FalklandsCraig

It is probably the most disappointing part of the build so far, but depending on which photos you work from some different designs of front exhaust headers exist, I wont contemplate changing those but the gap is something I cant overlook. I have found a very well detailed build that was on here and has since ended up on another forum informing readers of an issue with this forum, I dont know or even want to, i wasnt a member and its obviously old news, but it is a fantastically well detailed model of which I can only dream of getting close too. Work gets in the way to prevent me achieving much of a run but nothing worth having is quick. I will hopefully have more pictures after the weekend and hopefully I'll be heading in the right direction.

Well following my disappointment with the amount of detail of my Hasegawa Jag I bit the bullet and managed to win a Tamiya one on Ebay courtesy of British Red Cross so I might of paid a bit of a premium but hopefully theyll benefit from a few of my pounds. So I hope I can do this beast justice, this is my first Tamiya kit and I must say they are fantastic, dry fitting everything together and it all stays together, I am very impressed. There is a fair few items on order so progress is slow BUT I really want to build this as detailed as I can, the cars hold very fond memories as a kid, i got to meet Martin Brundle a few times through his racing career and have been lucky enough to be photographed sat in a few of his sports cars and F1 cars. As such as I have a couple of die cast Le Mans '88 winners this will be built as Martin Brundles car that failed to finish. I have added all 12 HT leads to the distributor cap, I was going to find the firing order but once the air intake box was added you couldnt see them so their all fixed in numerical order instead. Lots of pipework will be fitted but i need to add most of that to the floor pan so my aim was to get the engine as detailed as i could first. I'm lucky enough to have about 1000 photos of these magnificent cars and virtually every book ever published on these and TWR, i really admired Tom, he had plans for everything and MOST came to fruition, I'm sure he could sell ice to eskimos with the amount of big money backing he got through his business and racing career and I'm sure a weekend in a bar with him would of been hard to beat.!!! So I've added brake lines and as many various leads I can decipher from the photos, most of them just run to the floor around the sump but hopefully will give a good impression. The exhaust is only dry fitted but the wiring for the lambda sensors have been fitted. So huge amounts to go and will be extremely slow but I cant afford to rush it, the disappointment would be too much to bare. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated, it is only a few hours into the build and nothing is final where it is, just mostly mocked up at the moment.

Some nice black and silver pressed tin ones would suit her a treat, with the wealth of knowledge I've seen on the forum in the few weeks I've been a member someone must know how to achieve such masterpieces????

Very nice job John 👏 You working on some nice period plates to adorn her??? All your work has made it into a very good replica of the beautiful beast!!!!

Ahhh that's just me being a bit 🤦‍♂️then 🙄 thanks Chris I'll get them ordered as the HLJ ones are on back order

The only problem I couldnt find Silk Cut branding on the Shunko sets from Spot Model, i would rather like the proper set on this even though it's not a great kit

I'm after a bit of help please...... I have ALWAYS been a huge fan of the Silk Cut Jaguar XJRs the quite magnificent (unless you lent him money) Tom Wilkinshaw built. I have very vague memories of the 1988 Le Mans win and especially the 1990, I visited the motor show at the NEC with my dad and was lucky enough to see the 90 winner there. I have various books acquired in recent years and various die cast models of these wonderful machines but always fancied building a detailed kit. A couple of years ago I found the 1:24 kit from Tamiya BUT was over £60 and I was fearful I couldnt do such a well detailed kit justice, step in Hasegawa I managed to get the complete kit including proper Silk Cut decals for a mere £15, I thought it was going to be great and as such I bought the Spot Model PE kit for the Tamiya model in my plan to detail it a bit more. A few days later the kit arrived and the anticipation of opening it turned to disappointment as soon as the lid came off. Next to no detail, no ENGINE, no nice detailed interior and about 50 pieces to put it together, I was very unhappy, but it was £15!!! It sat in the box for a while but I decided that I should build it just to do it and then get the tamiya kit when I felt confident I could build one that detailed. I white glossed the shell and painted the interior as detailed as I could so this morning I thought I'd put the decals on it, complete it and stick it at the very back of the shelf as it isnt worthy of being close to the front. My problem is the decals were in a film wrapper and the decals over time have curled up and stuck to the film bag, I opened it up and left them to dry up a bit, all the edges have furred out and a horrible glazing all over them, I hoped they might lift and stick just not look very flat. WRONG They literally just disintegrated as soon as they hit the water and curled up cracking into about 40 pieces 🤬 So in a long winded way........ Does anyone know where I can buy a complete set of Hasegawa Silk Cut decals for my XJR-8 ?????

Very nice job Sir!!!!! I have a Scania R730 to get finished at some point, I got overwhelmed with the mods available on KFS 🤪 Rhd conversion is a must but as mines for my race transporter I'll convince myself we race more in Europe to justify not changing it!!! The tag axle looks fantastic and makes it so much more realistic for UK roadscene. The blue looks a very nice colour!! Good work on the trailer and decals, proper good job Sir!!!!

I will search the book out Andy, yeah knew about the Aston / Jag crossover and I think it went back the other way with the DB-9 / XKR. Ford management was always "1 part fits all" and it was never going to be any different with those marques and Land Rover. My brother in law shuffles paper for JLR and happily complains about EVERYTHING Ford did for them, they were so bad its only very recently that JLR have been able to replace Ford engines!!!! A very good friend of mine did his apprenticeship at "The Jag" as its affectionately known around Coventry, the stories Pete has of the "problems" in the 70s are priceless!! Still I'm sure weve taken up too much of Matthews thread and I bet wed struggle to find a production XJ-S built with as much attention to detail as this one!

I'm not suggesting your post is knocking Fords involvement with Jag development and production Andy and apologies for the thread drift.... Matthew that is a truly magnificent piece of work sir, attention to detail is mind blowing!!! You should be extremely pleased with your hardworking sir!! I knew an architect who treated himself to a 2004 Jag S type R in 2008, knowing I'm a huge blue oval fan he took great pride in whinging and moaning that he had the same steering wheel and the Same ignition key as his neighbours mondeo, whinge whinge moan moan, the fact that he bought this car for £15k a quarter of what some poor sod paid 4 years previously didnt get mentioned but like everyone happy to knock Fords involvement with Jag, if it wasnt for them hemorrhaging money like they did Jaguar would be consigned to the Great British Classics in the history books. Tata will never make money on owning them, build quality under BL was bad, some suggested Ford built versions weren't much better, that quality still isnt where it was back when Jaguar sat under Sir William, much like Marks and Spencer, Jaguar is living on the history of its name and management belief that will see them through. I would most definitely buy an XJS tomorrow, I know it will break down everytime I use it, it will spend more time in the garage then on the road and it will cost me a thousand times what I pay for one to keep it going but it's a Jaguar XJ-S!!!!!

Well less then 6 days after I recieved this kit she is as far as I think (please disagree if not) finished. This kit is my first ever completed 1:24 model, and a subject very close to the top of my 1:1 want list. I was offered a 1957 example back in 2008 during a summer trekking the west coast of France, it had been tucked up in a shed for 20 years and although structurally sound there was not 1 panel that wasnt suffering from surface rust. The passenger seat was a bare frame with remnants of a basic cushion, the drivers seat had been covered with a proper heavyweight tarpaulin so was a very grubby mouldy vinyl seat but remarkably intact. As I still have photos of this particular van my plan was to try to replicate it to the best of my ability. She now stands on a piece of ply, static grass covered with a bit of a gravel track surrounded by bushes and a cobbled together typically french rural fence. Hopefully she looks as good as I want her too??? The kit went together extremely well with next to no fettling or filing, a bit of a different story to articles I'd read prior to starting her. Thank you for looking and please any comments will be greatly recieved

Thanks Spiny (I'll learn how to tag you properly) the lenses were literally just glued in with glue n glaze and hadn't dried, hence the black spot, they have now dried fully clear but I might revisit these in the near future with a tweek or two

I seem to be getting lots of likes on the pictures so I guess I must be doing alright 🤨 I've now begun working towards the setting for its Ready For Inspection which isnt too far off now, I've made new mirrors for it as my 1957 pictures show them mounted on the top of the doors easily achieved with some 0.8mm brass rod, and being a '57 model it doesnt run indicator lights like the later models did. A simple A Vendre sign has been put in the windscreen and at €6,700 I'd snap it up in this condition!! Both positive (if there are any) and negative comments invited, the world of 1:24 is a long way from my 1:148 N gauge background 😬

Well a bit more progress (I think) has been made, structurally the HY is complete just all the ancillary parts too add and give a final weathering to, but as this is the first vehicle I have ever got to this level of completion I invite criticism over what I've done wrong to hopefully get next projects better.

Better then Jaguar EVER built one!!!!!