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Honda Prelude 2.0Si 4WS Fujimi 1:24


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My Tamiya Alpine A110 is nearing completion, so I thought I'd make a start on  this kit.  Although it is one of my more recent purchases it looks like it should be quite an easy build and I feel like I could do with a quick win.  It's also a kit with a really strong, personal connection as it's the closest I've come to owning a kit of a car that I've owned.  Between 1998 and 2006 I owned three Honda Prelude 4WS models and although this won't be an exact copy I will try and make it reasonably close to one of them.

 

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This was my first, a dark metallic blue ES.  These had steel wheels, cloth upholstery and no rear spoiler.

 

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The second one was a more luxurious SE with leather upholstery, air-conditioning, rear spoiler and alloy wheels.  I changed the wheels for a set of O.Z. superleggerias and 205/45-16 tyres.  I can't remember what this colour was called but I thought it was quite a nice champagne colour although some people called it metallic beige.  This one also happened to have automatic transmission.

 

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No doubt about the colour of this one.  Another SE but a manual this time.

 

A few years ago I heard that there was a 1:24 kit of the Prelude and, since it is probably my favourite out of all the cars I've owned, I had to have one.  I couldn't find any on sale in the UK but I did find some on eBay from Japan at fairly reasonable prices.  It took a long time for the kit to arrive, to the point where I was about to report it as not arriving (but eBay knew when it was delivered).

 

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Box art is quite nice, there's even a list of paint required.  What do you get in the box?

 

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Instructions look nice and clear.

 

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The body shell is quite nicely moulded.  I've not measured it but it looks pretty good to me.

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The underside/chassis is a disaster, a complete work of fiction (it's rear-wheel drive where Preludes always drove the front wheels) I'm not sure I'd even dignify it with a coat of paint.  It's a good thing I'm not planning to display the model upside down.  It also hints at the slight disappointment of this being a kerbside kit with no engine detail.  On the other hand, that should help make this a quick build.

 

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Four Pireli Cinturato P7 tyres with tyre sizes moulded on to the side wall (but a bit too small for my magnifiers to read).  There is a mould line that needs removing.

 

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Three sprues of white plastic for the wheels, interior, front bumper, rear spoiler and crude representation of the suspension.  You can see that there is provision for left or right-hand drive.

 

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In my other Prelude build thread I questioned how many kits give the choice of manual or automatic transmission; this one does, although the three-pedal version needs better pedals as the shapes and spacing is all wrong.

 

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Wheels have some flash that needs cleaning and don't look like any of the ones that were fitted to my cars, but I can live with them.

 

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Interestingly the mountings are different on two of the wheels, which might make replacements difficult to find.

 

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Something else that needs addressing are the seats, the seat backs need filling (probably with styrene sheet) to make them look something more like the real thing.

 

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A reasonable set of decals although I'll probably get some UK number plate decals and match the number from one of my cars.

 

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The cut-out in the rear bumper looks wide enough for a British registration plate.  Also, although the moulding is fairly clean it isn't perfect and some cleaning is necessary.

 

So, to work!

 

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Sanding sticks to deal with the mould lines.

 

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There were also faint lines close to the bonnet shut lines.

 

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Body washed in soapy water and allowed to dry.  Front bumper taped in place to check fit.

 

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First coat of primer.  The red plastic takes a lot of covering, I wish kit manufacturers would stick to neutral colours.

 

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Nothing like primer to highlight where your sanding has fallen short.

 

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And at the front.

 

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Sanded down again, the rest of the body was also given a light rub with a fine abraisive.

 

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Another coat of primer.

 

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I think I can still see a little more work needed and the primer is a bit thin on the sanded bits.

 

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I also gave the wheels a coat of Tamiya flat aluminium and a top coat of Tamiya clear from a spray can.

 

And that's where it is at the moment.

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I'm going to get my monies worth out of this picture as there are parts from three models prepared for painting.

 

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I think I found all the satin black parts for the Prelude, since I had to do some spraying it seemed sensible to get as much as possible painted in one go.

 

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Before painting I checked the parts, there were some little bits of flash to clean.

 

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Paint was Halfords Satin Black, It seems to do a good job and is better value per litre than Tamiya glass jars (good though that paint is).  Talking of Tamiya, I had a couple of bits of my Tamiya Prelude to paint so they got done at the same time.

 

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It's not much, but it's progress.

 

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Moving this one along.

 

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Trying to smooth off the last of the mould lines.

 

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I swear that trying to eradicate mould lines will drive me mad one day.  

 

I wanted to spray some more primer but I'm concerned that it is too humid today (over 70%) so I'll wait, as it happens this turned out to be a good move.

 

There is no engine in this build and the first part of the instructions concentrates on the suspension and steering.

 

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Tyres on the wheels nominal size is 255/50-15.  The width is about right but the aspect ratio is closer to 40-45% and the wheel is about 16-inches to scale.  It doesn't bother me, but I find it interesting.

 

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I've rubbed the tyre tread with a coarse sanding stick, paying particular attention to the centre rib, there was some mould flash to remove.  I've never done this before on a build but I'm glad I did.

 

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Front suspension and steering components, not scale renditions of the real thing and I can't help thinking that it is more complicated than necessary.  If the black mounting holes were moulded further back and further down one of the white components (the middle one) could have been eliminated and assembly might be simpler.  The large white part includes the lower wishbones and attaches from underneath, the middle part and the steering tie rod pass through the holes in the chassis sides.

 

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At least it was easy to tape into place once it was assembled.

 

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Rear suspension is just as fiddly, with left and right lower wishbones which would have been better either as a single part or moulded into the baseplate.

 

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At least it seems to sit square and level.  It seemed wise to check before gluing things into place.

 

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This is why I'm glad I didn't prime the body again, because I could do a test fit.

 

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It's a bit tricky because the mounting tabs aren't very big, the front bumper is only held on with BluTac at the moment and I think the interior would help locate the body.  Still the wheels seem to sit more or less right relative to the body.

 

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I suppose it's nice that the four-wheel steering was replicated although no attempt to recreate the actual mechanism that gave the clever steering angle dependent control of the rear wheels (the first few degrees of lock turning the rear wheels in the same direction as the front wheels but to a lesser extent, then further application of steering turns the rear wheels back in the opposite direction; I'm not sure how you could do that at this scale).  In some ways I would have preferred suspension components that look like the real thing, even if the 4WS could not be reproduced.

 

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Underside view.

 

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Everything glued in place.  I've already commented how inaccurate the underside is, I've just noticed that the exhaust pipe is on one side but the silencer and tail pipe is on the opposite side with no attempt to link the two.  It's almost as though this chassis was adapted from another model.

 

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Sitting on its own wheels with everything glued in place.  I think I've got everything lined up correctly, I just wish I had a mini laser alignment jig to get the tracking correct ;) 

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17 hours ago, johnlambert said:

I think I've got everything lined up correctly, I just wish I had a mini laser alignment jig to get the tracking correct ;) 

Well, in your case wear will not be too much if tracking is incorrect🤐

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Well, no progress as such (yet) today, but I did find another version of this kit on Ebay from a UK seller.  The price at nearly £60 seemed steep but when I added it to my watch list they sent me an offer at £50, which I ignored.  Today I made what I thought was a cheeky offer of £40 which, to my considerable astonishment, they accepted.  So I'll soon be able to build two of my three Preludes (more or less).  Or at least have a backup if something goes wrong with this one.

 

This one appears to be in blue or black plastic with some nice, five-spoke alloys a little like the ones I had, link here

 

So, this build was going to be the dark blue Prelude but do I make the second one as the gold one or the white one?  White would be easier to source but might be hard to get decent coverage, gold might be difficult to get a good match and realistic size metallic finish.

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4 hours ago, johnlambert said:

So, this build was going to be the dark blue Prelude but do I make the second one as the gold one or the white one?  White would be easier to source but might be hard to get decent coverage, gold might be difficult to get a good match and realistic size metallic finish.

The nearest I can think of is Tamiya's Titanium Gold if you need to go spray can (although it may be a bit mroe gold and a bit less silver than your car). If you're planning on airbrushing, it could be worth checking if the colour is one that Zero Paints can match. Both should have fairly small flakes.

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Last time I was looking at metallics I came to conclusion that any automotive paint will just look like a hot rod glitter job when applied to 1/24th. So the Tamiya cans are a better bet based on looking at various photos online, just obviously more limited in shades. I haven't tested the theory yet but many other people have.

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13 minutes ago, Anteater said:

Last time I was looking at metallics I came to conclusion that any automotive paint will just look like a hot rod glitter job when applied to 1/24th. So the Tamiya cans are a better bet based on looking at various photos online, just obviously more limited in shades. I haven't tested the theory yet but many other people have.

I'm going to try out the Tamiya Dark Metallic Blue TS-53 on this build, I've also got a couple of other cars on which I'd like to use the same colour.

 

I found the same thing about the flake size with my other Prelude build.  Oddly the 1:1 automotive paint I used when I started the build wasn't as bad (maybe I'd found a pearlescent rather than metallic shade) but I couldn't remember what paint that was.  I'm going to try the rest of that paint (a VW metallic colour) on a 1:18 kit at some point, I think it might work better on a larger model.

 

There are two Tamiya sprays that look possible; TS-75 Champagne Gold and TS-87 Titanium Gold, I'll probably get both and do some test sprays on some plastic spoons.  I'm a bit worried about trying Zero Paints as I don't have the facilities to spray two-pack paint safely.

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I did some spraying first thing this morning, before it got too warm.

 

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I think tomorrow I'll give it a light rub down and it will be ready for the first colour coat.

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Paint is on.

 

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The colour is a bit light, maybe I should have gone for grey primer rather than white but the finish seems pretty good, this is straight after spraying, it's now in a box to dry.

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Looks good, but you've got me worried with that finish - I have a couple of cans of TS-53 for the XJS and really did not expect it to look that light. I was planning on using it over grey primer, so I hope your theory is correct... However, I suspect that it looks brighter in the photo with the way the light shines on it, not to mention that once you start detailing that will probably tone it down a bit too.

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@Spiny If I get a chance I'll do a test spray over grey primer to show you how it turns out.

 

While the paint was drying I decided to have a look at the seats.

 

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There's a bit of flash on the seats.

 

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Mould lines are quite prominent.

 

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The hollow seat backs had to be filled.

 

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Messing around with thin styrene sheet and filler looked a bit scruffy but still an improvement.

 

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Sanded down and ready for primer.

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21 hours ago, johnlambert said:

@Spiny If I get a chance I'll do a test spray over grey primer to show you how it turns out.

 

It's ok, I have the paint and there is a grey-primed spoon just waiting to be tested. Good to see you adding backs to the seats too - that's one of my pet hates with Japanese kits is that so often they just give the seats a hollow back (even on the Aoshima Countach which was otherwise excellent).

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This is what the Prelude looks like under more natural lighting.

 

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I've also put some primer on the interior parts.  I'll let it dry for a day or two before applying various shades of grey as appropriate to a Japanese car of the 1980s.

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On the subject of colour, I found this thread here showing good results with TS-50 MIca Blue over matt black; it's something I might consider for a future project.

 

 

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Talking of black paint, I've masked up ready to spray the satin black body trim.

Edited by johnlambert
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Here it is after a couple of coats of Halfords satin black.

 

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I checked that the masking tape hadn't lifted in the heat and humidity.  I guess the proof will come tomorrow when I remove the tape.

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The second Prelude kit arrived today.

 

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But I don't think the heat and the journey did it any favours.  I tried straightening it out but to no avail.  I might use the wheels on this build and be content that I've got some spare parts just in case anything goes wrong with the build.

 

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At least this has turned out OK, a few little bits to touch up, but on the whole quite satisfactory.

 

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A little chrome on the bonnet badge.

 

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A little more on the boot.

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