Believe it or not I started this Fujimi kit about 4 years ago
Back then I tried painting it with some kind of purple pearl paint which reacted bady so it went back in the box and got forgotten about. Here's how it looked at the start...
Seeing 86_SR5 doing his Drift Skyline prompted me to dig it out and resurect it. I decided not to try to strip the paint, figuring as it had been on so long that might not be sucessful, so carefully I sanded it off and repainted it in Citroen Wicked Red (honestly, that's what's it's called!)
The kit is truly terrible. Most bits are badly fitting and they got the headlights completely wrong. Fujimi provided the clear lenses for projector bean headlights and the back part was for normal twin headlights! I chopped some reflectors up from another R31 kit, I also ditch the rear wing they provided as it was junk and fitted decent rims and brakes. Inside I changed the front seats, added a few details and, to make it a little different from other R31 models, my car's now LHD :o)
I'm amazed I actually finished it as it's been one disaster after the other in the build. I spilled thinners on my worktop which soaked the clear tail light panel, melting the surface which took a hell of of lot of time to fix. Then just as I finally polished it back to life I snapped it in half
I also got it wrong the first time I stuck the windows in. I used 60 second epoxy and glued them in in the wrong position
I had to cut and carve all the epoxy away with a scalpel to get them out again. What else? Oh, I got really bad pin holes in the paint down both sides of the car after the first wet coat. (I filled a couple of body moulding lines down the sides) I filled them with paint on a toothpick then sanded them flat before the final wet coats. Because of this it has too much paint on there really but never mind! Also, I damaged on of the stripes when applying it, the they started to wrinkle up when I put the clear coat on ...argh! ...but the application of some heat dried the clear before the problem got too bad, thankfully. So many times I've nearly given up on this one
Anyway, I'm fairly happy with the way it's turned out in the end. I've yet to add seatbelts and I had planned to do the rear wing in CF but the decals I ordered turned out to be junk so for now I've left it aluminium. I also want to tint the rear and side glass a light smoke but I haven't got any film at the moment, only dark smoke which looks way to dark on a model. I haven't waxed it yet as the paint isn't fully hard but I wanted to get the ordeal over and done with and put it in my display cabinet... I'll get and do the last bits some time next month I think
. Anyway... here's the pics...
