Feels like ages since I've posted an update! I've been busy building but I decided to make my life difficult by adding lots of extras and scratchbuilding a few bits too.
So up to now I have redone the cowlings (with blue painted rather than decals), radiator is completed, engine is finally completed as well!
Here is a quick pic of the main part of the cowling (I havent painted the inside yet of the cowling), I shall post a few more of the rest of the cowling parts when I get a chance to take some more photos
Here is the radiator done, I shaped the plastic area that attaches to the frame as on the 1:1 bike it has round bolts like the PE ones I have attached, if you dont modify this part then you will not be able to install the round PE parts. I also added plumbing near the radiator cap, apparently this tube runs up to the front section of the cowling just to the right front of the instrument panel, I wont be displaying this with the cowling on so this tube will hang and look odd lol
And finally the engine is complete! This is one heck of an engine with tonnes of wiring and a fair bit of additional details added. From all my reference pics I have seen the area where the intakes are (where the grill bit is) is different to what Tamiya supplies in the kit, in fact even on the detail pics sheet that comes with the kit it shows a different part to what they supplied. So I decided to scratchbuild the correct part, overall I think it came out ok but it could have been better (as is always the case with me!). In addition to the pipework I also added the reddish lines that are not included with the kit, the white plugs look a little overscale but if I went any smaller I wouldnt have been able to accurately drill them for the pipe work. I achieved the reddish line by using MFH 1/12 tube (brown one) and spraying it with alclad hot metal red and hot metal sepia (roughly 3 red to 1 sepia), I also used the same tube painted semi-gloss black for the spark plugs as they are more to scale that what is supplied by Tamiya.
If anyone knows where I can find tubing like MFH 1/12 tube (brown) in black colour please tell me! Its such a pain having to paint the tube and having to be extra careful not to handle it too much otherwise the paint can flake off. So please if anyone knows then please tell me
So without further delays here are the engine pics
Up until now it has been pretty annoying that I've been doing so much work but nothing is really coming together but now that the engine is complete the build should speed up somewhat, as you can see there are lots of sub assemblies completed so now its just a matter of joining them all up!
So next update should show the engine installed into the frame!