Well, it's been a while since I've posted one of these!!!! work has been crazy lately but I have been MAKING time to get to the bench.
I've been a Senna fan for as long as I can remember and once I saw this kit I had to have one. My wife got me this for christmas from Macs Modeling in Arizona ( a TOP dealer by the way!) and since then I have just been checking it out and researching the project, following a quick build of a Honda NSX I decided that I had to build this kit, so, here goes, I've been at it for about a week now.
The kit is the Model Factory Hiro Williams FW16 driven by Senna at the Brazilian GP in 1994, There are 3 options available and to me this was the only one to build, I simply couldn't bring myself to build the San marino car and with Senna being Brazilian and all this was the one. This is one of the most amazing kit's I've ever seen and although this will be a long project I know that it will be thoroughly enjoyable, the kit looks like it will build great OOB but the one on MFH's website is fully wired and detailed and this is how this one will be. Anyway, onto the progress..........
I started off by building the engine, the castings fit together pretty well but it took around 10 iterations to get to this, there was always something that wasn't square so I kept removing parts and going in a cycle until I had something square that sits level in all directions.
Next up was the trans, only 3 pieces and relatively painless, this view shows the engine oil tank and a small electronic box test fitted to the top of the trans.
Here is a shot of the engine and trans mated up, the gap is due to the bottom of the trans not being flat due to a curvature of the floor tray
The resin monocoque is a work of art and I wanted to see how it fit to the floor tray, pretty well as it happens, however, the same can not be said for the radiator ducts, the one on the left is OOB and the one on the right is after about 3 hours of filing and sanding to get it to fit against the side of the tub.
Heres a mock up of the tub, engine and trans. The mounting hole in the back of the tub for the engine is about 1mm too high so I need to modify this next.
I also test fitted the LH rear suspension and it fits great OOB.
All in all I am having a great time so far, I can see that 90% of this kit will be fully assembled by the time I start painting so be patient with me and I'll keep you all posted as I progress. Sorry for the long post, I'll try and update soon!!