Hello and good day to you,
with the recent passing of Mr. Hiro, I decided to build one of the most iconic cars he ever created a kit of.
The kit itself is sitting in my stash for years. I got it when I saw @360spider build of the two IGOL cars, but never started it. It is just a bit intimidating to build an MFH F40 after Alex's amazing build.
Now I decided to finally pull the trigger, and yes, I will be shamelessly stealing ideas from the IGOL duo build
!
Unlike Alex though, I will be building the "Brummel" car, not the IGOL ones.
Now to the build itself, the kit is different from my other 1/24 from Hiro. It seems like extra attention was put to this one. I just kind of feel, that this was a special one for Mr. Hiro. The PE is exquisite, the parts are put in two boxes, the resin is better than usual it is visible that they loved creating it.
The instruction booklet starts with the engine and that is where I started too. Just as usual the metal parts really require quite a lot of attention, sanding and prepping, but the end result is excellent.
Next I moved to the chassis, It consists of few white metal parts, the were all painted matt black and then carbon fiber decalled. Afterwards I covered the decals with acrylic gloss clear from Tamiya. Unfortunately turns out MFH did not supplied the heat protection metal foiling. I ordered some but it will arrive mid/end september so I had to move forward to another step.
Here Alex's build came to rescue and I decided to paint,decal and gloss the body. I carefully checked the pictures of the particular car, and it seems like there is no panel gap between the engine cover and the rear spoiler (unlike the IGOL cars), so the built in gap should be filled. I also got some low temp melting soldering tin and it was the best time to try it out. I soldered the spoiler "supports" and then filed them flush. It worked like a charm!
I usually prefer to paint the body instead of laying down the green decals. It just looks better if painted in my opinion and then things with decals may always go wrong...especially old ones.
First I used Mr. Surfacer, then white Mr. Prime Surfacer 1500 and finally, after masking the white straps Tamiya LP-21 Italian red and X-28 Park Green. Turned out quite nicely, unfortunately the front peeled off, so I need to strip the paint and repaint it.
There are couple of places where the white paint needs a touch up, but that is easily fixable. Then the red/green needs a entle 3k sponge sanding to smooth and get rid of any imperfections before decals and gloss.
Any advice, questions or suggestions are always welcome!
