Brabham BT52, 1/20, Beemax

[MarcoSaupe]

Hi

I finished another one, this time the Beemax kit of the early season variant of the 1983 championship winning Brabham BT52.

The kit is nicely detailed, but you need to be careful to avoid fitment problems, even a bit too much colour on the parts may cause problems. To give some examples: I shortened the half shafts by probably 0.5mm to make the rear suspension sit straight, the gear linkage at the mounting point behind the driver should be made as flat to the monocoque as possible to make the cowling go over it without problems (also remove some material on the inside of the cowling, especially the lower edge of the channel for the linkage), and assembling the turbo and exhaust is not that easy: I'd suggest to use instant glue in gel form, that takes a bit longer to really harden, so you can correct the parts in place.
I also used the detail set, which is also very nice, but has some small issues as well: the heat shield that goes on the floor underneath the turbo is a bit too wide on the side; the left cooler would sit on top of it which makes it sit too high, so remove that corner of the heat shield, as well as some CF decals on the floor where you'd glue the coolers to the floor. The rear wing endplates look nice, but it's difficult to assemble the wing with them: I'll probably build the B version with the plastic parts.
But while this may sound like a lot of criticism, if you are careful or an experienced builder, you'll get it done, and the result looks very nice, I think. You can remove the cowling at the end, by removing 3 parts that you should not glue on. The decals ware very good, CF and the big blue decals on the cowling went around corners perfectly with some hot air from the hair dryer.

Painted with TS26, some of the blue parts I also painted by mixing TS55 and 23 to match the decals (templates for the numbers on the coolers are included in the detail set). Mr. Super clear on top and as usual I added some wires and some heat shielding.

Hope you like it.

[MPWR]

Great looking build!

F1 cars of that era were so coool. Back when they were getting 1000+ horsepower out of a tiny little inline 4 cyl....

[Macio4ever]

Very, very cool and clean build. Old times...

[MarcoSaupe]

Thanks

[Sebastian.]

мммм!Great! work!!!!

[JesusM]

Beautiful, well done!! (great pictures as always!!)

[MarcoSaupe]

Thanks again

[CifeNet]

All I can say is “this is superb”. Thanks for the detail information on the build also.

Talking about the design from 80s, BT52 looks almost like a future fighter plane even today’s standard.

[Nissanmotorsport]

Looks good