Revell Bugatti EB110

[galaxyg]

I bought this kit for £10 from IPMS Telford back in November 2017. A few times I've looked at it and it's relative complexity and put it back in the stash, however I've found myself thinking about it more frequently recently, so out it comes for a build. 

 

 

The engine had been barely started by the previous owner, but nothing bad. One part was not glued straight but it was easily fetched off and straightened. A few other entirely random parts had also been removed from sprues, but it seems to be all there.

 

 

What's of more concern is the warping of parts. I put this down to low-grade plastic. I've found Revell kits to me feel a bit more "oily" in the plastic, almost like they're some part polyethylene, compared with all polystyrene. Maybe it's just me. Anyway this one certainly has a desire to warp. I have two choices at this point - glue the engine cover shut which will correct the warp by virtue of forcing the parts into the correct place, or try and fix it. I prefer the latter as there's so much engine detail I'd like to be able to see once the model is complete.

 

I did try a steam iron (with something to protect direct contact with the plastic) but this didn't help. It just made it warp in a different way, so since the warped piece is just flat anyway, the best solution seemed to be cut it off and make a new part instead, with a few tabs on it to both keep it shut and join it to the main engine lid.

 

 

Already I'm bringing out the superglue due to poor contact points between parts. I'll have to give a nod to one thing about this kit however, it does contain a lot of details.

 

[cmatthewbacon]

Good start! In case it helps, you can find my build here:

 

There are quite a few "gotchas" in this kit, and some places where the instructions are wrong, and I think I ran up against most of them... They're listed in the build thread, along with some "If I was doing another one I'd do it this way instead..." suggestions that might help!

 

Good luck...

 

best,

M.

 

[galaxyg]

22 hours ago, cmatthewbacon said:

Good start! In case it helps, you can find my build here:

Thanks. I have seen your build many times as you seem to be the only person pretty much on the internet that has built one of these when I go searching. I've referenced it a few times already for how things are supposed to look and assemble, as opposed to how Revell's illustrators think they should look.

[Roy vd M.]

Nice subject; you can still (albeit perhaps not legally) visit the abandoned factory where these cars were built. See here for some nostalgia. 

[galaxyg]

Continuation. I've found many images of EB110s online in various colours. I don't really care for Bugatti Blue/French blue, and the mix of Gun metal grey and tan looked good on one example I found. i found another example with yellow suspension coils, so mine will have those, just to stand out a bit. If you can see them later. Noting how much better the SuperSport version of the EB110 looks, I will mount the rear wing in a permanently up position and if I can get them to work, change the wheels for some Tamiya mount ones, as I much prefer the look of the Supersport which has spoked alloys rather than the retro-style ones the basic EB110 / this kit comes with.

 

 

I bought some self-adhesive heat shield for the engine bay. Fortunately on the real thing it's not super perfect either, in terms of how its applied.

 

 

Bonnet does not fit too well, so I've added a couple of small plates underside to help hold it more straight.

 

Not often do I feel the need to paint the inside of the body black. Some is going to be visible from the engine bay I'm sure.

 

There are a couple of extra items added onto the engine top out of wire, and they won't be the only additions to the engine bay.

 

 

Likewise I'm going to add some more details to the front area. Starting with some wires from the battery.

 

 

Here is a glimpse of what the final build will look like. It's painted now but not clearcoated. The main parts here are just placed on top of each other but already also give a glimpse of the slight warp in the main body.

 

 

[Noel Smith]

It is coming on well. Quite a complex kit to build but worth the effort. Heller did one in the same scale as well back issuein the nineties that as far as I can remember was less complex than the Revell one. The Heller one may have been sold under the Aortic name at the time as they were under same ownership.

[galaxyg]

The dashboard is carbon fibre as per the Supersport version.

 

 

These are the wheels I'll be using which are from a Tamiya WRC Toyota Corolla. They have 4 nuts unlike the EB110's centre lock but it's hardly the most inaccurate thing about this build.

 

Gluing the discs to the suspension parts gives me a solid lump of plastic to drill into. There will be no little rubber mounts inside here of course, so whilst the wheels do slot into these holes quite nicely, they will be glued in come the end of the build.

 

Below on the inside of the rear arches are the rear suspension components which have been mounted at the same point in construction sequence and the same orientation as in Matt's build of the same. His pioneering "this should be done before the pipework above" is spot on and exactly the opposite of what Revell suggest.

 

Whilst not mounted into the car yet, the rear brakes (shown here unpainted) are glued and drilled to accept Tamiya fit in the same way the fronts were.

 

Masking up those two small black bits.

 

The current state of things.

 

Now I come to the fun and games part. Having looked at various examples of EB110 engines on the internet, I found one where the exhaust pipes were wrapped in some kind of heat resistant fabric, and so I am going for a variation of that using this textured tape. It also allows me to combine 3 pipes at once into one more easily manageable item. It also saves me covering up all that hard work of the kit's pipe designers with the suplpied giant moulded heat-covers - of which I've yet to see an version in any reference photos of a real engine. Still, this is a supercar, and an Italian-built one at that, so I would expect that no two real-life models are exactly the same.

 

The individual tapes are now wrapped with another layer of "overtape", and this in turn will later be wrapped with some more heat-foil patter as on the rest of the engine bay. Blue tack has helped hold the pipes next to each other.

 

The this point I can place the 2 sets of pipes into the exhaust, swing them into position and start checking for fitment.

 

The painted and fully wrapped pipes.

 

Meanwhile, the largest omission from the engine bay are these pipes coming out near the firewall, so the next 3 photos are these being addressed.

 

Meanwhile back in the main part of the engine bay. The next series of photos represent most of a Sunday afternoon buggering about with the pipework - what follows as a description contains a lot of try, untry, try differently, glue, hold, press, fiddle, wiggle, superglue, hold, wait, test, curse, etc etc..  After a lot of testing I came to the conclusion the turbos (is that what they are?) were better off removed from the engine and used as mechanism to draw all the black pipes into one piece. I've snipped these off the engine as the location the mount to on the engine is by far the least accurate of the possible ways they could go and since they sit right above the outlet pipes there's no way to tell later if they're joined to the main engine or not. So it does not matter if they are not. Reassembling those onto the black pipework means I have just 4 (albeit complicated) items to mount into the engine bay, and to get to line up with each other. Which works. Eventually.

 

This right hand side of the engine pipework was the easier of the two as things lined up better where the silver pipes meet the turbos (or what I am calling turbos).

 

On the left hand side, some superglue and a lot of pulling bending and general buggering about and a cocktail stick to hold something whilst the superglue dried eventually brought this left side of the engine pipework to a conclusion.

 

It seemed a good idea at this point to check everything did still fit inside the bodywork and the engine lid would close.

 

And then onto the final parts in the engine bay, that container with the black lid on the right, to which I added some blue hoses, and also various other hoses and wires, primarily the something-sensor cables that come from each exhaust pipe and bend around in some untidy fashion - just like the real thing.

 

[FunkyChiken]

This build is sooo cool, love it! it's rare to see one of these on the bench

[Cooper645]

A lot of fiddling around going on there. I like it a lot. Keep up the great work 

[galaxyg]

I see the light at the end of the tunnel, though with some twisted body shell hurdles yet along the way.

 

Below are two views of the completed engine cover, inside and out, with some heat shielding where the real car seems to have it, on some at least.

 

[cmatthewbacon]

That is a most excellent job, with some painfully-familiar problems solved in new and cunning ways. I take my hat off to you! It does seem that there are many ways to build this kit, and what they have in common is that none of them are the way the instructions would have you do it. Some designer put a lot of work into the detail of the engine in this kit, but it does appear that no one tried to assemble it before they wrote and illustrated the instructions...

 

Final straight now... 😜

 

best,

M.

[galaxyg]

1 hour ago, cmatthewbacon said:

That is a most excellent job, with some painfully-familiar problems solved in new and cunning ways. I take my hat off to you! It does seem that there are many ways to build this kit, and what they have in common is that none of them are the way the instructions would have you do it. Some designer put a lot of work into the detail of the engine in this kit, but it does appear that no one tried to assemble it before they wrote and illustrated the instructions...

 

Final straight now... 😜

 

best,

M.

Thanks. I feel this kit reminds me of a quote I read about (I think) the Austin Maestro - "designed by 7 people that never met".  I do feel sorry for the designer of this kit at Revell, because whoever put it into production did not do it justice. The designer was certainly optimistic in parts, but the toolmaker, the ejector-pin locator and the guy that said "yeah, we can press a few more thousand out of this tired tool even though the metal is slightly misaligned", and the instuction illustrator... really didn't help. 

 

Still, we got a detailed EB110 out of it. I understand the Heller one is no great shakes either.

[Marco F.]

Yeah, you are so right...

[galaxyg]

At this point it seems worth checking again the body does fit on the chassis, and I get a good idea of what the final model will look like. This will be the final WIP post for this build. After this there's so little to do except complete and wait for some good light to photograph in.

 

 

I've added some seatbelt retainers inside the cabin and a few other bits in the engine bay.

 

 

The headlights have no depth to them, so I've built some with plastic square-section strip. This will be painted grey later.

 

 

Some buts from the parts bin, conveniently of roughly the same shaped item, will help fill out the rather empty front bay.

 

 

The wiper of course does not immediately conform to the windscreen. Mind you they rarely do on any manufacturer's kit.

 

Completed front bay.

 

The section between the cabin and engine bay is all glass in the kit but this does not reflect reality, where it's more of a porthole. Some masking and paint will solve that.

 

 

Last image/link. What parts remain to be assembled. For some reason the forum does not want to make this image into anything other than a link, so click below to see.

 

http://www.mfhughes.com/kits/revell-bugatti-eb110/eb110_wip061.jpg

 

 

 

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by galaxyg

[Alan R]

You're making great progress on this kit.

Revell's quality control on their older kits leaves something to be desired sometimes.

 

Still, you are making this into a great replica of the EB-110

 

Cheers, Alan.

 

[galaxyg]

This is now complete, the thread in the completed section of the site is here:-

 

 

[Noel Smith]

The kit was released back in the early 90's when the car was being built. The Revell kit has been reissued since under the Monogram label.

Also at the time Heller released a kit of the same car (also sold under the Airfix label) that appeared to be less complex a kit in 1/24 scale like the Revell one.

Have not seen one of the Heller/Airfix ones in a long time, even second hand.

I have one of the Revell kits, and having read this thread will be able to avoid quite a few pitfalls.......So thanks galaxyg.