Search the Community

hello everyone, this is my first WIP here. I started building this kit weeks ago, i work very slowly only in short time at night. Never built an F1 bebore, and i can say that is a bit difficult, too many pieces that you don't know if paint bebore or after.. Anyway this is the job done till now:

I was going to call this "Second Build in 15 years" but I'll let that one go. This is me carrying on with a history of F1 in 1/20th scale. I built the Tamiya 1965 Honda RA272 and even though this is only 6 years on, the differences from 1965 to 1971 are pretty amazing. This is the Ebbro Tyrrell 003 kit and is the first Ebbro kit I've built. Overall, I was very impressed. I think the level of detail and crispness of molding rival or surpass Tamiya. I'll admit that the reason I chose this one over the Sports nose model was the very finely crafted mirror mounts which I think look great on the finished model. I don't think this is the most attractive F1 car ever, but I do appreciate the function over form aesthetic of the nose in particular. I built this pretty much out of the box with the only additions being some Model Factory Hiro brown hose for the fuel lines and black wire for the spark plug leads, As well as a Tamiya seat belt kit to replace the inadequate decal that came with the kit. I would say however, that the Tamiya seat belt kit has nice photoetched hardware, but the adhesive vinyl belt materials leave something to be desired. My only complaints about the Ebbro kit would be that compared to Tamiya, it was a bit more fiddly to assemble. I think Tamiya does a good job of making the parts fit together in a very solid way. With this kit, the pieces fit, but there was a lot of glueing and clamping or holding in place because the pins were so small that they didn't align the parts very firmly. I recognize that this is probably the nature of trying to keep everything in scale and as separate pieces. These separate pieces include the headers which are molded as four separate pipes per side - again, a bit fiddly to assemble, but can't be beat for accurate appearance. That's usually my biggest gripe with Tamiya is that pieces are often molded together to make for easier assembly but this often results in a lot of masking if you're trying to airbrush separate colours onto the same part. My complaints must be pretty minor though as I've already bought the Ebbro Lotus 72C and the Lotus 72E. Must finish the MP4/7 first though. A few details on finishes, the blue is just straight Tamiya blue acrylic. I applied the decals and then clearcoated with Mr Color GX100 thinned with their levelling thinner. This is the best clear I've ever used. I tried the Tamiya X22 clear on the Honda and it was okay, but the GX100 was shiny right out of the airbrush, dry to the touch in 10 minutes and polished up very nicely. It did get under one of the decals, I'm guessing that my mist coats weren't heavy enough to actually protect the decals before I did the wet coat but I think this is going to be my clearcoat system moving forward. I've just clearcoated the MP4/7 and it came out better than this one and with no adverse effects on the decals after going a bit heavier with the mist coats. Anyway, thanks for looking, and I've added a few more shots below. Martin.

Tyrrell 003 Formula 1 Car, pics thanks to Stuart.

Tyrrell 001 Formula 1 Car, pics thanks to Stuart.

Also found this on the Tamiya Blog: http://tamiyablog.com/2015/08/future-tamiya-releases-autumn-2015/ Presumably a re-issue of the 12039 kit? Andrew