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

[klutz_100]

Ina word....Superb!

[CeeElle]

your work is awe-inspiring.

[Enzoenvy1]

I am in no way knowledgeable about F1 cars like you are. BUt as a fellow modeler, that caliper work is incredible!!! The replicated parts look awesome. I have followed the build for a while and never posted cause I am not really into F1 cars, but this has really sparked my interests. Thanks for the great build and great detail!

[Scuderia.]

Stunning work on those calipers jaykay. Make sure you don't work too hard, we need more updates. You don't have to worry about me throwing out the decal. I'm a modeller, I never throw anything out. Never know when it will come in handy.

Sorry to anybody who checked his thread and got excited thinking there was an update. I have been away so didn't get to post earlier.

[matt mack]

this is the most amazing build i have EVER seen .. i mean you used things i havent even thought of or seen before .. i only dream of being able to model as well as you

P.S. where do you get all your scratchbuilding tools and supplies from???

[Ąɥrton]

There are not enough words. It's unbelievable you are actually building a 1/20 model.

In 1/8 would be outstanding, in 1/12 incredibly amazing, but in 1/20? My God...

Thank you SO much for this WIP JayKay, each update from you is a complete modeling tutorial!

[tehSAC]

we need more!

[jaykay640]

Errrm.....yeah....i know....sorry guys :-)
I'm working on an excuse for the lack of updates......literally :-)

[Jonesy80]

Hi All,

I'm a newbie who's been modelling since age 8 and into F1 for nearly as long.
Having worked on a 1/20th McLaren MP4/4 on and off for the last few years, I've gotta say I am super-impressed by JayKay's work.

JayKay, you may remember a couple of years ago you were kind enough to send me about 170 of your MP4/4 pictures following a conversation on the F1M board. I would echo the earlier comment. I have a lot of reference material on this car but you have translated it into practice way better than I could even dream of. All credit to you.

I'm also impressed by your in-depth description of your work and thanks for sharing the techniques you've used.

BTW, I do have quite a lot of contemporary published pictures and descriptions of the car so if I can help with anything., please let me know.

Phil.

[jaykay640]

No, it’s not a fata morgana………this really is an update….finally.
I’m sorry this took so long again but that’s the way it goes. Progress was veeery slow because at some point I got distracted with another project that I resurrected when experimenting with the resin and I thought…well let’s finish something for a change and do that one for a bit. The sad truth is, that one now hit some really annoying troubles and has been moved to the far end of my table. Whenever I finish it I’ll probably show you :-)
I also worked on some other little projects. This is one of them:
I mounted two converted digital callipers that I bought for 10€ a piece to the table of my mill ( Saint….as you can see it’s indeed a Proxxon :-) This should make my life easier with work to come!





But now for the McLaren, or it’s suspension to be precise.
In my last update I showed you the uprights and here are two more scary bits…..the left side upper and lower front suspension arms:





The Tamiya pieces had to be separated of course and needed detailing. There was no way I would keep those chunky snap-lock type connections. The real front suspension looks a lot busier. Here’s the left side:





I cleaned the parts up from sink marks and seams, added those reinforcements at the end of the A-arms with polyester putty and styrene sheets and replaced the mounting points with brass tube and scratch built aluminium parts.





Replacing plastic with metal is necessary because the more accurate smaller size parts wouldn’t survive ( after all Tamiya makes them oversized for a reason ).
I made the rod ends on the lathe, shaping a ball at their end, then sanding it flat from two sides with a sanding disc on my rotary tool and finally drilling a hole. They are nowhere near the precision of R.B.Motion parts but should look all right once mounted. I hope i’ll be able to improve them using the mill, although that’s probably also gonna take longer then…

Here’s a close up picture of the lower mounting point of a real A-arm and upright:





I made that one as a separate piece also to ease painting.

In the next picture you can see the arms of the model’s left side. The upper arm is turned upside down so you can see the photo etched mounting point for the pull rod. The aluminium part to the right will go there. The pull rod itself will be a brass rod that I haven’t cut yet because I’ll figure out it’s length when I test mount all the parts.





In between both arms you can see this little turned aluminium part. That is part of the upper mounting point. This area really made me scratch my head in the beginning because from most pictures I have I couldn’t see how the upright would turn there. In the following picture you can see it has this ball shape in the middle where it goes in the hole at the end of the upper A-arm. I figured it must turn around this ball part, so I tried to replicate that as good as I could.





F1 cars have a very narrow steering angle compared to road cars so that must be it. I hope it does what it’s supposed to do once I put everything together. I really wonder though why McLaren designed it like that…. Suspension layouts are a real mystery to me :-)

Now for the uprights: I cut off the brake ducts from the Tamiya parts and shaped the remains to look like the reference I have. I don’t have as much as I’d wish because at Goodwood the wheels were always on the car…





I added brass tubes as mounting points for the resin brake callipers. After I had cleaned up 8 of them ( which still took ages to do ) I mounted them with brass rivets. Like this I can put them on and off until I finally mount the brake lines.





This whole process of building the mounting points and fitting the brake callipers was very time consuming because I had to make sure everything was lined up nicely. After all these parts have to fit inside the rims and everything should move in the end ( and hopefully will still do so after painting :-)





Here’s a picture of the rear uprights. One difference to the front ones is that the brake callipers are not mounted vertically but at an angle ( it’s a bit difficult to see in that picture…).





Next up I have to build new brake ducts for all four wheels. The Tamiya ones were too big for the version I’m building anyway and chunky on top of that :-)

Back to the front of the car I already made some parts for the steering.
Tamiya supplies one single piece for this that moves as a whole inside the nose….which is not exactly right… :-) Here’s a close picture of the real one:





I used brass rods and made the end pieces from aluminium again which was quite fiddly and time consuming again but worked out in the end.





The brass steering arms are still missing and will follow soon when I dry fit everything…. I hope :-) At my current rate of updating I’ll see you for the next update in….errm…October then ….lol!
Thanks everyone for the ongoing great comments ( even though there was nothing new to see…). They are what’s keeping me going at slightly more than glacial speed :-)


P.S. In the meantime I also read a very interesting book on the MP4/4. I never knew there was one until a colleague of mine came up with it at a party. Would I be interested in it….what a question!?
It’s “McLaren Honda Turbo - A Technical Appraisal” by Ian Bamsey ( pretty british book title :-) and pretty interesting reading. For example the rule changes meant that all of a sudden it made sense to heat the fuel under certain race conditions instead of cooling it and Gordon Murray admitted that this 8 brake calliper layout could have been improved……you tell me dude!
I’d recommend the book ( they pop up on evilbay.uk for reasonable prices regularly ) and have already bought two more from the series ( XJR-9, Maserati 250F ).
I would love to have that of some of the current cars!

Cheers

Jaykay

[robrex]

Great update once again!
The brake calipers look pretty tight inside that rim. Excellent engineering as always! It's a pleasure to read and see your work!

[gionc]

Ok mods: please ban Jay, he put we all to be ridicolous ROFL (J/K)

No more words, I said too much time about my respect for you.

[Chinamalc]

Hoorayyyyyyy! An update! I know how these project go, so was hoping it had not been pushed toooooo far to one side. Fantastic and inspiring as always.
Malc.

[RallyRaider]

I am constantly amazed by the jaw-dropping work that members of this forum produce. How much higher is is possible to raise the bar? Stupendous work Jaykay.

[davesans]

Man oh man don't know what to say that all ready has been said that is really cool work you have don't I love your attention to detail I had a dream once about making my own parts on a lathe and they didn't come out that nice