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BIG F-40 - A Cautionary Tale...


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Once more I'll test your patience with a sub-par build with which I tested the depth of my skills - meaning how far down they've fallen.

Starting with the noble premise of building an exciting looking car for my seven year young grandson, I scraped the bottom of the basement vault of aging kits for a subject. Boxed together since the '90's when new, I found two of these, an ambitious idea to build one stock and one hardcore race version. This was also the time I began to dismantle my 1:1 Cobra and embark on a decades long journey into soul-searing horsepower. So they languished.

I was shocked to see some current auction numbers on them but was not deterred - I would build one good one for my man. This is what they're supposed to look like; Italian beauty personified:

ferrari-f40.jpg

But my real purpose in posting these few finished shots is to warn all who fall for the siren song of this muscular beauty. Although I took some shots along the build and have some good reference photos, as I struggled to build it, I knew I could/should not do a WIP. The kit is that bad.

A general look:

IMG-8200.jpg

I had started some building in the 90's before packing up. Most of the chassis, engine and some of the suspension. But the pitfalls mount up from there. A WARNING: I am posting this experience because some of you may be excited to buy this rare, expensive kit but I want you to be aware of what you come across. 

The real car has very complex ducting, baffles and closing panels under the rear clip and in the wheel wells. The model has these. And very poor instruction illustrations. And no good locating pins, slots or accurate locators for many of those parts. I often found I had to un-glue (break) joined parts because they were on top/on bottom of where they should have been. The giant rear clip (very light on 1:1 due to carbon fiber) was heavy with these thick plastic parts. So that when attempting to hinge it at the roof (on two spindly pins)  to operate, some of those parts within were interfering with the fit so it wouldn't sit flush closed. But you can't see where the interference is when closed. :wall:

After literally months of trying, I adopted a 'guerrilla' building style and formed the idea that I must cut-corners or commit hare-kari.  To minimize this soap opera I'll reel off what I ran into.

The 'spring units' which determine suspension height are solid molded blobs of plastic which I had unknowingly glued in years before. Some test fitting revealed that the ride height was toy like. So I broke them out, cut an unknown amount off each to get the body closer to the tires by guesswork. And  not enough.

The side scoops in the doors get glued into the body from behind - a nice touch for painting. But Mono molded half of each TO THE DOOR and the part you add from the rear? - puts a nice seam vertically in each scoop. Ugh...

The front glass FALLS through the A-pillar openings - there's no way to glue it in without being seen. I made very thin flanges (many times) across the roof and down the sides and finally epoxied it in place without showing. Only because I blacked the glass edges just enough.

IMG-8201.jpg

The engine alone has a hellish amount of vague connection points where the headers meet the turbos and wastegate. Some areas don't even meet up and I applied epoxy in rivers to get them to stay.

The wheels are held on by sleeves which slide onto a tiny stub (plastic) axle and the wheel back meets the hub flush. Near impossible to prevent wobbly wheels.

The mirrors look goofy - too long like elephant ears with narrow stalks which are impossible to drill for pins. More epoxy. The wheels and tires are wrong.

The body proportions are wrong - too thick in body side height at doors - note how low and sleek the 1:1 looks. The front bodywork should be bulged up to meet and flow into the windshield, not level with the fender tops as molded.

I had hacked out the solid rear 'screen' molded between the taillights and inserted mesh screen.. A wasted detail effort early on. The directional taillights are same as stop light red and needed orange paint to get them close to 'real'.

A big problem you may not have: I had to do two paint jobs. I spent a fair amount of time sanding the red plastic bodywork to get seams off and prep for a decent paint job - to make it visually exciting to a young boy. After red lead primer, I selected Tamiya Italian Red lacquer. Without going into full concours mode, I got a very acceptable finish. And then I tried to fit the side glass (a large one-piece unit) in each side. The fit was terrible and only one safe edge to glue on - the top. Curious, I got out the windshield and to my horror discovered one edge would mate and the roof and one whole side would not ever touch. Sighting from the nose to rear the roof had an enormous bulged warp on one A-pillar. No fix for that on a painted model.

So determined to please my young man, I got out the SECOND kit body, carefully inspected and test fitted and gritted my teeth at having to paint AGAIN. :banghead:

But the pain continues; needing to order more Italian Red, I discovered that virtually all sites were out of stock on that red probably due to Tamiya or Covid. In desperation, I ordered Tamiya Bright Red - only to discover it's nearly a dark orange. Not as bright as my Countach but more in that family. Looks better in person but photos seem orang-y.

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Consequently, I shot a second adequate but not special paint job and made the final decision; I would finish it (no shelf of doom) but with no exciting features or details. And I would not give it you my young lad lest he think his gramps was a loser.

Cover your eyes now; I broke out all the glued baffles, ducts radiators and such and epoxied the rear clip in place - even then under a lot of pressure. I have used more epoxy on this one build than all the R/C aircraft I have built and flown.. Not proud to tell you that.

The main body is supposed to slide down atop the chassis but there are no fastening or gluing contact areas for both parts. I inverted the car, weighted the floor pan and using masking tape on the edges, flowed epoxy across the front and side seams to hold it together. I felt like I had just slaughtered a dragon.

IMG-8203.jpg

Now I admit, I'm not atop my game anymore and this kicked my bottom badly. There are many fine Ferrari builders here who can surmount such problems and improve the weak areas. I'm looking at you Pascal.

I dearly hope that the 1/8 Pocher builders of this car have more accuracy and better proportioned models than this. Especially the transkit guys like Wayne. That's all expensive stuff. The cars were hugely complex which also means accurate models of them are too.

So now I have a daily reminder of my decline but as some merely require, at least it's shiny...:shrug:

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I think there's been a big case of that well-known modellers syndrome here whereby your own model always looks terrible because you've spent ages looking at the thing in close up. If someone else had posted that up, I bet you'd be impressed by it (weird wing mirrors possibly excepted!). I see it said so many times with car builds that they stand or fall on a paint job, and with a lovely paint job like this you wouldn't know how much it has fought you without your detailed description. Good luck with the next one. You may be disappointed with it, but based on your Sedanca and Countach you're operating from a high baseline and I think 99% of people here would be pleased to have built something like this.

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Upon further review...

Since ten or a dozen of you have been kind enough to express appreciation I have made a small comparison to pinpoint this kit's visual problems.This doesn't explain the bad parts fits and vague instructions. But staring at it on my desk daily, I have found the major unsatisfying elements in the kit's accuracy to the original design.

This and the opening photo show the sleek Pininfarina design to be low and wide, very 'thin' in cross section. The windshield and front trunk flare upward from the much lower front fender line:

05.jpg

Now a similar view of the model. The vertical side distances are each too 'thick', making the design less sleek and low. Note the distance from the top of the rear wheel arch to the fender top / the rocker panel bottom to the black seam line and especially the distance from that seam upward to the window line at side scoop. This could all use sectioning but is painfully too complex to do that on this model. Largely because the cabin and all mechanical bits would not allow it. Also the rearmost slots would be problematic. Here the front fender line is almost level with the rear edge of the front trunk.. And as I said earlier, the ride height needs to come down closer to the tire tops:

IMG-8211.jpg

This kit would require more accurate mold making. Let's hope that Pocher has the body design more faithful to the original than Testors/Monogram got it.

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39 minutes ago, Codger said:

This kit would require more accurate mold making. Let's hope that Pocher has the body design more faithful to the original than Testors/Monogram got it.

It seems a bit weird to like this post, but it’s interesting to see the comparison. Are you planning to build the Pocher version?

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50 minutes ago, Mr Mansfield said:

It seems a bit weird to like this post, but it’s interesting to see the comparison. Are you planning to build the Pocher version?

No sir, my major building days are over. But Wayne and possibly others are in progress but have been dormant of late.

I only post this as I named the thread; a caution to those wanting to buy an expensive old one at auction without knowing what they are in for. My money was spent on these (two kits) decades ago when they were new. But modelers better than I may overcome some of these problems.

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Chas, in all you still built a nice looking model for your grandson.

Thanks for warning us, explaining the pitfalls etc.

But what kit is it? I didn’t see you mention it.

 

when I submitted the response, I noticed the tag.

Ah sorry. Forget the last question.

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