Its been a while since my last update sorry about that but its been a busy few weeks and my time building has been somewhat limited.
I have been doing some work though and its all bits and bobs but eventually it will all come together and hopefully look alright
To begin I received the optional decals which include the Michelin branding on the rear swingarm and the tyres. The swingarm is getting near completion just need to add the chain adjusters and a few tiny details and it will be complete
The rearsets are pretty much ready for paint. I used the Hobby Design PE parts for this but I modified the PE parts so I can fit some of the old plastic parts back on as I noticed the Hobby Design version has the rear brake actuator going behind the cowling brace whereas the correct routing is in front of the cowling brace. I decided to use the plastic part and shave a little of it out so the brake actuator can pass by it without and problems. The actual actuator itself has been modified, the brown line will head upwards to the rear brake resevoir and the connection pointing downwards will connect to the braided hose at the bottom of the pic, that line will run to the brake caliper.
Next up is the Top Studio chain, this was my first chain and I gotta say although very tedious and time consuming it was very good fun to build. After having built the Tamiya chain from the RC166 I gotta say the Top Studio chain is much more sturdier and in close up looks much more authentic. The cahin itself is not 100% complete as I will have to measure/determine the length that I must build the chain before completing it, once I have the back end complete then I will be able to measure it all up but by my calculations the chain needs to be 145mm in length. In the picture you can see the difference between the plastic chain and the TS version, also the front and rear sprockets are shown. I have looked at the rear sprocket and it seems that the TS version is slightly different than what is 100% authentic so I checked the plastic sprocket to see if it will carry the TS chain and it doesnt as the plastic is too thick and the teeth are too far apart. So I am left with a choice to either use the TS set which has a very slightly different rear sprocket (the correct version sprocket is flat, whereas the TS version has a little step in it) or use the Tamiya plastic set, and I chose to stick with the TS set as it looks so much better.
I also started painting the cowlings. I will be painting the Red and White but not the blue as Tamiya supplies the decals for the blue parts which means less masking for me!
Colour coat painted
1 coat of 2k clear applied (not polished yet) ready for the decals
Thats it for now, my next update will be dealing with the brakes, lots of parts as you can see in the pic below and there are quite a few tiny detail bits as well
Thanks for looking! As usual C&C welcome