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

[agamo]

It is very hard to say something that has not been said regarding your impressive job, I just can tell that I'm highly impressed for the dedication and perfection that your skills show, it’s not easy to find this level of detail so well explained and see the work of somebody going that deep, and more than that, with your disposition to share every little detail.

Your work is highly illustrative and your compromise with Excellency is very inspirational.

Thank you for sharing, this thread has become a valuable “Modeling How To” Book.

Have all my respect.

[lumpulus]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again....If this was in 1/12 it would be amazing.....in 1/20 it is astounding! If you have an 1/20 MP4/4 go break it out and hold the Monocoque in your hand....That will give you an idea of the talent JK has.

[willimo]

You are my scale model hero.

[tehSAC]

w0w, just w0w

[simpleon3]

Typically when I see someone who is better at modeling then me I think to my self "one day I'll be that good" but yours.... simply speechless you truly take it to a level that I can not imagine at this point. GREAT work!!!!

[Raceman]

Amazing,sometimes its hard to tell if the photos are from the real car or the scale model.Great work...

[johnsontang]

What a Incredible built

[jaykay640]

Hi everybody!

First up I wish all of you a Merry Christmas!

It’s been some time again since my last update. Due to various reasons I had to put modelling aside for a while but I hope to get some more done now during the holidays :-)
I started to work on the suspensions, which is one more reason for slow progress as all the bits have to be made before I can put them together and check the alignment and figure out all the proper lengths.
I’m using the kit suspension arms but replace all the end pieces with scratch built items. The snap-on type of connections in the kit were just not acceptable. Because of that and because of my new brake/wheel assembly the uprights have to be reworked a lot and another important area are the brake calipers.
Here you can see the real ones in two pictures I got off the Net:










For reasons I would really like two know the MP4/4 had two AP callipers per wheel, which makes for a grand total of 8. That looks like a lot of unsprung mass to me…. but it seems they didn’t stop the car from outdriving everything else:-)
Nevertheless the next year McLaren used Brembos like other teams too, with one caliper per wheel.

My first attempt at building a calliper was almost exactly one year ago ( oh yes this build has taken some time ….) with styrene sheets. Generally speaking it would be possible to do it like that but I wasn’t happy with the result ( it was too big and asymmetric on top of that ) and at the time I turned my attention to other things.
Earlier this month I finally bought a little milling setup and a rotary table as my personal Christmas gift and the calliper was the first thing I built on it.
I used green Ureol again as you can see in this picture:





I used a round piece as my starting point and first milled the outer shape. The rotary table came in very handy here and for the details to come, to keep things symmetric.
Next up I did the inner details with a 0.6mm milling head. I did all the basic shaping of the holes with it. To get sharp edges I later had to do some detailing with a knife and files.


186


I first did the underside and cut the piece off. Then I made a “negative” of the big inside hole to stick the calliper on it upside down. Like this it was positioned correctly and I could do the holes from the top.
After turning the rotary table 90 degrees I could drill the holes from the sides, including the places where the pistons sit. These were turned on the lathe and glued in.
In the next picture you can see my semi finished styrene calliper ( white ) and at the bottom the pieces I now made before gluing them together.





The other green part ( top right ) was my first try ( no it didn’t work first time out :-). It wasn’t really symmetric in some places and some of the walls were just too thin. Also I had made some steps in the wrong order which would have made things too complicated when milling the second side.
It’s quite important to properly plan how to make a piece, especially when you don’t have a digital readout for the mill. This makes life easier and is now on top of my wish list :-)
Here you see another close up of the finished calliper. I fixed it in some places with body filler.





In the next picture you can see the Tamiya brake disc/calliper assembly for comparison. The Tamiya callipers would be o.k. if you don’t take the wheels off, but otherwise they lack all the detailing.





Making the calliper took a lot of time and I knew from the beginning that there was no way I would mill 8 of them! So casting them was the way to go.
It took me some experimenting but the third mould turned out satisfactory.
First the silicone cured way too quick and I had too many bubbles. Using it directly from the fridge increased pot life and that cured the problem mostly. I will try to get some vacuum pump though to get rid of them completely.

The resin had the same "speedy curing" habit and cooling it down increased it’s reaction time too. Then also it didn’t cure completely in the mould in some places because, as it turned out, I hadn’t mixed it well enough….partly because of the quick reaction time and me trying to rush because of that. What helped me was a note on one resin supplier’s website, that at small quantities the resins should be mixed by volume rather than by weight! So instead of mixing 6g on a digital scale I mixed 1ml in a plastic syringe. Funny enough, even though I really shook the stuff in the syringe hard I got very little bubbles and the casting finally worked out.
Here you can see a calliper after taking away one half of the mould.





In the next picture you see the first couple I made, taken off the mould. They now need some cleaning up, but that’s still way quicker than milling :-)





In the last picture for this update you see the Tamiya uprights with brake ducts. These will need a lot of work now. I’ll have to make the mounting points for the brake callipers among other things. Since in the kit the callipers are stuck to the brake discs and nothing turns they usually just don’t exist on the 1/20 kits……





That’s it for now. Thanks again for your comments and I hope you enjoyed this update too.
A happy new year to everybody and lots of modelling in 2007 :-)

P.S. Scuderia……thanks for your offer about the nose number decal. I think I may be able to save mine with some liquid decal film. If not I will get back to you about yours. Just don’t throw it away in the meantime :-)

Cheers

[auw12]

merry christmas modeling god...

[stevenoble]

Brilliant work on the milling machine! Anybody else would have been happy with the Tamiya kit parts,but the difference between them and yours is astounding.Your attention to detail is incredible.I look forward to more progress reports.

[billypee]

Fabulous update... lots of food for thought.

Working on my Jordan at the moment. Christmas day is a great day for modelling

Happy Christmas and New Year to you too.
Bill

[robrex]

Wow! Wow! Wow!
I just got my milling machine and have no idea where to start! This detail work is absolutely incredible! I hope I can make parts like those calipers some day?
You are a real inspiration Jaykay!

[davesans]

Glad to see your back working on your McLaren JayKey it's such a awesome build

Merry Christmas to you as well

Dave

[mike@af]

Lovely piece of machining you've done there. I look forward to seeing more.

[Decs0105]

Originally Posted by auw12

merry christmas modeling god...

great update JayKay, I still can't believe that this is a 1/20 F1...outstanding work!!!
Which milling machine did you get, (looks a bit like proxxon ) ?