My last build was pretty much glue and paint, so in the spirit of learning, this one will be a little bit more ambitious with some mods, scratch building and PE work. No lathe yet
So here is my attempt at the Tamiya Ferrari 360 Modena + Crazy Modeler PE with some detailing and open doors and trunk (is trunk the right name given it's at the front of the car?). This is the kit that got me into this insanity in the first place. For that story, as told in intro to my previous build, see
here.
You will recognise some familiar ideas from other builds on AF. Much kudos to those guys (MPWR, gionc, 360spider, etc), and to everyone here for the superb artistry and entertainment you give to all of us.
This is my first WIP, so please let me know if it's boring, too detailed, not enough detail, needs more jokes, etc
Oh, and um, I've already made a lot of progress on this build, so I will be playing catch up for a little while...
This was going to be a simple build, but in examining this brilliant Tamiya kit carefully I realised that the doors can be cut out and reassambled outside the body with some scratch built frames for both the doors and the body shell.
Here I am checking the feasibility of cutting out the doors. I was mainly concerned with how I would put the window in and how it would all fit back into the chassis, hinging details, etc.
Here's a close up showing how the interior and exterior panels match up. There is a nice place in there where the window can be attached.
This one shows the area at the front of the interior panel - it will need to be reconstructed/filled in to complete the door.
The interior door panel, beautifully detailed. It's pretty easy to cut this out of the tub.
So I've decided to go ahead. But I need something to hold the body together when I cut the doors out. Turns out there is a very neat solution to this problem
Firstly, as Gio pointed out, the lower rear intakes look like total crap on this kit - this absolutely must be fixed. I started by removing the rear wheel wells, which will actually make lots of things easier and more sensible imho (painting, scratch work, final assembly, etc).
Wheel wells gone. Look at those lousy intake ducts...
Fixed...
I also added a solid door sill to the skirts. This should look good on the final model (famous last words
)
That side skirt is now extremely strong. I glued it onto the body permanently, along with an internal frame (details later). This gives the body enormous strength, allowing the doors to be cut out safely. The kit normally adds the side skirts after painting, but I prefer it this way anyway...
Cutting out the second door - the point of no return has been well and truly reached. The doorless body does not flex at all. Just as well, or those flimsy A-pillars would be snapping every second day until completion
The Hasegawa PE saw set includes some great small blades, but as shown above, the cut out for the door falls in a single plane (yes, it really does - this is significant...), so the larger saw is perfect for the job.
And of course we'll have to cut the window in half like this:
Looking good.
To be continued...