual moulded seam, so as to retain the seam line, the replacement nose was made from a rough skeleton of 2mm poly sheet then strips of 0.5mm sheet glues over to give a very basic shape over which I applied a layer of Milliput's fine epoxy putty and began to shape.

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To the remaining section of the cockpit I capped it off with a section of 2mm poly to get a good fixing surface when attaching the new nose, as you may see I left a small return to the base of the nose to match a similar return in the bodywork near the front suspension.

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I cut a section of the new nose to accommodate the front wing, then fitted the front wing to the nose with Milliput sandwiched between, left to dry and trimmed off the excess.

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The nose was attached and it quickly became evident my initial estimate of the size of the replacement nose was underestimated and a lot more filler would be required, that done the process of filing and sanding began.

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IMG_3792_zpsm7hynsuz.jpgThe grooves were made to give me a guide to the amount of filing back needed.

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Ready for initial prime coat.

The addition to the front of the cockpit was from a section of 9mm poly tube cut at an angle, glue and packed with putty the lots of filing down. And I thinks its still slightly to large.

Regards

John

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Wonderful stuff! Gotta love that diffuser. I agree with you about Derek Warwick - it seemed like he always landed a ride with a team right before or right after they were good - the timing was never right.

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Thanks for the good words gents.

Just a little advance on the cockpit, it's as ready as it will be for the final coats so will be put away until all the yellow parts are at a similar stage. Really pleased with the progression so far, I forgot to mention the mod's to the airbox inlet and head rest, basically trimming the inlet back to make it less angled and dropping the 'head rest' section, all of which was mentioned in Chan's guide, looking at the chassis #4 photos I acknowledge the head rest mod but am still not sure with the inlet.

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I'm still using Halford's plastic primer, but noticed the finish more stippled than usual, this wasn't a problem as a quick sand down with my trusty piece of fine wet & dry I've been using for the last 2-3 years which is now so smooth but always gives a great finish. I filed down the raised section of the cockpit slightly, I still think it's a bit to large but not as bulky as before.

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Started work on the rear cowling, there is quite a lot to remove, made a start on removing a section of the left hand side intake then removing large sections at the back and promptly slicing my scalpel into my index finger, claret everywhere!

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And now onto my biggest worry, the re-shaping of the air box, I have decided to go down Mr Chan's route and removing a large section, which I'll be infilling with poly sheet and filler, I'm looking to be a bit more finer with the sheet as I'm still hoping to remove the cowling and exposed the engine.

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And that's just about it for the moment, thanks for looking.

Regards

John

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Great work John. That last picture of yours is the one reason I didn't attempt to change the shape, for me at the time I thought that engine cover change was a little beyond me. Looking forward to see how this progresses

Shaun

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Cheers Shaun,

I'm not regretting going down this route but it is a bit of a pain, I generally get bored with excessive preparation and have never used the milliput 2 part putty before but although the fine filler takes an age to file/sand down the finish is impressive and worth while (I hope).

I made a start on the basic framework of the air box from a template I created on cad, applied thin strips of poly sheet over in the same way as the nose, applied the initial thickness of epoxy putty and left to dry overnight before the filing down began. To be honest I was getting a bit worried that after all this hassle the air box wouldn't look any different to the original.

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About half way through I finally decided to reduce the 'cowling bubble' below the air box with my Drimmel, The plastic thickness began to thin so I glued a thin strip of poly sheet to the underside.

You may have noticed the extra internal bodywork side air duct on, that was made from poly sheet and a guess from photo's and am hoping it wont clash with the engine block later.

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Sanding down of the airbox completed and I'm quite happy with it so far, I need to add a smaller bubble in the the bodywork and prime to

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All going well this morning and thinking of priming, it was then I noticed the bodywork under the gearbox is a lot higher than the model, as the photo below, so out comes the Milliput again so I doubt if any more work gets done until I'm back off my hol's.

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Many thanks for looking.

Regards

John

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Looks great John, I have just got some of the tamiya 2 part putty stuff recently and from how you have made the body look with milliput I am really hoping the tamiya stuff works just as good.

Even with the last adjustment you want to make that engine cover looks the mutts

Shaun

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  • 4 months later...

It's been a while, the good weather is over and i'm back on my Nan's old trestle table. The only real thing I got done in the last few months was a semi permanent base for my air brush that I must still say I'm pretty much a beginner.

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I Invested in a small tool cabinet on ebay for around £65 and moved into the summer house which means spraying in the winter may be a pain but better off out of the house I suppose. 

 

I would like to say there has been some absolutely inspiring builds on the Forum this summer and apologise if I haven't commented as much as I should, to be honest, I found it hard, other members had already given there superlatives and I certainly couldn't offer any advise, I just looked on in wonderment. 

 

Anyway back to the 102, I packed out the back of the cowling with milliput. shaped a couple of raised sections of cowling from an old sprue. I also 

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I shaped a couple of raised sections of cowling from an old sprue along with a fin detail on the back of the cowling, as you can see there was a hell of a lot of fine filling and shaping still required, after much sanding down I decided to suck it and see if the finishing coats and decalling would mask most of these problem areas.

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I wasn't particularly happy with the rear air inlets to the rear cowling but carving it out of the filler proved difficult and I didn't really want to cause to much damage so I hoped the finishing coats may just hide some of the difference between the two.

Which takes me to the finishing coat, I purchased a bottle of Zero's Lotus Camel yellow from Hiroboy, this is the largest thing I have sprayed with my airbrush and straight away realised I made such a simple error by spray onto grey primer, I was kicking myself as the grey kept grinning through coat after coat. I did think of stripping back with bleach but didn't know what effect it would have on the alterations, so I kept on spraying.

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I eventually decided to call it a day, the finish is ok and was pretty impressed with the spraying technique and the finish although there was still some light grinning through but hoped the striking contrast of the decals and further clear coat would hide it.

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Decals have now been placed and will post shortly which makes all the hassle so worth while, this car has such a great livery.

 

While all this was going on I have been working on the floor, The diffuser differed drastically from the 102B, it looks like 5 semi circular ducts and on and earlier post I showed a preliminary photo with the central duct shaped from poly sheet, either side of this I placed a cut section of 9mm dia. poly tube and finished with a 6mm dia. section and then a copious amount of filler.

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To be honest, I'm winging this a bit. I've taken so much structure out of the rear of the floor I don't know the damage I could cause while applying pressure when working on this.

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Using a dremmel I carefully cut out the exhaust channels and finished the shaping with a round file, the using a thick section of sprue drilled out the core to provide the connecting section of floor, it looks uneven in the photo, to be honest I didn't notice when viewing the actual piece but wiyth the engin in place you will never see both to compare.

 

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With the engine in place it's beginning to look the part. It has since been sprayed and attempted to apply some CF decaling, what a pain in the backside that was so I gave up, in my photo's of the actual car the CF is pretty fine and would be difficult to see at this scale. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

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This is what I'm trying to achieve.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Regards

John

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for the comment Shaun, nice try but I still think I ballsed up. As they say, 'you live and learn'.

 

Nearly finished the floor, just spayed the heat reflective coating with Xtream's polished aluminium. I was toying with the idea of purchasing some foil but decided against it as I've never used it and not sure how much you would see when the cowling is in place. 

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The burning on exhaust ducts are a bit uneven, I didn't notice until I cleaned the air brush last night after spraying in the 'Summer' house, by Christ it was cold and as mentioned previously you will never see both intakes together once the engine goes in.

The drybrushing looks quite harsh in the photo, it was a bit of a surprise when viewing as I don't think it was that distinctive, saying that I will probably give it a black wash to tone it down slightly.

 

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A rear view of the diffuser, I'm quite pleased how it came out to be honest.

 

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The engine block is taking place, again I do like to drybrush elements to give it depth and once again the camera has picked it out too well.

I used the Studio 27 white metal break disks in the end polishing the metallic section and finishing with a clear coat and following on with Zero's carbon disc paint. Everything was going well, I superglued the discs into the hub then a couple of minutes later, like a child at christmas and without a thought placed the wheels in only to realised the glue hadn't set! 

 

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The decalling went really well and have only a small split one Camel sign on the rear cowling, a small patch job should do the job. All the hard work seems worthwhile when the decals go on and this is such a great livery.

 

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Thanks for looking.

 

Regards

John

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  • 2 months later...

It's been a while, I've had a bit of an impasse on this one since the post apart from the seat. I did start preparing leads, piping and bought a set of electrical boxes/fittings for an 80/90's car but got a bit scared off and kept putting off.

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So decided to make a start on the front suspension, all fitted well and was 

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All good until I remembered another reason why I had stopped work on the 102 was I was looking to polish or even give it a coat of gloss varnish over the satin finish that I had already given it as it needed a bit more sheen. One of my Old Man's favorite comments is 'If you had one more brain cell, you'd be a tree!' and that basically sum's me up I'm afraid.

Anyway while I deliberate my next move, please see a couple of snaps of the 102 with my FW13b that I have been working on and off on over the last few years but have never posted its WIP.

 

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Regards

John

 

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  • 5 months later...

This is more of a post to see if I'm posting from Flickr properly, so will be no doubt editing.

 

Not much progress on the Lotus unfortunately, I always hit an impasse when I get onto the wiring.

Initially I hit a snag with the radiators as the associated pipework differs from the 102b kit, I managed to resolve this by reversing rads and turning the upside down, I hope you get the jist from the few photo's I managed to take, If of course you can view the anyway.

 

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I have made a start with adding some extra 1mm clear pipework and using Top Studio wire band clips, which after a hell of a lot of swearing and losing a number in the carpet, came out quite well.

 

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I hope this works, I did read on a Q&A tread you don't see the images until you post, so here goes.

 

Regards

John

Edited by Hugh Jampton
removed associated text from photo's
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  • 3 years later...
  • 7 months later...
On 1/2/2021 at 10:33 AM, Malc2 said:

Wow, just found this, great job, esp the diffuser.

Shame Photobkt has ruined the early photos with their intrusive watermark.

 

M.

Mal

Thanks for the comment.

I know, I really must change photo's to my flickr account.

 

John

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