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1975 - Lancia Stratos HF Chardonnet (1/24 Hasegawa)


Scargsy

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Hi all,

 

Here's the kit I'm going to build to represent the year of my birth...

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The Stratos was first introduced in 1974 but 1975 was the first full year it competed in.

The car I'm building is the "Red Chardonnet" one on the box art, that won the Tour de Corse Rallye (Corsia Rally) in 1975. Chardonnet was the name of the privateer team and the car was driven by Bernard Darniche with co-driver Alain Mahé. I believe Chardonnet also had a second, blue car that year as well.

 

Hopefully it won't be a difficult build in terms of large decals / complicated colour schemes.

Edited by Scargsy
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So here's what came in the box...

 

One large bag containing most of the sprues...

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Clear parts and body shell individually bagged. Tyres and polly caps in a separate bag.

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There's a little bag also containing some plastic sheet to make the mud-flaps from and a small metal rod for the ariel.

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So not a huge amount of bits, hopefully it won't take an age to build. 

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Also included - a sheet of decals and a single leaf, fold out set of black and white instructions.

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So I thought I'd crack on and get going, first things first though and step 1 has calls for painted up bits in different colours...

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So I assembled them piecemeal, I'm not sure how much (if any of this) will be visible when the kit is finished - but the rear sub-frame assembly I put together (but didn't attach to the lower chassis parts) and the 3 sides of the engine (looks like it doesn't have a top, but you couldn't see it when finished anyhow).

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Since I'm going to need to paint different colours for different bits, I also started building up some other sub-assemblies - the exhaust sections and the seats (just attaching the headrests)...

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I also did the body 'construction' - adding the wide rear arch extensions, rear and roof spoilers...

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The rear arches fitted amazingly, the roof spoiler just needed one of the connection pin's corresponding 'holes' opening up a bit from some flash and the rear spoiler also fitted fairly well (though there's a slight gap, I'll have to filler that later)...

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Overall so far it's going pretty well - it seems a well engineered kit, every part so far seems to have a pin and hole type alignment helper. Looking on scalemates it seems that the kit was a 'new tool' in 2002. 

There's some small bits of plastic flash on some parts, but the body seems well moulded (which I guess will be 90% of what's visible when finished), there were some small seam lines just on the front wings / rear quarters - I think I may have been over-zealous cleaning them up though (too coarse sand paper) but hopefully I can sand that out later. Only major mistake so far - I drilled out the holes for both wing mirrors but it looks from the picture (and instructions) the car should only have a driver's side one - I guess rally drivers don't spend too much time looking at what's behind them :)

 

 

 

 

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Welcome aboard Scargsy and what a lovely entry you have nominated as part of this GB. I have to agree this Lancia must rate as one of the coolest cars to emerge from the 70's era and it's great to see this in rally guise and being built here. Looks to be a decent kit and the early 2000's was a good period for well thought out , minimal parts Hasegawa models. We all look forward to your progress. 

Cheers and best of luck.. Dave 

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So I started painting the first bits, although I generally like to assemble first.

I found a can of Tamiya flat black spray I'd forgotten about and decided a quick coat of lacquer would work well for a base/primer/one shot coat for the interior / chassis.

After then masking the interior black bits off, I airbrushed on Tamiya flat red...

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The black turned out to be a bit of a bad undercoat for the red, made worse by it being very thin and me then putting too much on to try and cover it and ending up with runs.

There were a couple of problems there - as can be seen by the spraying it onto the 'raw' white parts which turned out much nicer than a black base. The rear frame there in the above shot had actually had a second coat hand brushed on, still pretty thin. I think I'd previously pre-thinned the paint in the pot but then mixed it again at a ratio of 1:1 with thinners!

The kit calls for RLM red for the interior / frame (compared to the exterior paint work), but I figured the flat red should work OK, I plan to do some weathering and having it look less shiny should be good.

After that mistake dried, I toyed with a second coat of red but instead decided to try first airbrushing some white acrylic ink first (otherwise I might have needed a third or fourth coat).

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That was my first go airbrushing inks and it went pretty well, the consistency is great for airbrushing (no need to thin), I also think that it's water based as a solvent - which is good healthwise but can create issues with droplet clumping / running if put on too heavily. I think it turned out OK, I wasn't going for 100% coverage, just enough to provide some base for the next red coat.

A bit more care with the next red coat and it seemed to have all turned out well, though maybe not 100% clean / consistent colour it will work well for my dirty used car :) plus most of this isn't going to be under great scrutiny out of sight. I assembled up the engine 'block' (minus heads that aren't included in the kit). and glued the rear frame, cross supports and firewall in place.

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I added some gunmetal to the details on the engine 'box', you can see there isn't great paint coverage on the interior but I touched up some bits and left those that would be under the seat, etc. I'll need to get out the paintbrush to touch up the parts where the glue melted the paint and where I had to remove some of the support frames from the plastic sprue I painted them on. I also need to install the rear window glass into the bulkhead/firewall.

I also used the rattle can to black 'prime' the rest of the white pieces, after first removing anything I needed to not be black (the popup headlights and light pod cover)...

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I've also started building up the door card / insides. I really like how they have the moulded detail of the extra wide door trays - which I believe is so the driver/co-driver can stick their helmets in them when not in use...

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Edited by Scargsy
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Nice progress and looks like your getting on top of a few very minor issues. This hobby's all about experimenting and finding new techniques. Sometimes they work and sometimes not, however it's all about having a go and improving with each and every build. Your doing a great job so far, keep it up. 

Cheers.. Dave 

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A quick update...

So I've managed to paint and assemble the suspension components, interior and underside.

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Suspension - this all pretty much went together without issue, the only small snag I had was fitting the lower arms piece as it has multiple pieces to insert, doing it with wet glue and painted parts was nerve wracking - the shocks were a bit of a pain to line up, but once in it all fitted well. The underside scratch plate - I'm not overly happy with the result on this so far but I may give it another coat and a lot of weathering, I'm planning to make the car look in a used state, post rally so this will be a prime weathering target.

The running gear I might give a few washes. etc. to - all my metallic paints seem to have come out a similar colour, again good targets for weathering, etc.

 

 

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Interior - note in the pictures the seats are currently just placed down and not attached, I have some spare PE seat buckles from a previous rally car build and I'm going to attempt to build up the seat harnesses rather than put the decals on the seats. The fire extinguishers I painted in some different red (Mr Hobby Aqueous Shine Red) after a primary coat of white, the interior of this thing is going to be a festival of reds and blacks! The spare wheel, etc. panel I hand painted and used some old red and brown washes I had (it's probably 30 years old but still seems good). I was a little unsure of the gold colour for the wheel rim (Tamiya 'Titan Gold') which was the only gold I had to hand, it seems a little more on the silver end of the spectrum than a typical yellowish gold colour, with a brown wash it's come out OK (though no one will ever see it once the model is finished! I'm not overly sure about the real colour for the wheels, they are supposed to be gold but can look more of a dull copper colour in certain photos.

 

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Bodywork is the next thing on the agenda, I think I've pretty much finished the construction of the lower tub - the door cards, dashboard, etc. appear to all neatly fit on locator tabs in the upper shell. The only issue I can foresee is attaching the two halves together, the instructions tell you to 'carefully' pull out the sides of the shell when fitting it over. I managed to get the lower chassis inside when dry fitting before - but that was without the extra arches added or any of the interior pieces / rear sub-frame etc. It will be mighty annoying if I snap it at the last construction phase!

I've used some Citadel 'liquid green stuff' filler - never used it before, hopefully it will come out well - it seemed to do a decent enough job when wiped off quickly as on the filled wing mirror hole and rear spoiler gap, though it's very thick (I think my bottle must not be air-tight - even compared to videos online mine seems thick, thicker even than my 10 year old Revell paint which I can stand a cocktail stick upright in). I'm not sure how well it's going to sand but figured even if it all rubs off, at least the green will remind me I need to give the areas attention, unlike my other fillers which are white and no doubt I'd leave an ugly blob I wouldn't find till priming. Don't worry I'm not going for a very bad Alitalia paint scheme :) even though it looks like it at present with the brushed on filler on the white body, it's just where I brushed on some of the watered down filler.

 

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Nice progress, and lot's of it!

 

I use the Citadel stuff - I cadged a tip off someone on BM, and put a coat of Klear/Future/Astonish on it before sanding now as it holds up a little better.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So onto painting the shell, I sanded down the body and filler,

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then gave it a coat of Zero Paints light grey primer.

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It was a bit rough in places, probably more to do with my method than the paint - I gave it a rub down afterwards with 1000 grit wet and dry in the worst places. though I burnt right though in some spots.

Then onto the base coat - I've gone for Mr Color "Super Italian Red" as recommended in the instructions, thinned approx 60:40 self leveling thinner to paint. My first experience using this thinner and Mr Color paints, it went down smoothly enough but dries very quickly, even with the retarder thinner. I still had a few bad spots so I rubbed them back with some 3000 grit wet and dry but still burnt through in places (probably since I'm impatient and hadn't waited very long for the paint to harden fully).

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Then onto a second coat, I thought I'd do an artistic shot with my homegrown chilies - to show a comparison against something shiny, red and hot. :)

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I decided I wanted it both more red and more shiny so I came up with the idea of giving it a coloured clear coat. I mixed up some Tamiya Clear Red X-27, Clear Gloss X-22 and Mr Color self-leveling thinner in a ratio 1:1:2 and gave it a pretty wet coat...

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It came out pretty well, though the surface is far from smooth - hopefully a few coats of clear at the end and some sanding/polishing will help.

Onto the decals and on the whole it all went fairly smoothly, though I had a few minor issues: the decals are either thin or I had some bleed through of the paint onto the white areas on some (possibly again due to my impatience in waiting for the paint to fully cure), one of the decals split along the door swage line after I put decal solvent on it and poked it about too much and finally I hadn't realised that the Shell decals actually go over the lower bit of the headlight, so I had to hastily construct them with the inners and attach them, accidentally melting a little bit of fingerprint into the side of one of the headlights paint coat!

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The light in the photo is rather unflattering to the surface texture but clearly some further clear coats and polishing will help.

I also managed to make some seatbelts after reading some advice on this site...

I started out with some thick foil from the top of a wine bottle, stuck some masking tape to it, then cut it by eye (yes they're not perfectly identical sizes), painted them up, attached the PE parts from my spares box and used some extra decals for the belt pads that the Stratos kit handily supplied. It all went together quite well. Cutting the end of the belts at an angle helps poke them through the PE and being relatively stiff means they hold their shape quite well and are easy to thread (I imagine doing this with ribbon would have been a real pain, I'd bought some 3mm ribbon but it was too big for the PE, seems they're made for 2mm stuff. Some bits of rather old crusty super-glue applied with a couple of cocktail sticks holds it all together and in place - one cocktail stick to apply a tiny blob, one to apply pressure whilst the glue sets, saves getting everything stuck to your fingers.

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I also painted up and temporarily installed the wheels, they'll need to come off to get the shell on no doubt.

Edited by Scargsy
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What a great update, hot chillies, fantastic homemade seatbelts and some lovely stickers slapped onto a sexy car body.  There’s a lot to like going on here, we’ll done! 
 

Cheers.. Dave 

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So I added my topcoat and hit a disaster - I'm airbrushing clear lacquer and I did a quick mist/tack coat OK, but then after 20 minutes or so hit it with a wet coat.

I should have done another mist coat, or possibly used acrylic clear because the decals did start to melt (though thankfully not too badly) but worst of all it seems to have activated the underlying red coat and the white decals have now gone seriously pink! Oddly this doesn't show up in the photos - I think my camera phone must have some kind of colour correction software and think it's fixing dodgy lighting or something?

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Still you live and learn - next time another clear coat before the decals and a soft clear coat on top of them to seal them I guess, or read the instructions and do a few mist coats over the decals rather than rushing and doing a single one. :) I'm fairly new to airbrushing and especially with the lacquers.

So I pressed on anyhow, hand painted the window frames in dark grey, added the windows, inner door cars, dash etc. and managed to squeeze the the chassis into the shell - that was nerve wracking and it did warp the rear frame section at one point, one think is for certain it's not coming back out again, I didn't even need to glue it in.

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So just a few finishing pieces to add and maybe some subtle weathering and I can call this one finished.

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That's looking beautiful. I must admit I've moved well away from Lacquer clears even though I know some modellers have achieved really good results with them. Acrylic Clears are way softer on the surface, however you need to make sure that any subsequent layer or touch up is the same medium again. 

Cheers.. Dave 

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I've finally manage to finish it (just in time for the group build).

I fitted the ariel antenna, front mesh, number plates, clam-shell body catches, remaining clear parts, mud-guards, wing mirror, wiper, etc.

The ariel was a supplied thin metal rod, though after fiddling for ages to get the tiny mount piece in place I then had to drill a small hole in the top to get the metal rod to fit.

 

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The clam-shell catches were similarly a pain to get attached, I really dislike using CA glue, as inevitably the parts either get stuck to the tweezers, my fingers, etc. but I got them on eventually.

 

The front mesh I was planning on replacing with some metal mesh but in the end I just went with the plastic part, which is annoying as you can't see any of the internals (radiator, etc.)

 

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The rear lights I kind of messed up - I paint silver on one side and then the clear orange/red on the other but I'd painted the wrong sides (doh) I only realised when it came time to fit them and I didn't have the patience to try stripping them and starting again.

 

The mud-guards were made from the thin flexible plastic supplied in the kit - I initially cut one out using the template but I couldn't get it to fit perfectly, in the end I cut them slightly larger and fitted to the inner wings with CA glue, but used the template as a guide to how much should be extending beyond the arch.

 

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So I made a few mistakes during the build, but I learnt a lot too and I think it's a marked improvement from the last rally car I built, shown side by side here...

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Well done Scargsy. A really wonderful finish to a very special 1975 subject. 

Thanks for taking part and I hope you've enjoyed yourself along the way. 

Cheers and very well modelled... Dave. 

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