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Many months ago I picked up a Tamiya William FW07 kit on ebay fairly cheaply as a spare or repairs job. I actually want an FW07B from the end of the 1980 season rather than the FW07 from 1979 and early 1980 season. Fortunately at 1:20 the difference is very minimal, with the exception of the front wing, which as the ground effect was so good on this car they decided they didn't need and they removed it - so will too. The shape of the leading edge of the nose was marginally reshaped but nothing more than a sanding stick won't achieve. On closer inspection of this kit I was pleasantly surprised to find it mostly complete and un-started... The decals are very old and are shot and it was missing a set of parts mostly associated with the right side: front right wheel rim right rear wheel rim right rear tyre right drive shaft right rear top suspension arm right rear upright 1 engine intake trumpet All of these have the left side version present as a template and as I have a resin 3D printer now, this just offers an opportunity to use it! 🙂 Whilst I wait for the weather to warm up a touch more for painting on the other cars and aircraft that are mid-build, I thought I'd crack on with replacing these bits. Started last night with the drive shaft modelled in Fusion360 after copious measurements with my digital calipers etc. on the Left side parts. Whilst it is only the right side of this that is missing I am probably going to print both to ensure they are exact matches (and because the 3D print won't have seam lines to clean up!) More as it happens FB EDIT: For comparison here is a picture of the kit part for the left side:

McLaren 765LT (A55006) 1:43 Airfix McLaren started as a racing team that have done pretty well for themselves over the years in Formula One especially. They eventually turned their hand and considerable expertise with carbon fibre and innovative engineering to creating Super Cars, and now have a range of them, following a plan to bring many more to the market. The 650S was replaced by the new 720 in 2017 that was both lighter, stiffer and more powerful than its predecessor, powered by an evolution of its 4 Litre V8 block that was turbocharged to output over 720hp (where the name came from), with active suspension tuned and lightened to keep the wheels on the road while putting down all that power, propelling it to 60mph in a fraction under 3 seconds. Subsequent upgrades included the 720 Spider, and the 765LT, which had a matching increase in horsepower to equal its name, and a lengthened rear, with handling and performance that was tuned to make it a formidable track day car, although you can probably imagine that the market won’t be exactly huge. The price tag will also ensure that only the super-rich can afford one of course. Only 765 cars were to be made, incorporating lowered suspension, a quad-pipe fully titanium exhaust system, more effective active aerodynamics that increased the downforce and improved handling when cornering. Deliveries started in 2020, although Covid might have had some effect on that. The next consumer variant is the 750S, which started production in 2023, with a facelift, weight reduction and power increase to match its name again, intended as a direct replacement to the original 720S. The Kit This is a brand-new tooling in 1:43 from Airfix, and it is a Starter Set that includes everything you need to make the model in a basic form, aside from a few basic tools. The kit arrives in a red-themed box with a hanger projecting from the top, which shows the glue, paint brush and paints that are included, although the colours differ from what’s in the box. Speaking of inside, there are two sprues plus the bodyshell in bright orange styrene, a clear sprue, decal sheet, instruction booklet printed in spot colour, plus a helpful sheet that informs a total novice of the basics of modelling, and suggests a few tools that you might find helpful whilst building this and any future model you might tackle. Airfix’s recent range of car kits in this scale has been a delight to review, as the detail and finesse of the parts have been excellent, with this kit conforming to type and having some impressive details on the exterior. Construction begins with the floor pan, which is nicely detailed and flat to give a smooth airflow under the car, adding a short nose section on a large curved mating point before putting the front axle into position, plus brake discs and callipers at either end. The interior shell is placed over the front axle with glue placement points marked in yellow throughout the build, again to assist the absolute novice modeller. The parts are also located on the sprues by a small diagram in the corner of each instruction step to reduce the time spent searching for parts. The seats are installed into square holes in the interior, and the two door cards are mated to the sides of the tub. The dash is left-hand drive, and has a decal for the large central console display, and a coaming insert over the driver’s binnacle, into which the short column with stalks and steering wheel are glued, then the completed assembly is fixed to the front of the tub. The rear axle and brake disks are glued into position behind the tub, into what would be the engine compartment on the real steel version. The bodyshell is prepped by fitting two small intakes forward of the front wheels, then the side panels that incorporate the rear arches are glued in place on each side, and the glazing is inserted from inside, fixing the front bumper so that the shell and chassis can be mated. A pair of wing mirrors and the rear wing are fitted to the exterior, and at this stage you are shown where a few of the decal badges should be placed, before the wheels are made up from hubs and separate tyres, the hubs having the rear wall of the tyres incorporated to ensure proper alignment. The larger wheels are placed in the rear arches, and have decals supplied for the centres. Markings The back of the box carries drawings of the car from all sides, repeating many of the colour call-outs and decal placement from the instruction steps, and showing the bright orange paintwork, which explains the colour of the plastic, which could suit younger modellers that aren’t yet ready to handle painting their creations. Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion I wish I had the time to get into 1:43 scale car kits, as this range from Airfix is growing into an appealing option for those modellers that want to build car models, but at a more modest scale. My son has driven one of this series of McLarens around a track (under supervision), and was quite smitten with it by the time he came back in for his next car. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

The Lotus 25 is nearly done (waiting for the clear coat to harden) so it is time to start a new model.... Next up then is the Lotus Type 79 that took Mario Andretti to the Drivers Championship title in 1978. As with my planned rules for this group build I'll be building it to depict the car at the race where Andretti clinched the championship. In this case that is the fateful Italian Grand Prix at Monza where sadly his team mate, Ronnie Peterson driving the Lotus 78 spare car, was killed after a crash at the start. This was the first kit I sourced for this series (the Lotus 25 jumped the queue as it was a nice easy build to get started). I'll be using: Tamiya 20060 1:20 Lotus Type 79 Tamiya 12635 1:20 PE detail-up set Indycals 1:20 Lotus 79, 1978 Mario Andretti Decal set (Tamiya kit decals are missing the tobacco advertising for JPS) Modeler Site PDF build guide (thought I'd give them a go) First step was, as with many Tamiya F1 kits, to get rid of the horrible chrome finish on one of the sprues: Much better: Although in this kit's case I did keep the chrome coating for two parts - the "glass" for the rear view side mirrors as they are in a frame the sprue gate scars should be OK.

Lotus Coventry Climax Type 25 as raced at the 1963 Italian Grand Prix in Monza (round 7 of 10) where Jim Clarke won enough points to be clinch the driver's championship title. My first car build in 35 years! This is the first in a series of builds of the cars of the Formula One drivers championship winners from 1950 onwards. Built almost entirely OOB except for the mesh engine trumpet cover. Paints are a combination of Tamiya spray cans, Tamiya acrylics and Alclad II lacquer metallic WIP thread:

Whilst the digital modelling of the McLaren M23 and others is trundling along in the background, I needed some traditional modelling to balance out all that new fangled CAD and 3D stuff and whilst I wait for the new resin printer to arrive. I have a fair few subjects to choose from but figured I would start with one as close to OOB as possible (it won't be 100% OOB as I'm pathologically incapable of building something OOB without adding or tweaking details!) Picked up this Lotus 25 on ebay for a good price. As this is part of my World Drivers Champion winning cars serries I'll be building it as the 1963 setup for Jim Clark who clinched the championship at round 7 of 10 at Monza. Lights out and away we go with some cleanup on the main monocoque. Bit of (tamiya fine surface) primer and some polishing before a bit of dry fit of smaller parts: I'm painting the outside in the recommended Tamiya spray TS-43 but after trying it on a test piece I don't like the thickness of paint the spray can gives so I decanted some, added some lacquer thinners and I've been using my airbrush which lets me do lots of thin controlled coats of paint. The main monocoque and rear cover have had three and two coats respectively at this point and the top cover is primed and ready for it's first coat at lunchtime today. Surprisingly for my first car model in 35 years it even looks like the Lotus 25 it's supposed to be! The fit of the rear cover isn't perfect. I could spend weeks fettling it to perfect fit (and there will certainly be plenty of obsessive perfectionist nonsense in the rest of this series of builds), but this one is supposed to be a quick build to get me off the start line. Decided to not worry about the gaps as I'll be displaying it with the covers off to the side with the added advantage you will be able to see the engine and gubbins. Removed all the small parts from the sprues and cleaned up the mould part lines and some minor flash then got them all primed. I like to leave a bit of sprue attached to a part where it won't show if possible to give me something to hold or get the spring tweezers to grip whilst painting and drying but thats not always possible so I also use the bits of cardboard and double sided tape method (and the occasional cocktail stick through a suitable hole method): Tamiya included a large sprue of chrome plated parts in this kit but they are all far too shiny and uniform for my liking so I decided to strip the chrome off. Forgot to take a photo of the shiny parts before stripping however I also forgot to strip the engine inlet trumpets so here they are alongside the still shiny sprue to give you an idea of the problem: The main problem is the underlying plastic is black (as gloss black gives any metallic the best background colour) and when you remove them from the sprue you end up with unsightly black areas around the sprue gates making the chrome plating rather pointless. Stripping the chrome is easy... 5 min coated in Mr Muscle oven cleaner spray, followed by a good rinse in plenty of water and all that shiny chrome is gone, simples! The first set of parts I already did only got 5 min in the foam and I didn't give them a stir part way through so where a part was against the side of the plastic takeaway tub it was a little less exposed to the foam and thus left a tiny bit of chrome: another 5 min in new foam sorted that easily though and I know from now on to stir them around a bit to get all the surfaces treated equally. And now I have lovely clean parts ready to be primed and then sprayed with a range of Alclad II metallic colours so that they have a bit more variation and nuance than the single colour bright chrome Tamiya provide (and no unsightly sprue gate scars!) The main exhaust part I primed still had some part lines and flash I had missed and after cleaning those up and sanding it had a mix of primed and not-primed areas. Time to see if Mr Muscle will strip Tamiya fine surface primer too. After 5 min it hadn't done much: Giving it a half hour to see if that works. Watch this space for more exciting adventures in plastic! 😉

Haven't posted on Ready for Inspection before...be gentle... And that's her done...👍😀

Finished this today. Niki Lauda's 1974 Formula 1 Ferrari 312B/74 in 1/43rd by CAR, an acronym for Costruzione Automodelli Roma. I got this kit off eBay and had never heard of the maker. I also picked up one more kit made by them of a Shadow DN9B which I kind of started today. Information on the net is thin but judging by notations on the instructions it appears to be from 1983 and CAR was based in Rome. There is some indication of a connection to Bosica later...maybe someone involved with CAR went on to found or work for Bosica, I'm not really sure. Regardless, I'm quite surprised at the end result...which I'm very pleased with. I kind of can't believe I got this out of the kit to be honest. I'm not sure if it was considered a "super kit" back in 1983 but it has a full engine, suspension and cockpit. The moldings where not too bad, I think quite good for the time period probably, but the engineering was really quite bad. Lots of cases of parts designed to occupy the same space at the same time, which never works...it's doubtful the pattern maker ever actually built the kit before sending the bits off for reproduction. It is definitely one of the most challenging kits I've ever built and I've been building for the better part of 40 years! It's all white metal with the exception of the tires, windscreen and some photo etch wing end plates. But enough whinging. It's built box stock with the following exceptions. I used some photo etch belt hardware from BBR, made the belts from textured food packaging foil and various suspension rods and components that where not supplied or usable where fabricated from various diameters of paper clip wire. It's finished with various Tamiya lacquers, acrylics and some Krylon satin black. The clear is Acme two part automotive urethane. The decals proved still usable and required copious amounts of Solvaset to lay down well. The tire decals where robbed from a Meri kit...which will now only have Good Year on the outside of the tires when I get around to building it. A worthy sacrifice I think. In the end I'm happy with the finished product. About mid way through the build I learned Tameo has kitted this car in the last few years. I'm confident in saying, though never having seen it, it's a much better kit but this one was a third the price and a quite challenging and ultimately rewarding build. Tameo has also kitted the Shadow I have from CAR, but I'm still gonna try to build my old one first...cause a good old fashioned challenge is fun sometimes.

1/24 scale white metal kit by South Eastern Finecast (originally made by Auto-Kits in the 1960s) Scratch built shocks and springs, decals from Patto's Place.

Hi everyone, After 3 months here is my first F1 build finished. It's Tamiya's 1/20 McLaren MP4/8 as driven by Mika Hakkinen at the end of 1993. I added the carbon decal set from Studio 27 and it turned out to be an absolute pain. I wired and plumbed the engine. I scratch built the front bulkhead and brake master cylinder assembly as well. Tamiya TS-26 and TS-36 were shot through a Grex airbrush to finish the classic paint scheme. I decided not to go fro tobacco decals as this build had already gone well over budget and it didn't some with Shell Oil decals either. A loosely compiled WIP can be found here. As always, comments and critiques are welcome! Thanks for looking, Jake

Here's a 1970 Ferrari 312B. SMTS 1/43rd, Clay Regazzoni, 1st-Monza. Box stock. Tamiya paints with urethane clear. SMTS kits tend to build themselves once painted. No complaints.

Recently finished this CAR ( Costruzione Automodelli Roma ) 1/43 DN9b Shadow from the 1979 season. The kit is from sometime around 1981. The engineering and fit was overall a little better than the CAR Ferrari 312B/74 I built earlier this year. It's finished in Tamiya lacquers, acrylics and two part automotive urethane. The decals had survived the last 35 years in pretty good shape and most didn't prove overly fragile or dried out. I am aware there is a nicer, newer Tameo kit of this car, but this is the kit I had so I built it.

Finished this one today. 1/43rd Tameo 1989 Tyrrell Cosworth 018 as driven by Jean Alesi at GP Giappone. Built box stock except for mirrors and belts, which some previous owner must have robbed. I made the mirrors from a bit of white metal sprue from the kit. I robbed the belt photo etch from a BBR F-1 kit (they came with enough for two) and made the belts from the foil on top of a tub of Philadelphia cream cheese. Painted with Tamiya Camel Yellow and Tyrrell Blue with two part urethane clear. There where some fit issues as well as some decal issues. Had to modify all the front wing decals as they where too large to fit. Some of the main body decals where close to being too big but I made them work. The front wing element and end plates had to be modified to fit. Some of the suspension elements needed modifying as well. I chalk this all up to it being a fairly early effort for Tameo. I know the newer kits I've built where better engineered. All in all I enjoyed the build and am pleased with the result.

Hi everyone, Here are some pictures of my second F1 model. I tackled the Ebbro Lotus 49 in 1/20, Ebbro's first kit. I used Indycals to finish this as the Rob Walker Racing Team privately-entered car. Swiss ace Jo Siffert drove this car in the first half of 1968 season. He drove the car in this guise in the 1968 Belgian Grand Prix, where he failed to finish. After a string of DNF's, the 49 was replaced by a winged 49B that Siffert would use to win the British Grand Prix that year. I used Tamiya TS-55 through an airbrush for the Rob Walker blue. I stripped the chrome and sprayed Alclad chrome over the shiny bits. The rest of the car was finished up with Vallejo acrylics and Testors metallizer. Scratchbuilt bits include brake lines, spark plug wires, fuel lines, and a brass radiator pipe. It was a very fiddly and often frustrating build, but an impressive kit nonetheless. I will definitely be trying some of Ebbro's newer kits in the future. I particularly liked that I didn't have to mess with doing belts - Siffert never had them in the car! Comments and critiques always welcome. Thanks for looking, Jake

Hi everyone, My last build of 2016 - and one I finished with about an hour before New Years. This is Ebbro's lovely 1/20 Tyrrell 003. I finished it in the specification and livery that Jackie Stewart drove to victory in the 1971 German Grand Prix. He stormed to a half-minute win over François Cevert in the Tyrrell 002. It was one of Stewart's six victories in 1971 that propelled him to his second World Championship. He also drove the 003 through most of 1972, taking 2 more wins. Overall, the Ebbro kit was delightful. The Ebbro Cosworth DFV is a much easier build than Tamiya's, and the extensive decal and spec options allowed my to put together the German GP version, despite it not being an official option in the kit. Overall fit was excellent, just a little trouble with the rear wing mount. my favorite part of the kit was the one-piece, metal mounts for those mirrors - they saved a great deal of time and swearing! I used Tamiya TS-5 Blue for the bodywork and a mix of Alclads and Vallejo for the rest of the car. The Tyrrell alongside my other Ebbro build - the 1968 Lotus 49 as campaigned by Rob Walker. It's amazing to see the rate of development in just 3 years. Thanks for looking, Jake

Hello all, This will be my first car model since I was a kid. I'll be building McLaren's 1993 Formula 1 challenger, the MP4/8 as driven by Ayrton Senna, Michael Andretti, and Mika Hakkinen. I'll be building Hakkinen's car, as he is my all-time favorite F1 driver. Hakkinen only drove the final three races of the season - Portugal, Japan, and Australian and they were the first races for Hakkinen at McLaren. However, this will mean correcting some aspects of the car. The car had 5 different rear wing configurations and ran with or without bargeboards. The kit version of the car has bargeboards and a high downforce wing that was used at Donington Park and Monaco. I'm also planning on sprucing up the engine bay with wiring and hoses, and I also want to scratch build the front bulkhead with the brake master cylinders. I plan on finishing the car with the engine cover and nose/front wing off. The kit is supposed to be built with bargeboards, but Hakkinen never drove the car in this configuration. I cut off the mounts from the floor (original floor shape shown in the instructions) and sanded it smooth. I will also have to fill in a pair of mounting holes each side of the monocoque. The monocoque is very nice. I'll be closing off the front of the monocoque and scratchbuilding the bulkhead and master cylinders, plus adding hosing and detailing the suspension mounts. The radiator ducting is a bit underwhelming and somewhat inaccurate. I'll be adding to the electrical boxes already molded and a load of wiring. This is what I'm most dreading/worried about. This rear wing is a high downforce specification with 5 elements and deep endplates. The Hakkinen car for all 3 races used a lower downforce spec. The wing elements are the same (Thank heavens!) but the endplates were much smaller. I'll have to take a saw to them, which is shame because it's a beautifully molded wing. Here's Senna driving with the same wing as the spec Hakkinen drove. Note how much closer the forward edge of the endplate is to the main element of the rear wing assembly. Some good news here! Senna and Andretti's steering wheels were round, while Hakkinen used a unique wheel with a flat top. Tamiya has supplied both wheels - a nice touch. Not a whole lot done so far, but it's a build I'm very excited about. I've 2 requests for anyone watching this: I'd love any reference pictures, especially of the car without bodywork. Also, how do y'all (my Texan language showing there) paint carbon fiber effect? Thanks a million. That's all for now - Jake

Had a fantastic weekend at Silverstone. Got a ton of pics to go through. Here are a few I've sorted out already.

After too much time on my current 1/24 FA2 Build I think I need a break and try something new. So here we are. I have never tried a Car let alone in big scale. So take a look and if you have any suggestions please feel free to let me know. Today the kit arrived, the box art looks great: And inside there is a lot but it look fab and looking forward to making a start. If anyone wants more pictures of the kit prior to starting I can post some but let me know before I put knife to plastic. Enjoy Nick

Hi Everyone, I have a pair of Formula 1 cars in my stash which I intend to paint and build at the same time. I have the Revell 1/24 Red Bull Racing RB8 with decals for Mark Webber's version and a Revell 1/24 Mercedes GP Petronas MGP W01 which has decals for Rosberg and Schumacher (I will be building this one with Schumacher's decals). Here are the pictures of the box art as I haven't taken pictures of the sprues yet as these kits were washed at the same time as the F-14A. Redbull RB8 : Mercedes Petronas: Once finished, these 2 builds will join my McLaren F1 car which I finished last year in my display cabinet. I will update with sprue pictures later on. Rick