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Jaguar XJR-9 IMSA


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I picked this up 2 years ago, I've always thought it a great looking car. Not keen on those wheel covers though, they'll be coming off. Make it look like a hovercraft or a roomba or something. I know Tamiya's kit is vastly superior to the rather basic Hasegawa one, but the Castrol livery looks just as good as the Silk Cut one to me, and at least isn't about ciggies.

 

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Basic chassis with stub axles.

 

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So the car has run without in some capacity the covers as shown in this photo on the instruction sheet. And looks a lot better for it, to me.

 

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Some moulding lines to be removed too.

 

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Luckily there's a ridge on the inside to scribe up against, better than attacking the outside.

 

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Another one here who prefers them without the wheel covers - never been a fan of the 'hovercraft' look. And yet something like the Citroen CX managed to pull it off. From your photos the kit looks very simple, but I have this strange feeling you're going to desimplify it a bit ;)

 

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On 1/9/2022 at 9:04 PM, Spiny said:

From your photos the kit looks very simple, but I have this strange feeling you're going to desimplify it a bit ;)

 

 

I'm certainly going to try. 😃

 

On 1/10/2022 at 8:15 AM, klubman01 said:

Great subject! It is worth noting that the wheel covers improved downforce by nearly 10% on the real thing.

 

Yes, I'd read so whilst researching the car. Amazing it could make so much difference.  On with the build.. wheel arch cut out.

 

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This small hole on the side is a moulded line on the kit and the kit has no smaller hole forward of it. But my drill soon corrected those.

 

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There are 2 left side panels and two right, of varying types. This kit has all the parts for several variants of this car, not just the Castrol IMSA one.

 

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The side panels have pathetically small contact areas however so I've had to reinforce.

 

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The rear light panels are also seperate.

 

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And a kind-of blanking panel for one side of the fuel filler. I guess an IMSA special too.

 

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Edited by galaxyg
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Normally I don't paint the inside of a car body but in the case of group C cars, I guess I'll regret it if I don't. I'll touch it up later but to begin with, the spray can can do the heavy lifting here.

 

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And now roughly masked up the black interior so it doesn't pick up too much white from the outside.  Although at least black on white is easier to touch up!

 

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The rear wing has some quite awful sink marks which I've filled - they're caused by the wing mounting recesses underneath. Also in the sunlight you can see the swirls where the molten plastic has injected in from the sprue.

 

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The wheels bolts have no holes in the middle, and the brakes have no calipers. Two things I'll have to solve later.

 

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Masking off for the green front lip.

 

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And here is said lip. The radiator has two tow hooks and you remove one depending on which car number you're building. Or in this case, remove both and replace with PE as the plastic ones look quite clumsy.

 

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Completed front.

 

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Hasegawa's suggested solution for the rear wing is three giant decals. I don't really like the sound of this, so I am going to paint mine. Putting these colours over a base of black primer seems to give a pretty close match to the decals.

 

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Fortunately I noticed on a reference photo before I got the black out... the last (masked) part of the upper rear wing is white. 

 

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Better I paint this now and then mask it off than risk getting black or grey on my white decalled body.

 

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In photos it's a charcoal grey but I don't have one of those, so this will make a better contrast than just plain black.

 

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This post is a giant pain. I had thought to paint the parts first, and I'm glad I did not. It'd have just made a mess when it came to gluing it. I had to resort to taping it to the rear wing using that as a jig to hold it all in place. Small contact points and easily "collapsible" until dry.

 

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And it's so worth dry fitting it all as there's several ways this wing-post could end up such are the lack of guides. Many of those ways would result in the wing being tilted backwards. You can also see the assembled exhaust here, which is part painted but not complete. Reference photos show the exhaust as symmetrical. The reality of the kit has one side higher than the other.

 

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I've polished up the Tamiya Pure White body ahead of putting the decals, giving these old decals the best chance of adhesion to smooth surface.

 

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Not an especially encouraging start. It gets somewhat better however.

 

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This is as smooth as it goes. My paint is smooth, the decals - just old. Not great. However a macro photo makes everything look bad.

 

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More

 

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The big one piece bonnet decal was especially annoying, but at least it stayed in one piece, albeit with a tear at the V.

 

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More.

 

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This side decal decided it wanted to both be positioned incorrectly and self destruct if moved/touched. Grrr.

 

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Fortunately, Tamiya Imperial Japanese Navy Green (the same as a Mitsubishi Zero) is a reasonably close match, and later there will be another sponsor decal to cover part of this mess. That's enough decalling for one evening, this is not a car to be done all at once. The decals really don't like being touched once they're on the car.

 

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That's a bit of a bugger when decals misbehave.  Are you aware that Indycals do a sheet for this car in this scale?  Might be useful instead of the kit decals, especially at this stage in construction.

Trevor

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1 hour ago, klubman01 said:

That's a bit of a bugger when decals misbehave.  Are you aware that Indycals do a sheet for this car in this scale?  Might be useful instead of the kit decals, especially at this stage in construction.

Trevor

I wasn't but thanks for that. If the rest of them get worse I have a fallback at least!  Since there more than half done now I'll see what happens with the remainer - nothing to lose now.

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I have just recently (about two weeks ago) applied the decals on my Tamiya XJR-9

Apart from the fact that as they were so old, they were somewhat fragile, some serious touching up required in places, they showed the same 'graininess' (?) as yours.

I used Micro-set and Micro-sol to get them to lay down. I don't know if this helps, but I had been watching some you-tuber using a hair-dryer to accelerate the decal softening and setting. I tried it and it does seem to work.

Certainly speeds up decal application...

 

Cheers,

Alan

Edited by Alan R
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1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

Have you tried giving those old decals a coat of Microscale liquid decal film? I find this sometimes works wonders on decals that react like that.

 

Keith

 

 

I didn't know of such a product!  Always something new to learn, thanks. I'm sure it'll be useful later as this is not the only "old decals" kit I own.  Photos later but I've actually got all the other large decals laid down on the Jag's body now, and they went without a struggle. Even with me having to hack some of them around to account for the wheel covers my car no longer has.

Edited by galaxyg
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Sometimes it’s just best to paint what would be large decals , as you have with the green side one . I now know this from bitter experience ! Keep it up though and put it away when all is going wrong . 
 Gary . 

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The side decals.

 

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The main body decals all complete. They're a little scruffy in a few parts but on the whole, pretty good. And it's a good looking livery.

 

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After all those battles what you've got on the car looks good. It's just a shame about those you're showing on the backing paper which appear to have self-destructed. Hopefully that's something you can fix by paint?

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1 hour ago, Spiny said:

After all those battles what you've got on the car looks good. It's just a shame about those you're showing on the backing paper which appear to have self-destructed. Hopefully that's something you can fix by paint?

Thanks. Those on the backing paper are no problem, they're where the wheel covers used to be, so are no longer needed.

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