Ok up for some new progress, are you?
Here's some input on the Tamiya fork set.
As you saw in the last post the fork set includes the fork leg in some sort of metal, sliding parts and reservoir in brass and a fork bottom in plastic. I was actually hoping for a metal bottom as well but now I'm left with some painting on this as well. Here are the steps for the standard forks wich includes these pieces in plastic:
With these I had to:
Paint the bottoms with Tamiya X-32 Titanium silver.
Paint the fork legs with TS-14 Black.
Paint the sliding parts and the reservoir with Alclad II Pale gold. I have to do something to the reservoir as it has to get a more orange look.
Install the reservoir
Four steps resulting in this:
With the Fork set parts I had to do this:
Paint the bottom with X-32 Titanium silver.
Install the sliding part on the bottom part.
Slide those two parts into the fork leg.
Install the reservoir.
Four steps resulting in this:
Conclusion: The actual fork legs of the Fork set from Tamiya has a nice touch to them. You don't have to go through a lot of masking and the time consuming period of time between painting sessions. The metal parts also has a shine that is hard to come by using paints. I'm a bit surprised that the bottom parts weren't metal as well. Plastic that had to be painted.
Although the really nice appearance I must say I'm a bit disapointed as I feel like I'm cheating... This is in a way just too easy. Value for money?
Yes, if you wan't that really clean, spot on look on your bike and if you are having a hard time masking off the areas to be painted on the standard kit. Brass parts looks excellent.
No if you like to do stuff by yourself. With these parts it is actually only the brass parts that adds to the kit. You have to paint the fork bottoms and TS-14 gives at least the same shine to the fork legs as the ones given in the Fork set kit.
Skipping fork legs and fork bottoms would have cut the price on this detail kit. All in all this part gets
out of 5.
/Joel