Tamiya Jaguar XJ220

[Some_Kid]

Finally I'm back in the game haha. I haven't made a model in quite some time and I've decided to pick up where I left off years ago on my XJ220. It's the most work and detail I've ever put into a model. Which is funny since I've never technically completed one, but I am dying to finish this.

The XJ220 is one of my favorite super cars and I must say the Tamiya kit is under appreciated. The engine is pretty well detailed. It's missing coolant pipes but with a little bit of ingenuity you can make this look like a very impressive engine bay. I think back in it's day the XJ220 kit was close to the Enzo kit. If Tamiya re-engineered and reboxed it, it would not take much to make it one of their more impressive kits.

I will be painting this car silver. I have already painted it several times but I haven't been please with my choice of silver paint yet. I will experimenting with TS-17, TS-30, and AS-12 over the next week or so to see which silver suits me for the body. It was once painted aluminum metalizer and I had a flawless paint job. However I realized an error with the model. The sides skirts need to be glued and blended into the body as that's the way it's done on the real car. I'm trying to get this as real as I can get it so I could not settle on this error.

Now to the pics. Let me start with the engine. The block was painted Tamiya XF-16 flat aluminum. The lettering on the valve colors were covered with BMF and then sprayed MM aluminum plate metalizer(same for the intake). Then I took a cloth and wiped the lettering clean. After this I sealed the parts with metalizer sealer and then I toned down the BMF with testors flat clear acrylic with a brush. The parts you see in the gold brown color on the block is brush painted testors enamel mix of flat brown and gold. Then I washed the engine with thinned down oil paints(special thanks to MPWR, really sets it off).


The throttle cable was made from detail master ignition wire dipped in MM aluminum plate. I then added inserted thin wire into the end of it, drilled the top of intake and inserted the wire. The intake pipe you see running around the back and curling back into itself was made from head phone wire painted black. To hold it's structure I removed the copper wire and fed wire through it. Then I drilled two holes, one on each side of the intake to give the wire something to bite and glue into.



The exhaust was painted Alcad chrome. Then I heat stained it with variations of Tamiya acrylic bronze, metallic blue, copper and clear blue. It was more bronze than anything else though. If you look closely enough you can see the texture of the heat shield I added at the end of the exhaust. I made it from BMF that was pressed onto fine mesh. You won't be able to see it but I thought it would be cool. I'm very happy with the way it turned out and I think looks pretty realistic from my references.



The turbos were painted according to kit instructions, chrome silver and x-10 gunmetal I believe. However it looked too clean and did not mesh well with exchaust. So I bought Tamiya's weather master kit D. I must say I was very very pleased and had just the effect I was wanting.



The coolant pipe you see under the intake with the cap is scratch made. I made it from styrene sprue(.8 dia I want to say). The cap was made from part of a steering linkage from a fujimi countach kit. The hoses were made from electrical tape. All hose clamps were made from strips of BMF, then cut metal wire used to make the screws.



For the brakes I first took 800 grit sand paper and carefully sanded in a circular motion to simulate brake use. Then I sprayed them with MM aluminum plate. After they were buffed I painted the center hubs with vallejo gold acrylic. The kit called for metallic grey on the calipers. So I first brush painted them with vallejo black grey acrylic, then brushed them with watered down vallejo metallic grey as the paint tends to be thin and needs a base. After all that I black washed it oil paints.

Many more details to be added to the engine, but here's a nice pic of it by itself.



Your questions, comments and criticisms are all welcome. Thank you for letting me share the build with you.

[nugundam93]

nice work so far! and sanding the rotors is a good idea

[Some_Kid]

Now onto the interior. From a lot of the photo's I've found online the XJ220 for the most part has two versions for interior colors; tan or a very light grey. I wanted to do something darker that had a nice race feel to it but still classy at the same time. I was inspired by this photo I found for an XJ220 by TWR.


So for the interior I made a custom mix of tamiya semi gloss black and tamiya german grey. It was about a 50/50 mix. The dash was painted black and once everything was painted I gave it a wash of a mix of blue, purple, and black oil paints. I made seat belt catches by gluing two sides of clear plastic packaging, cutting them to shape and painting them black and red. It was an easy mod I think it adds some nice detail.



The interior was flocked with the traditional white glue method using testors and detail master black flocking. Once i had the instrument cluster decal in place I gave it several coats of future, with hours in between each coat. The tape deck was detailed with white vallejo paint and I also used future again to simulate the gloss of the clock. I then used tamiya's weather kit to add a blue tint to the buttons.








The seat belts are 1/16th ribbon from hobby lobby. I just need to add the photo etched belts and then run them through the back of the interior and it'll be done.

[Some_Kid]

Here's a better shot of the block before the mock up photos.

[SilverRomeo]

Looking good! Nice to see these classics coming back.

[mattbacon]

Looks fantastic -- you really should finish it this time!

Looking at those pictures, you can really see why prospective buyers at the time cried off when they discovered that they were only getting "half an engine", and from a Mini Metro at that...

bestest,
M.

[Some_Kid]

Wheels painted. TS-17 then clear coated with testors one coat clear. Progress will be slow on the body because I'm ordering a custom zero mix from spot model in Spain. Trying to get my hands on Silbergrau DB-180, a Mercedes silver from 1972. Trying to get a fine in scale silver.