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Initial D Toyota Sprinter Trueno (AE86)


RFT

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I haven’t done a group build before, but I've been fancying doing another 1/24th car kit anyway and the film/TV theme suggests one of my favourite things – Initial D.

Initial D is a Manga and Anime series set around the beginning of the 21st century. The focus of the series is the mountain-racing scene in Japan’s Gunma Prefecture (Coincidentally, the home of the Japanese plastic modelling industry). The central character is Takumi Fujiwara, an 18-year-old who’s dad has been secretly training him, without his knowledge, to be the best street racer on the mountains. Since he’s been 11 years old, Takumi has been delivering tofu to a hotel at the top of Mount Akina (in reality, Mount Haruna), and by doing so he’s learned to be a fast, smooth driver.

The car chosen by his father for this task is a 1983 Toyota Sprinter Trueno, known as the “8-6” (Or Hachi-Roku in Japanese), after it’s chassis code, AE86. A very close relative of this car was sold in Europe as the Corolla GT in the mid-80s, though most have rusted away or been used as rally cars. It’s RWD and roughly similar to a mark 2 escort in size, weight and mechanical layout.

The car had already enjoyed cult status as an affordable (at the time of the late 90’s) way of getting a RWD alternative to a Front-Wheel-Drive “Hot Hatch”, and the Anime made it much more widely known- the car becoming prominently featured in videogames such as Gran Turismo, Forza Motorsport, and other games.

The Original Japanese manga is very concerned with realism and accuracy – the cars featured, and the roads that are driven on are all accurately modelled on reality (though some location names are changed.) Despite being a street-racing/tuning/drifting scene, this is a world away from “The Fast and the Furious” – the cars are nearly all very subtly modified, no wild paintjobs, just good wheels and tyres, modest bodykits, and subtly lowered suspension.

I;m going to build Aoshima’s version of the hero-car AE86. I really enjoyed building an Aoshima Nissan Silvia a couple of years ago due to the way it went together and the fact they give you pre-coloured lamp lenses. I can never get these painted to look right, so this is a big plus for me. They sell two versions of the kit- one without an engine, and one based on later episodes of the show where the car’s had an engine upgrade and a carbon bonnet. I’m going to get the version with an engine. (HLJ link: http://www.hlj.com/product/AOS03921 )

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Edited by RFT
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When Anime meets plastic, great things usually happen!

Go Akina Speed Stars! :)

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Watching with interest.

Love AE86's,my mate has one....i've asked to buy it more than once...lol

Back in '02 or '03 I found an AE-86 Corolla Liftback in Cherry Red ( :Tasty: !!! ) for sale for only 2000 Euros.

Unfortunately at the time I was trying to convince (unsuccessfully :( ) a neighbour to sell me his '87 Alfa Sprint Quadrifoglio Verde (in practically factory new condition) and I didn't have eyes for anything else.

Don't even want to think how much I would get for that Corolla nowadays... :wall:

Edited by Panoz
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  • 2 weeks later...

So, the most challenging but of this build, for me, is going to be getting the black/white "panda" paintjob nice and neat.

I haven't got my actual kit yet, but I do have a 1/32 version of the same car I bought years ago, intending to make into a slot car. I never finished it, but thought I'd use this weekend as an opportunity to practice.

After 4 coats of gloss white yesterday, I spent about 2 hours patiently masking the car up ready for the gloss black.

2 coats of Tamiya gloss black, nice an even, wait to dry, and off with the masks to get...

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Yeah, that's a bit rubbish.

Edited by RFT
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  • 2 weeks later...

Yay!

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I'd got a bit worried about this as it disappeared off everyone's tracking systems over 10 days ago, but it turned up today.

It's a nice big box full of plastic bits. I didn't realise that it also comes with the parts to make the engine appropriate to the early series as well, so I might do that.

One part's broken, and it's a chromed exterior bit, which is annoying.

Looking forward to getting started!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Progress!

After a few coats of spray white, 2 hours masking, and patient buildiong up of thing layers of gloss black spray, the "panda" bodyshell is painted.

Much neater than the "practice" car.

I took a photo this morning, but it;s come out really poorly - I'll take another when I get home.

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More progress (and challenges).

I noticed on friday night that there was some overstray on the bootlid. after re-masking, repainting the affected area, when I removed the tape, some of the paint lifted. after much retouching with a brush, and then sanding back, I got it back to somewhere near presentable.

Then, I proceeded to make a total mess of the bumpers by going too fast with the black, which meant sanding back and repriming.

anyway, last night, to give myself a break from endless bodywork work. I moved to on the motive power.

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after taking this, I noticed the gold blob on the intake trumpet (from trying to pick out the detail on the top of the webers with gold). I've fixed this, and given the whole engine a wash of citadel "badab black". It's now mounted in the engine bay. the kit's a little inaccurate as the new "head" (a 20v unit from a later generation of corolla) should have the distributor at the "rear" end of the head, and not the side, but that installation requires a firewall mod.

Finally, I put the tail-lights in to the shell:

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They're a nice tight press fit, so each is secured with a tiny blob of glue.

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  • 3 weeks later...

oops. missed the deadline. for some dumb reason I thought this was going to the end of june and I spent the last week's evening assembling a Tamiya Hornet R/C car for my son...

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Sorry RFT, it was a typo at the start of the thread which I only discovered a couple of days ago, keep going with the car though in the vehicle section it is looking good and I hope you and your son have a lot of fun with the hornet, i was looking at one last week although my son is only two so I'll have a to wait a couple of years for that. Cheers for taking part and sorry about the mix up (more details in the chat section)

Graham

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So, with the extended deadline...

this was where I was about a week beforfe the deadline struck - masked and painted the black window borders:

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I then spent the next week building this with my Son:

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after we got the extension, I went back to work, and started to get the bottom half of the car together

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This is a bit tricky on Aosima cars as they come with sprung suspension so there's a goo deal of holding the thing together waiting for it to dry while the springs on the suspension struts try and pop the lower wishbones off.

got it all together and popped the body back on to check I'd got the wheels in place right:

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the engine's in there, It's just hard to see.

There's not much left to do - the engine bay needs filling with minor ancillaries, the (Hideous - got to love the 80's) interior needs assembling and installing, then it's pretty much done bar the decals. I've done, but not photographed, one of the harder bits, which is installing the pop-up headlights at the front end. they're posable up or down but it's quite a tricky tolerance to get them in the right place.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's finally done.

There's quite a bit I'm not happy with, but overall I'd say this is the best I've done with 1/24 car kits.

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The chrome edging around the upper window frame is the part that was broken in the box. Getting it on was nerve-wracking as it was gluing directly on to the "glass" with very small parts.

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Pop up headlights popped up. The kit didn't come with anime-accurate number plates (just the initial d logo), so I've left these blank. Might try home-printing some plate transfers in the future if I'm feeling brave.

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Back end of the car, with those nice coloured lights that I didn't have to paint.

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Engine bay. The 20v installation with the webers makes it a little more bare than the "stock" version which has a few more parts in there. I'm tempted to get another kit to make this version of the car as well, which would have a white bonnet too.

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Peek inside. The white thing is the paper cup of water the lead character's dad has been using to surreptitiously teach his son about smooth driving and the concept of the friction circle. You can also make out the 80s-tastic brown and orange interior colours.

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Alongside the Nissan s13 silvia, also an aoshima kit, that I did 2 years ago.

It's been a fun build. Not without challenge (many of my own making), but not too taxing overall. Keeping the paint job neat was the main issue and mostly it's come out OK. My main problem is that the line of the colour change, especially on the wheel arches, wasn't on a body crease so I had to freehand cutting the line of the mask. It's a well-engineered kit, and the fit is superb. The sprung suspension is a bit of an annoying gimmick, though with some creative use would be cool to use to make a car cornering at speed with some body roll for a diorama.

I'm now trying to decide whether, for my next project, to do the "early series" car with the standard 4a-geu engine, or get Tamiya or aoshima's version of the car's spiritual successor, the GT86.

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Excellent glad you got to finish and it looks good to me, with luck we'll get to 10 completed builds by the 30th

Thanks for taking part and looking forward to seeing your next project take shape

Cheers

Graham

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Very nice, I've only seen snippets of Initial D but this is still very recognisable. I was going to ask if you intended to weather the bonnet, but looking at some screen caps it looks like that's more a feature of the box art than the anime?

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Very nice, I've only seen snippets of Initial D but this is still very recognisable. I was going to ask if you intended to weather the bonnet, but looking at some screen caps it looks like that's more a feature of the box art than the anime?

Yeah I think it's supposed to just be a flat black, with the box art just looking that way as it's hand drawn in black and white pencil then coloured over the top. In the manga, the black bonnet is said to be carbon fibre, but none of the reference I have shows any sign of weave, so I figured just leave it plain black.

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