Eighties Contest Entry: 1988 McLaren MP4/4 (and Introduction)

[gionc]

Hey Jay Kay

this is one of the most fun and pedagogical threads of ever: I read all another time now, I forgot your full-explanation on PE works and in breake turning/milling: simply fantastic. I can't stop to thank you so much for the fantastic effort, for the model's quality, for the huge number of detail and for the instructive "cut" of this fantastic thread. Keep up the awesome job!

[klutz_100]

"bloody hell!" sums it up best , I think

Stunning work Mr. Jaykay!!!

BTW, what don't you like about the RB Motion parts? I was under the impression that they are pretty fine yet you call them "positively ridiculous".

Looking forward to more updates and hoping for as much "modelling weather" as possible in your part of the world

[jaykay640]

Update time again………finally:-)

First up about my description for the RB Motion parts in my last post as “ positively ridiculous” i wanted to say just that! They are so nice that it’s a challenge to keep the rest of the model look as nice and crisp! They are ridiculous in a good way and I can only recommend them…..not that anyone gets me wrong :-)

To the model then! In my last update I showed you my failed attempt to get the right CF look on the seat and the turbo air ducts. When they turned out crap I decided to strip them and try something else. As a reminder here’s another picture of the real seat.



After painting the seat silver I added one layer of red flakes that I printed on transparent decal film. You can see the first half done in this picture.



Because of the shape of the seat it’s not possible to do it all with one piece of decal. Like this it took a good deal of time and Micro Sol already :-) The seam line will later be hidden anyway so it’s no problem.
Next I put on one layer of my own Kevlar decals. Since they are also printed on clear film the red flakes underneath still showed through. It turned out that the contrast with the silver base coat was very drastic so I put on a thin misty layer of gun metal grey to tone it down. Then I added the orange/brown tone.
This time I went for a mix of transparent yellow, transparent red, and ( very important ) matt black and matt clear. The resulting paint looks a lot like Tamiya “smoke”. The matt parts are important because the make it dry faster and hence not run and build puddles. I added a bunch of thin layers until I got the right look. Finally I added two thick layers of automotive gloss clear ( with sanding in between ). Here is the seat after the second layer.



It needs some sanding and polishing to get the last unevenness ( from the decal layers ) out of the surface and a little bit less shine. The glossiness of the clear coat is a bit too much compared to the real thing.
In the next picture you see it after that and with some tape added like on the seat in the car I photographed at Goodwood. I can’t tell if Ayrton Senna had his seat taped up like that back in the days because in all my pictures he sits in the car……..so I decided to do it like this.
The tape stripes are cut from black electrical insulation tape and to highlight the edges and make the tapes look a bit “worn” I brushed on some white pastel chalk dust with a brush.





Also in the picture you see the turbo air ducts that mostly got the same decal and paint treatment as the seat. The difference is that I started with a gun metal grey base coat and didn’t put the “red flakes”. In this picture the seat and ducts look very much alike but in real life the difference is bigger and the pattern of the ducts doesn’t show as much. The photo and lighting change the look somewhat.
The ducts are covered with two pieces of decal each ( one on the outside and one on the inside and lots of patience and decal solution :-) The problem was that with each layer of decal and paint the edges get softer and thicker. I tried to get a little crispness back while sanding and polishing but I had to be very careful not to sand through the paint anywhere. Ultimately the pieces turned out mostly like I wanted them…but most importantly a whole lot better than my first try so it was worth the extra hours spent redoing everything.

Of course that wasn’t everything. The monocoque also had to go on. Initially it was much less tricky than the turbo ducts. I also airbrushed it with my custom “smoke” mix to tone the decals down from the look they had in the picture I posted in the last update. The paint mix also took care of the “magenta problem”. Here’s the result after clear coating but before some final surface treatment.



I also redid the nosecone. When I put it next to the monocoque after painting the colour just didn’t look right. Also I was unhappy with the “seam line” at the lower edge of it that I described last time. It was too big. So I stripped the nosecone ( Btw…..is that just me?…..It was a real effort to make those decals stick nicely in the first place but then, when I wanted them off……no sir! I really had to get nasty with glass paper in some places to make them go…..). Anyway I sanded the seam line smoother, painted the nosecone gun metal grey this time and redid the CF decals. Then I covered them up with a mix of matt clear and just a bit of matt white. I think that looks quite good now.
Here’s the real car again for comparison:



And this is a closer look at the front part of the chassis. Even in the picture you can see the effect that the patterns show more the closer you get and I’m quite happy about how everything came out…. although it took quite some time.



A serious amount of work did go into the underside of the car. Here you see what it looks like right now, before some final touches and detailing.



My special thanks go to fellow AF member Cinqster who was cleverer than me and took some pictures of the car’s underside when it was on display in Goodwood :-)
Here are two of them. The first one shows the middle part of the undertray and what you might mistake as a wooden “legality plank”.



It looks a lot like wood with those scratches but I guess it’s some kind of Kevlar. This photo was actually the starting point of my decal. I changed it to the right size in Photoshop and added the part at the front that’s missing in the picture. This I printed on clear decal film and put it on the grey primer patches that I masked off when spraying the undertray black. Afterwards I also “smoked” these areas a bit and added some scratches in the black paint with rough glass paper so the primer showed again.
Next is a picture of the diffuser area. This clearly got used and also the vertical diffuser fins are missing.





I decided to keep my model diffuser in “better shape”. There was no way to mask and paint the yellow and brownish areas on top of the Studio 27 CF decals I already put on so I cut out the pieces from clear decal film and airbrushed those. It’s no problem to apply the decals afterwards but of course they become thicker and less flexible. On top of them I added decal layers with dot pattern and “stripes” ( dark brown patches ).





To get the undertray surface even after all those decal layers I put on three thick layers of automotive ( 2K ) clear coat, each of them carefully wet sanded. The final layer also went on the top side of the monocoque. This layer was very wet ( not a problem with that stuff as it runs a whole lot less than model paint ) and a lot thicker than what I normally put on to be on the safe side for sanding. I hoped to get a very smooth finish to start with but instead I earned orange peel and a lot of sanding to do. Great! It wasn’t a problem for all those straight surfaces but the diffuser area and the edges around the upside of the undertray were really annoying.
My plan was to get surfaces with various levels of sanding/polishing finish that would look very much like the original finishes but that didn’t work out so I changed my plan. After everything looked mostly right and even I covered the whole monocoque up with a thin layer of semi gloss clear ( in my case a mix of Revell matt clear and Humbrol matt clear which is rather glossy !? :-)
Next I sprayed some Revell matt clear through a very thin photoetched mesh on top of that. You can see the effect in this picture:



The pattern that’s visible is not from the CF decals like in the foreground of the picture but from the paint. For comparison see the lower right corner ( in front of the diffuser ) where it’s missing. I couldn’t do that in every little corner ( that would have meant to cut to shape and hence waste a lot of expensive PE mesh ) but it wouldn’t show too much in all areas anyway.
On the cockpit front area I did the same but with the glossy stuff to get a variety of that look like on the real car where this area is shinier.
In the tank area of the monocoque right behind the driver’s head and on the sides there’s yet another surface look. It’s more like a cross striped pattern as on the decals. To get that messy surface I added the stripes with a thin brush and old ( less fluid ) clear that wouldn’t flow and even out before airbrushing the semi gloss layer on. That worked out quite nice.
See the real look in this picture:



I have to do some surface treatment here and there still like polishing the cockpit surrounding a bit or adding scratches on the underside ( the clear layers evened out those scratches I put in the black paint so now you see scratches underneath a perfect surface…..that would be odd :-)
But now it’s time to add details and some “eye candy”. The bare monocoque looks quite dull, almost like armour ( no offence :-)
The next thing to do in the cockpit were the seatbelts.



I used the Perfect Parts T2B set that looks quite good and is the best I’ve seen so far. The shoulder adjusters were painted semi gloss black after bending them to correct shape. The round lock piece is turned metal and the buckles come chromed. I sanded them with a 3600 grid pad to take away some of that chrome shine ( but incidentally also took away the complete chrome layer on two edges…..it’s quite thin, which is generally good if you don’t try to change it’s look :-)
The blue was airbrushed over a thin layer of aluminium, because directly on the polished surfaces it easily “ran” from the air pressure and got uneven and was topped off with a thin layer of matt clear. It did make me feel a bit pedantic to put three different layers of paint on such little pieces but once you start….that’s the way it goes I guess :-)
In the next picture you see the assembled belts before they will go in place.



The belt material will never have as small a pattern as it should be in scale but it’s quite good and I like it better then the sticky stuff in the SMS set that’s no fun to handle for me. Cutting and gluing with superglue was no problem. I added bits of white decal to represent the stickers on the real belts and then airbrushed on the belts a very thin layer of matt clear to take away the shine of the plasticky fabric. That made for some tricky masking of the shiny buckles:-) Next time I think I’ll do that before assembly…
What’s missing still are the boss stickers on the shoulder straps. I decided to add them when the belts are installed in the car because i’m afraid the decals will brake during handling once they are dry. In the picture above there are black stickers with white lettering on the belts but in all the pictures I have of Senna racing they are white with black lettering and these correct stickers come with the Perfect Parts set.

Finally for this update alittle teaser for things to come. Another piece of “candy” I already made and that will be installed soon: the gearshift .



I made a basic cylindrical piece from brass in the lathe and then did the round shaping with files, various milling heads and glass paper while spinning it in the hand piece of my Proxxon drill ( aka Dremel or whatever you use :-) That took some time because not only was the brass quite uncooperative, but I had to make two of them since the first one turned out a bit too small :-) The pieces that hold it are also made from brass rod and a square tube.

This is it again….for now. Hope you liked it.

It’s sad there’s no new contest going on ( not that I’m in any position to complain! ). But lately progress seemed to be generally slow around here ( summer maybe…) and I already had ideas about at least a curbside entry for that smoke and booze theme….
Keep ‘em coming guys. You must be building faster than me :-)

Cheers

[robrex]

Originally Posted by jaykay640

I decided to add them when the belts are installed in the car because i’m afraid the decals will brake during handling once they are dry. In the picture above there are black stickers with white lettering on the belts but in all the pictures I have of Senna racing they are white with black lettering and these correct stickers come with the Perfect Parts set

jaykay640, this may sound scary, but try putting the Perfect Parts decals on the belts like normal decals. Then drop some Tamiya thin liquid cement under the edge of the decal. The effect is like super strong decal setting solution and the finish is matt! The belts can also be handled without a problem.
Check out the belts on my 312T3 and also the FW24.

Once you try this technique I guarantee you'll be hooked!

The only hassle may be the matt clear coat you layed down?


As for the rest of the build... this is the best F1 model I have ever seen! You are certainly an inspiration! Thanks for making me a better modeler!!!

[nniemi]

Originally Posted by jaykay640

Keep ‘em coming guys. You must be building faster than me :-)

Cheers

When results are like this, speed doesn't matter.

-Niko

[gionc]

I agree with Robrex: best F1 or at least best inspiring thread, news any corner. SUPER.

[Scuderia.]

Great work Jaykay, absolutely stunning build. This is definitely my favourite thread. I love seeing all the methods use use to attack different problems. Really makes me want to finish my mp4/5b after seeing your pics.

Thanks for the tip about the seatbelt decals Rob. It took me a few goes to find a method to get them to stick down, and not just look like they were sitting there. I'll have to try the cement method.

[sjelic]

Unreal work or....to real. No matter what I am simply amazed.
True inspiration.

[joelwideqvist]

"#¤/%#"&/&#="#&¤&#¤/"#&¤& - Syntax Error in brain speach center. Please reboot!
/Joel

[Lurchio]

I've just read this thread from start to finish!
Absolutely inspirational - a joy to read!
Can't wait for more

[flight1]

I cannot believe What you've done!!! absolutely amazing!!
Keep it up!!

[puffyrs]

Not only outstanding model making but great updates and photos.
Keep them coming.

[auw12]

dream...only a dream...= =

[Decs0105]

Jaykay this "model" is so awesome, I don't know what to say

[CeeElle]

this is an amazing build, jay. i'm learning a lot from it. the homemade decals are incredible, and your attention to detail is inspiring. great work all the way around.