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I did this one late in 2022. Basically it's the Belkits Escort with a resin chassis and engine. The rest of the engine bay is scratch built and spares box. Motobitz wheels and decals. Interior floor is part of the chassis which makes the interior a bit deeper and it's a lot easier to get the body and chassis together. Seats are resin items, I also added carpet from flocking, it's all black in there so a bit hard to see anything 🙄 Overall, a really enjoyable build. Atb, Steve.

So my second GB entry will be this mini-beast... 3.0 litre, V6, mid-mounted with 4WD in a Metro shell, group B rally madness at it's finest. The kit itself looks pretty comprehensive which is a good thing if you like 6R4s as unlike Spitfires there's no exactly much in the way of choices out there (maybe a resin kit or two). The instructions are in a nice glossy booklet with colour in parts. Decals seem good - I've got some aftermarket window masks from Hiroboy (plus their Zero-paint set, I hope it's a good match the white seems somewhat yellowed but that maybe just the thinners). All the sprues are individually wrapped. There's a small PE fret, some rubber parts, seat belt material, chrome parts and a metallic MG decal/sticker. It comes with two sets of wheels (I guess the second set are for the RAC decal version). The parts just keep coming... Finally the tiny body shell (Plymouth GTX for comparison), which is individually wrapped and packed in a small box to help protect it... Now I somehow have to fit all those parts into it!

Good morning vehicle chasers. Jumping on the Belkits Escort bandwagon following the excellent build by Nick Belbin I've been attacking the kit I've had for a while. I must confess to doing bits and pieces for a while but have only started chopping the chassis about this past week. If you want to see what's in the box can I suggest you buy a kit , you won't be disappointed. There's not much left intact on the sprues in mine anyhow! This is the car as it appeared back in the day, clip from YouTube. I am fortunate that a contact also had some period photos from Wembley Stadium as the car departed on this epic event. The car is also well detailed in Graham Robson's book 'Works Escorts in Detail' and there are plenty of images on t'internet. Here I'm mocking up the locations for the extra bracing bars and bull bars as featured on the escorts used in the event. I have subsequently discovered the kit lamp brackets set the light too high. Another feature of Ford's modifications for this car was the installation of auxiliary fuel tanks with extra filler caps sited in recesses in the rear wings. The standard fuel filler located in the left C pillar had to be filled along with the rear lamp recesses as the block lamp units were replaced by individual lens type fittings [see photo above] An auxiliary lamp used as a reversing lamp has been fabricated too. If you can't beat 'em chop out some plastic. I was hoping to get away with part surgery [ l/h image] but decided a major op was called for. Hence drawing templates for all the new bits to make the inner arches. As per NJB's build I'll be fabricating new front shocks too. The rear arches have been shaved to make fitting the body easier down the line. As mentioned earlier the kit spot lamp brackets set the lamps too high. Again Nick's build provided the inspiration and with some images of AVO Brackets off the net I have made a replacement from plastic strip, rod and hex section for the bolt heads which I'll get cast in resin for future builds. The other bracket is for the wing mounted lamp on the East Africa Rally Escorts ... more on that story later . That's the state of play so far, the front inner wing build being next in line to complete.

Time to present my latest completion - Belkits Fiesta S2000. This one is their second kit, and there are indications that they are still finding their way a bit. One such example would be that many of the pegs are semi-circular which is very good for locating parts correctly, but a couple of the pegs are the wrong way around. Overall though, this is a very good kit with just a few bits which need trimming, but it's got a very good level of detail, 'proper' seatbelts, photoetch and lots and lots of decals. In fact, this would be close to being one of the best kits I've done if it wasn't for the niggles and anything related to paper- the instructions are based of CAD 3D line drawings and are really not clear in places (and the order for installing the rollcage in particular is questionable), and the decals are monstrouly thick for the curves they have to go around, albeit nicely opaque. If you want to build a Fiesta kit, I'd definitely go for this one as it builds up to a very nice result, just make sure you go in with your eyes open and try to plan ahead. This build, as is standard for me, is out of the box with the only extra bit being that I cut up the photo-etch fret to create the wing mirror glass. If you haven't seen the build thread, it's linked below. And now for the bit everyone wants to see - the photos. First up, a tour around the car from various heights and with various levels of lighting experimentation: Close-up pics weren't completely successful, but here goes anyway. First up, I tried to get a pic of the roof showing the aerials (which make it awkward to pick up) - also has the added benefit of showing the mirrors: I tried to get a close-up of the wheel, which unfortunately just seems to highlight the issues I had with the front wing and doesn't show the suspension (which was a lot of work) at all This one was meant to be the shot of the mirrors, but instead ended up being just a view along the side of the car: And finally, I tried to get a shot of the interior. This is one of the most complex parts of the build, and isn't too easy to see when it's completed unless you look closely, and if very tricky to photograph, so I've included an in-progress shot too. Hope you like it. Thanks for looking.

With the Challenger completed, it's time to move onto the next project. First in the set of "cars which share a name-and-not-much-else with cars I've owned", this will be Belkits' Fiesta S2000, which I believe is only the second kit they made. Of course, after I bought this Belkits released their newer Fiesta with the Aston-style grille which would have been much nearer mine, but this will be close enough - after all being a rally car it's never going to be the same as a 1-litre supermini. Unlike @pau10wen's excellent ongoing project, this is going to be pretty much out of the box so I hope you won't try to compare the two too much - I'm not sure mine will withstand that comparison! The first set of pictures are going to seem a bit repetitive as I've only really got the paint on the body so far, so apologies for the plethora of white Fiesta bodies coming up. I had to have a couple of goes at cleaing up the body, as the first application of primer highlighted some bits of seam that I hadn't got sanded right down, plus some other sharp edges. But once that was done, the white plastic had a nice coating of white Halfords primer. After that, it was out with the Appliance White having sanded the body down with 2000grit sandpaper. What with the chassis also being white, and trying to get a good covering inside as well as out not to mention all the other body parts which also needed painting, I near enough used a whole 300ml can on just this car. And the picture barely looks any different. With the paint dried, yesterday I ran some dark grey wash into the panel lines to bring them out a bit using blu-tak as a dam where I didn't want it to run. Hopefully this is as bad as the body will look. And then today I got some 4000 grit Micromesh sheet onto those panel lines to get rid of the overwash. While it's cleaned up the edges quite nicely, unfortunately to my eyes it's also made the panel lines look a bit too dark. I think tomorrow I'll give them a run over with some white gloss paint to dial down the darkness a bit. What with cleaning up the body and washing two lines ont he boot which I missed, I haven't really got started on construction yet. But my feeling is that it will be worth getting the body done first (including decalling) so that the clearcoat gets time to dry, Thanks for looking, even if it has just been white Fiesta after white Fiesta to start this thread.

Skoda Fabia S2000 - Rally Sulamericano Erechim 2015 - Brasil Drivers: Gustavo Saba (Paraguai)/D. Cagnotti (Argentina)

Evening all, I haven't posted anything in ages but have recently got in to building cars... I've been building the Belkits RS1600 since November. I was way too cowardly to post a wip, sorry but tempting fate if you ask me. I named my build Project Walker as homage to the actor Paul Walker who sadly passed away in a car crash, one of the leads in The Fast and the Furious film franchise. Naming seems to work for me, especially one with an identity like this. This is my version of the Mk1 Ford RS1600 Escort from F&F6. Finished with Zeropaints Fast and Furious Blue and Hobby Design decals. The wheels are aftermarket from MotoBitz, a real find and I'm very happy with the final colour. It would be great if more aftermarket comes out for this kit, different colour decals, RS alloys, bib spoiler... Bucket seats came from a Ford Focus and I added a cross member to the rear roll cage. Wing mirrors came from a friend spares box. In 1990ish I was driving around in a Mk1 Daytona Yellow Mexico, lowered, Janspeed exhaust and bored out to 1760cc. I might have been a boy racer; probably why when I saw the Belkits kit I thought YES! Thanks also to Pink Floyd, Ozric Tentacles and Public Service Broadcasting all of whom helped me out no end along the way. Anyway here's Walker I hope you like him. Thanks for looking.

We've just received our stock of Belkits highly detailed 1/24 Scale VW Polo R WRC Red Bull Plastic Model Kit! This fantastic kit comes with photo-etched and night race parts included! Available while stocks last, so get your order in early! For full details, see our newsletter here.