Tamiya McLaren Senna

[galaxyg]

There's a thin black strip that clamps the lower window in place to avoid gluing the glass. The pegs are currently holding it in place but it's a thin part and the amount of glue you need means the glass inevitably gets some anyway - making the whole "don't need to glue the glass" system a little bit pointless.

 

 

Meanwhile, the doors are bloody fiddly. More so than anything else.

 

 

Here's how various body panels clamp all the side glass in place. To be honest I think it'd been easier with some other engineering method. The surfaces to hold adhesive are so small, you end up coating all of them, then manuovering things into place, getting sticky fingers and potentially more problems.

 

 

The first door is in place along with the rear panel.

 

 

Mostly completed exterior. Door mirrors are not on yet, in fact I've not even got around to painting them yet.

 

 

Well, this is unexpected and at this stage in the proceedings, uncorrectable.  The fit of the kit is so precise that any kind of mistake is going to reverberate down through all the parts that fit to it, and in this case it's probably the one piece giant curved A to C pillar covers, which would only break if removed at this point and were pain to fit to begin with. Still, it's not so bad that I'm only going to look at that fault. The complexity of the bodywork means that it's collected a few imperfections as the build has gone along, but I've tried the near-comlpete body on the chassis now and in this colour scheme, it does look damn cool, so I'll let that distract away from the faults.

 

 

And here we are at WIP image number 70 !  Wow, most of my WIPSs get to the 40-50 region.  Aside from the door mirrors and number plate, the bodywork is completed. There are still 6 under body panels to go yet, and some skid blocks.

 

 

 

 

 

[Malc2]

I feel your pain over the panel mis match.

Are you going to pull them off and see if you can adjust them to get a better fit?

As a suggestion, try MEK which is much thinner than Tamiya liquid glue, hold the piece in place then touch a fine paint brush loaded with MEK on to the joint.

As it is water thin, capilliary action wicks the MEK along the joint. No sticky fingers and no smudges as you manuver the piece in to place.

The brush that comes in the Tamiya glue pot lid is also a bit of a blunt instrument!

 

Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs!

 

Malc.

[galaxyg]

11 hours ago, Malc2 said:

I feel your pain over the panel mis match.

Are you going to pull them off and see if you can adjust them to get a better fit?

As a suggestion, try MEK which is much thinner than Tamiya liquid glue, hold the piece in place then touch a fine paint brush loaded with MEK on to the joint.

As it is water thin, capilliary action wicks the MEK along the joint. No sticky fingers and no smudges as you manuver the piece in to place.

The brush that comes in the Tamiya glue pot lid is also a bit of a blunt instrument!

 

Hope I'm not teaching you to suck eggs!

 

Malc.

Thanks. I'll investigate that glue for future builds but with this one, it stays as-is now, there are just too many fragile parts as it is without having to try removing them when glued down. My photo shows the misalignment from exactly the worst angle, there are other ways of viewing the car that don't look so obvious.

[Mpfiend]

It looks good despite the misalignment, I can appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this.

I always use the Tamiya extra thin cement (green lid) for my car and bike builds, this is much thinner than the regular cement and it has a very fine application brush in the lid. 

it also dries much quicker.

 

If you were to build this again, with regards to the fitting of the panels, would you do anything differently.

 

Best regards,

Keith,

 

[galaxyg]

1 hour ago, Mpfiend said:

If you were to build this again, with regards to the fitting of the panels, would you do anything differently.

 

Yes. I'd glue the glass in place first and make sure it sat exactly where it should rather than trying to trap it glue-free between the glass-retaining parts as Tamiya intended. Then I'd dry fit the glass retainers and the doors with masking tape and check it all a lot more.   In addition there are two V-shaped pieces of body-colour panels attached to the main black front wing/floor plate, (under the "bonnet") and I'd glue those to the wing first, rather then gluing the wing in place on the bodyshell and the V parts to it. What Tamiya shows is what I did, and it's just not the best sequence of assembly for those bits.

[Sabrejet]

I'm surprised at how clunky the kit parts look, but you've done a lovely job on making the world's ugliest car look a bit less butt-ugly. 👍

[Mpfiend]

22 hours ago, galaxyg said:

 

Yes. I'd glue the glass in place first and make sure it sat exactly where it should rather than trying to trap it glue-free between the glass-retaining parts as Tamiya intended. Then I'd dry fit the glass retainers and the doors with masking tape and check it all a lot more.   In addition there are two V-shaped pieces of body-colour panels attached to the main black front wing/floor plate, (under the "bonnet") and I'd glue those to the wing first, rather then gluing the wing in place on the bodyshell and the V parts to it. What Tamiya shows is what I did, and it's just not the best sequence of assembly for those bits.

Thanks for the feed back. 

Keith.

[BT44]

Great work. The silver colour really suits the car. Did you spray directly from the rattle can or did you decant the paint ? Also what clear lacquer dis you use ?

[galaxyg]

14 hours ago, BT44 said:

Great work. The silver colour really suits the car. Did you spray directly from the rattle can or did you decant the paint ? Also what clear lacquer dis you use ?

Thanks. I agree (of course!) that it does look better in silver. I spent a lot of time looking at images of real cars before I found a silver one and though "ah-ha". And in this case more is body colour than the instructions suggest and I think that helps overall too. The "extra silver" parts here are the little bonnet thing down the nose, the rear wing and the T section on the roof. 

 

All sprayed directly from the rattle can, Tamiya TS-76 Mica Silver and Tamiya TS-13 Clear.

[Andy J]

Well regardless of the issues you mention i think you're doing a great job and look forward to seeing this one finished 👍 

[galaxyg]

Before I launch into the pictures, whilst doing some research online I've noticed a few builds of the Senna where the alignment of the doors and front wings is less than perfect. Perhaps not quite as "out" as mine but nonetheless, out. Even Tamiya's own pics have a gap here more than you'd expect. And the guy who built the blog version Jadlam, it looks a similar problem on his photos too - shown most on the last photo. (I won't hotlink to the image but if you're really curious, google "jadlam blog mclaren senna".

Whilst it doesn't change my build, at least I know that I only partly contributed to the problem. 

 

Anyway, onto completing the build. Underneath the body are these 6 earth brown blocks that are separate pieces of the kit to be glued in place. I can only assume they're some kind of wearpart for if your Senna catches the speed bump entering Iceland's car park or whatever.

 

 

 

These 6 black panels are then put into the underside of the car. For a supercar it has a more interesting underside than most.  It's not all Semi Gloss Black for one thing.

 

 

It all fits very very tidily. The front cover plate (below) in particular is such a perfect fit it is practically snap-fit and indeed I only used a small amount of glue at two points on it, and let snap-friction take care of the rest.  At this point there are only 3 decals left to do, plus both door mirrors. None of those warranted me taking a photo, so this will be the last one in the WIP; Ready For Inspection photos will appear sometime soonish. It's sitting in front of me completed on the desk now and despite more imperfections than any other 2021 build, it does look damn good. And in this colour scheme, more pretty (relative!).

 

[Fnick]

33 minutes ago, galaxyg said:

Ready For Inspection photos will appear sometime soonish

Great build. looking forward to the photos!

 

Nick