Tamiya Alfa Giulia Sprint GTA and Aoshima Murcielago SV

[mattbacon]

Two very different cars, but both a tribute to the best of Italian sports car know-how...



The GTA in primer. I'm trying out a technique suggested by "Cruz", on another forum, in which you wash the shut lines with black while the car is in primer, before painting. He suggests rescribing the lines first, but I thought that the GTA had crisp and deep enough lines out of the box to test the technique without needing to scribe them.



The Murcielago in primer. I wanted to get as many parts of the body together as possible to avoid having to match the colours, and glue clear-coated pieces together. In practice, this means the extreme nose, skirts and lower edges of the extreme rear can be attached. Doors and one intake (which has a segment of body colour inside) have to remain separate...



The Murcielago will be Giallo Orion -- a pearl yellow colour -- with lots of black/grey carbon trim. This is, once again, the ever reliable Zero Paints system of ground coat, base coat and clear coat.



Whereas the Giulia Sprint GTA is in a colour scheme inspired by some of the racers I've seen at Donington over the years. More Zero Paints, this time Alfa Rosso Corse and Lamborghini Powder Blue (a Miura colour which eventually lost out to the lime green when I built mine, but I may still do another in this colour, because it looks so cool...)







And now with the clear coat on. You can see how much it changes the apparent colour of the base coat, especially on the Lambo. I think the change is even more intense with the pearl finish because it reduces the scattering of light by the pearl layer, and lets you "see through" to the base coat more directly. I also tried using clear over a decal for the first time, (the Alfa "snake" on the bonnet) which has worked very well. There are the odd spot imperfections here and there, but once again the Zero 2K clear has done its job and settled into a smooth, glossy finish all over.

These will now go away into plastic boxes for a week or so to fully cure before polishing out those spots.

It's good to be back at the bench!

bestest,
M.

[bradfordian]

Is the lambo an aoshima?

[mattbacon]

Errr.... yes.

;-P

bestest,
M.

[da_ashman]

Nice, great choice of colours!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, mate... slow progress, thanks to trying to manage my stash "garage sale" eating into bench time... but at least I'm getting somewhere:



Engine (which is surprisingly large) is now done. The wiring is a pain, since it's a "twin-spark", with two lines per cylinder. A bit of wash and detail painting brings the kit parts up a treat.



The interior is based on a real period car that I found online at Bring a Trailer. The seats are grey vinyl, not black, and the door cards are NATO Black with Citadel black details. Carpet is done with Plastikote Velvet for texture.

bestest,
M.

[Tompidom]

I like the grey on the seats. Looks good with the red floor!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, Tom! Got the exhausts done:




...as you can probably tell, I'm quite pleased with the way the heat discolouration came out. Citadel blue, purple and orange washes over Humbrol "Chrome Silver" from a can.




Not all the GTAs I've found online have a grey dash, so I decided the wood effect would provide a nice highlight in the cabin. All the wood is various "dark flesh" or "Leather" colours, with a glaze of Tamiya Clear Orange, applied with brush strokes carefully visible...




And a quick mock-up . The engine is going to need some work on thinning down the mounts and refining the gearbox to make sure that it sits down properly into the chassis, at the correct slightly inclined angle (The sump is dead horizontal but the block is leaning about 5-10 degrees left.

bestest,
M.

[rallymaster]

The wood effect made from Citadel colors (I guess ? ) is really convincing.

[mattbacon]

Thanks, Phil... mostly progressing the GTA at the moment.

This is the engine bay done:



I need to find out where the other battery lead goes. I think round the far side of the bay to the "fusebox" on the firewall



The uses of Humbrol Metalcote Steel. Polished for the discs, lightly buffed for the "metallic grey" callipers, and a nice flat primer base for the black bits.



..and finally, the front end coming together.

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

I wanted to see how the "stance" would look. I've lowered the rear by about 1mm, by drilling out the spring sockets in the body shell, and the front by about 0.7mm, by removing the "pillars" at the mounting points on the front subframe. The effect is not the full on racing look, where the rear tends to be well down, but it's a little more aggressive than the standard set-up...





...back to the interior, now...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Here's the interior more or less done (the instrument panel is just dry fitted for the moment)




The complete chassis:





and I couldn't resist a quick mockup:


A few interior tweaks on the body shell before she's quite ready to go together permanently, but it won't be long, I'm sure...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

Life has got a bit in the way of bench time lately, but I'm still plodding on. Focusing mainly on the Alfa at the moment, so there's nothing interesting to photograph on the Murcielago, but it is bobbling along in the background. Anyway...




A couple of sessions got the BMF on the side windows done, and the windows in. The kit's really well engineered -- enough so that the layer of paint and BMF on the side window "bars" makes the fit a little "tight"... I've fettled somewhat, but there may need to be another session.



Last chance for a good look inside before the rear window and windscreen get in the way!





And now the windows are on. Just the final bits of detailing to do now... mostly in "chrome"...

bestest,
M.