Malc2

So finally as promised, the gear box is painted and the springs and damper actuators have been glued on. Strangely the kit did not provide front damper rods or rear control arms, both are an aerofoil shape, so the 020 gave up more parts and more 0.5mm copper wire was used for locating pins. Wire ends super glued in to push rods before cutting to length. In place to check fit and ready for paint. More gear box assembly, now with added control arms, driveshafts, gear linkage, an almost invisible oil pipe, which TBH was just an excuse to use a spare TopStudio connector. The front of the gearlinkage is supported with a scrap piece of plastic card, this will be painted black and will hopefully disappear in to the darkness under the body. The push rods are left long until the ride height is established. Malc.

OK, thanks. I don't have one either so good to know for when I start mine! Which brand of 2K etch primer have you used? M.

While the paint was drying on the gearbox, rather than watching it I got on with the front and rear wings. The white metal main rear wing supports were removed from the bottom element and replaced with plastic card, have a very out of focus photo of the replacement supports lurking with intent amongst the desk top debris. The ends of the wings were drilled for all 16(!) mounting pins. The pins are made from 0.5mm copper wire. I use copper wire a lot as it can be easily found in an infinite variety of diameters, is easily worked, holds its shape and is especially good for coil springs. The surface of the wing pieces looks rougher that it actually is, but was further refined before and during the priming stages. The wing elements are just flat plates, I did not want to change the profile as they wouldn’t fit the shape in the end plates, in retrospect I wish I had re-profiled the elements as they should be more of a fat aerofoil shape in real life – oh well, on the next model. I found a Jordan 191 element in the junkyard that replaced the smallest element exactly. The clunky white metal gurney strips on the back edge of the end plates were replaced with strips of 10thou plastic card. After priming the body and comparing it to photos, I noticed that in side view the nose should form a straight line from the tip to just in front of the cockpit opening, the kit body has a very slight concave line resulting in the tip of the nose being about 1mm too tall, so it was straightened and the non scale inner upper wing mounts removed – will I regret this later…..? Test fit of front wing top elements, the vernier is useful to check its all square while holding everything in place. The shims are used to make sure the wing gaps are parallel and equal. The LH element was a bit short so I added a shim of plastic card to the inboard end. It really will be gearbox assembly next. Malc.

Nice! Have you put the metal parts in the final pic through a magnetic polisher? Will be following this for sure. M.

Thanks mate, well here it is! For a bit of motivation the seat was painted and finished and can now be put aside as an assembly. No detail on the dash as it is so deep in the cockpit it can’t be seen in the gloom. Tamiya aftermarket seat belts were used, they are thin self adhesive plastic, they look OK but I prefer belts made of material. The body in primer and good news, no sign of the joint with the intake fairing, but it has shown there are a couple of small areas that still need attention. The finished seat assembly in place to check the fit. The mirror mounts had got blurred from the sanding (see above) so I replaced them with plastic card. More parts in final paint - aiming to assemble the gearbox and rear suspension next. More soon, Malc.

Fantastic builds and a great selection of civil models, always love following your WIPs. M.

Wow, what an interesting story and colour scheme! Malc.

Nice model, vastly under represented car in any scale! M.

Cheers mate! M.

Wow, just found this, great job, esp the diffuser. Shame Photobkt has ruined the early photos with their intrusive watermark. M.

Thanks Hugh, Funny you should mention the 102, at the same time I bought the 101 I got a Garage Unlimited 102 trans kit, while the 101 kit is on a par with Studio27, the 102 is one of the worst resin castings I have ever seen, (many bubbles, warps, rough surface, poor fit, asymmetry, blurred detail, the resin body is about 3% smaller than the Tamiya body due to resin shrinkage - you get the picture.....) it could work out to be the most expensive decal set I ever bought! To try and make something of it I lucked on a cheap started Tamiya 102b, so the current thinking is to chop out the sections of the resin body that are required (nose, engine cover, diffuser) and graft them on to the Tamiya kit parts. Do you have a WIP or any pictures of your 102 conversion? - Edit - Just found your WIP! M.

What he ^ said. The association between Lancia Stratos' (Stratii?) and coffin spoke Campagnolos is so strong that anything else just looks wrong. But its your model, your choice! Good work so far BTW. M.

The gearbox was tackled next, the front top wishbone was about 3mm too low and did not fit in the body cut out so was raised as photo below of 1:1 car (photo credit Stu.G) The upper and lower gearbox halves were super glued together sandwiching the lower wishbone. The real car had large wings each side of the gearbox for the upper front wishbone pickups, this is quite a prominent feature and visible with the body on, added from plastic card, and raising the top front pickup points at the same time. Photo credit unknown The raised wishbone now fits nicely in the body cut out. The few bubbles in the body were drilled and filled with superglue and baking powder, super quick! The kit push rod/spring assembly is also somewhat sketchy. So new rockers, pivots, dampers and supports were made, easy to say but this took ages……. The kit supplies a square plate to mount the rear wing on, which in turn mounts in a hole on top of the gearbox (see first gbox photo), this is not prototypical so the hole was filled and four posts added as the real car, hope I can make the joint to the wing strong enough! Malc

Love a 6R4, I remember them testing each one as they were finished on the Longbridge site up and down 'heart attack hill' next to the onsite fire station. Should have bought one - they were offered to employees for 14K after group B was cancelled. I think full list price at the time was around 40/60K depending on spec. Malc.

Thanks KK, the decals are dark blue, just my bad photography - sorry! I did not know about the Wave kit. M.

Thanks both, I will see if I can figure out posting the full size pics next time. Malc.

OK, so that worked, let get up to date. - is it better to list photos like this or as above? Milliput side consoles Another round of filler on the side consoles finished them off, but no pictures. The gear change bulge was ground out on the inside of the cockpit. The intake was made deeper and then the whole upper fairing super glued to the body, only a small amount of superglue/baking soda was required on the join. The detail on the head rest was replaced with plastic card Luckily I noticed the left triangular plate was skewed before the epoxy had dried. That's it for now, Malc.

I bought this a short while ago from Icaro – Thanks Roberto! I have always liked the Camel yellow colour scheme and late 80s early 90s F1 are my favourite cars. I thought I knew of most F1 resin manufacturers but I had never heard of Hobby Base and an internet search did not yield a Hobby Base Lotus 101. OK, so I can hear the voices in my head shouting ‘finish the others first!’ but the new and shiny syndrome is biting hard, so I hope I can push this across the line quite quickly………. The kit represents Nakajimas fantastic drive in the torrential rain of the 1989 Australian GP. After a miserable season filled with DNF’s and DNQ’s, he qualified 23rd on the grid for the last race of the season. Spinning on the first lap of the restart, (which put him last by a long way), he kept out of trouble, set the fastest lap while most of the rest either spun off or collided with each other, and secured his best finish of the year, just missing out on the podium with 4th place. So the kit, the resin parts are superb, smooth finish, fine panel lines, no distortion and resin that is easy to carve, more like injection moulded plastic. I think that the overall shape of the casting captures the original well. This is what you get, you can’t see in this picture but there are rain tyres as well as a set of 1998 style grooved dry tyres, I wonder if they have been added by the previous owner by mistake? Instructions are basic! Only one sheet, I wonder if its worth translating the Japanese? Reverse side is the decal guide. three sets of decals! Although on closer inspection, one sheet is not enough to complete the model (large Epson and large Camel for example), so you need one and a half sheets to complete the model. I wonder why they did not print a full set on a larger sheet? Sadly the bottom sheet had stuck to the one above, when I unpeeled them some of the colour remained behind, luckily there are enough good ones remaining assuming I don’t mess up! First up cockpit, the seat is too narrow and the back too short, so a junkyard Tyrrell 020 gladly gave up its seat which fitted nicely with almost no modification, I also made a more representative bulkhead that replaced the simple legs attached to the kit dash. The only pic of the kit bulkhead is in the first shot and in the instructions. Kit dash just placed (badly) on the new bulkhead. The seat fits with just a light sanding of the back and removal of the moulded on seat belts was done with a curved wood chisel, finished by wet sanding, I managed to save the padding at the bottom. With the only positive location of the new parts being the bulkhead, I glued the seat to it, to get a repeatable fit for small adjustments and to build up the side consoles from Milliput.

I hope you are soldering proper connectors on all those wire ends! M.

That looks a great and brave subject for a scratchbuild and the first time I have seen someone else with an original brass Swan Morton model knife! I use mine almost every day and have had it for over 45 years! M.

Noice! I had missed this, so good to finally catch up. I have a Lotus 101 on the go, much simpler colour scheme..... M.

I spy a Lotus 107 in the corner, is there a build thread for it? M.

Haha, no, don't think my Dad would have let his 12 year old loose on a 312T in 1975! Much as I would have liked to...... Hence a career as a powertrain engineer. Good to help out fellow F1ers, its a small corner of a niche hobby! M.

Looks great, no, it looks fantastic! I'm sure you will find some les brocante bargains... And you have shown never be afraid to start over if the first attempt does not work out! M.

Haha, yes I had forgotten, nice little project for vacforming/plunge moulding. M.