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Showing results for tags '1/16th scale'.
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This is another one that has been through the wars a bit. This is when Bandai were making some very cool large scale cars and things (A Steam roller and a Showmans engine) all in 1/16th scale, long before they got into Gundam and the like. Now, don't get me wrong, those Gundam and Star Wars model kits are really impressive, and I do see myself indulging an a Star Wars kit some time in my future, but giant robots are not my thing. They look amazing when built, but they leave me a bit cool. My adult son, on the other hand, thinks that they are really great. I suppose it's a bit like Rap music or Drum 'n' Base,: Technically really impressive, and I can appreciate te artistry, but I just don't like it. Anyway, middle-aged moan over, on to this kit. The obligatory box top. This has to be one of Colin Chapman's prettier cars, not as beautiful as the original Elan, but pretty none-he-less. Now this kit has had a chequered history. Early on, I decided that I wanted a dark blue Esprit, and sprayed it with Car aerosol paint. However, that stuff was very different from the modern acrylic based car paints. It was the old fashioned Cellulose paints. There are two main problems that I have encountered The paint is very unkind to polystyrene. It will eat into the plastic and do some real damage. The cured paint is very brittle and doesn't flex as well as the underlying Polystyrene. The first can be mitigated a bit by carefully priming the plastic with a Cellulose primer. It seems a bit less 'hot' than the colour coat. Anyway, the inevitable happened and the paint started cracking and peeling off before I had even started assembling the body! Tis left me a bit depressed, and I vowed never to use car paints again... It ended up in the loft, to probably be ignored forever... Many years (and house moves) later, I decided to give it another go. This probably was about 5 or 6 years ago. I stripped the really disastrous blue paint on it, and decided I would paint it Red. The ideal Lotus colour... So, at this point, we had: The body, stripped. (You can see a bit of the sub-frame to the left) The sub-frame. This was assembled a very long time before, and just forgotten. It was one of my better efforts from way back when, but had suffered the ravages of time. When I took it out of the box, the front end looked rather tatty, and the whole rear end fell apart. So, after much cementing, filling and touching up, it was back together again. This is how it looks at present. The floor pan, with release marks suitable filled and sanded. Most likely, none of them would be visible when assembled, but hey ! The engine, almost complete. Then I noticed that avital ancillary part had gone missing during the 30+ years in storage... I'm not sure what it is, but the instructions were good enough for me to re-create the thingummy, thus: I was so proud of it, I took many pictures of it. The last gives ma sense of scale, I think. The engine again... Finally all the other body parts, stripped. This poor car has suffered the Lotus curse: "Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious" So, this was where it was about two or three years agio. It has been in suspended animation since then. Thanks for looking, Alan.
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- Bandai
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