Mines Powered Z Tune

[Mtxzptlk]

Hi guys,

been a long time lurker around here on the forums. I must say that i've been very impressed w/ the works that I have seen on here. Worked on a few models here and there mostly, ships and planes, some gundam kits and such, recently I figured that I should give it cars a try, I sincerely thought that it would be a walk in the park compared to those kits but sadly it ain't lol. anyways here's my sorry ass kit.

It's a Tamiya Z tuned GTR ( yes, i know another GTR ). This kit was bought from Tonioseven back in '05 along w/ an aoshima RB26 engine and some Te-37's. I was somewhat motivated to do this after seeing hiroboy's WIP back in the day, I must admit getting this far has been nothing but a pain in the ass. first off i messed up the holes on the seats where the harness goes through, made it a bit too big, then there was the clear canopy which was scratched badly, in addition to this, the application of CF to the hood has been nothing short of a nightmare, ended up having to strip it off and start from scratch and having to repaint the hood. bad news is the hood ended up w/ a few dings that would surely show through the paint and cf work so i'll have to buy another Z tune kit and start on the body work all over again.

side note: if anyone would like to hook me up one at a good price i'd be very grateful

the photos below is the objective i'm trying to get to:













Now this is where i'm at so far.














feedback and tips on the CF'in the hood would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

P.S: pardon the quality of the pics

[cyberkid]

You can fix the hood easily with some putty or filler, depends on how deep the 'dings' are. As for the photos, it looks like you are holding the camera too close for it to focus correctly, hold it a little further back and crop the pic in a editor if necessary. Looks pretty good so far, keep it up.
Steve

[energon]

Looking good so far! Keep it coming! It's a beautifull car to replicate, should turn out great! I'm looking forward to more!

[Enzoenvy1]

This is looking great, what is wrong?!

I have been wanting to do a R34 for a long time. I just haven't found a clean version until now. I had forgotten this Tamiya kit. I am going to now get one.

Keep it coming.

[Mtxzptlk]

Thanks for the words guys,

I'll have to take cyberkid's advice and restrip the hood and start over on that.hopefully that'll save me $25.

Any suggestions on going about applying CF to the hood? is it possible to do it using one big piece then 4 little pieces for the rest of the vents?

I will try to add some progress pics over the weekend. will most probably be working on finishing the engine bay.

I resized the pics to get a better view. the reason i had to take the pics upclose was b/c i was using my phone-cam which is a 2 megapixel, if i moved any farther out. i'd start to lose some detail. I think some of it showed up well given the limitation of the camera. unfortunately some did not.

[NOMADGAMER]

you need some micor-sol and micro-set

[OCTANE!]

Hello! I really like your project, and also want to built the same car...
(sorry for offtop)
But I have a queston to you... what is engine firm? (fujimi, or something else)...
And where it is possible to find really good photos of r34 engine?????
P.S.
Sorry for my bad English

[Mtxzptlk]

I did use micro sol and micro set when i attempted to CF the hood the problem lies in the shape of the Z tune hood, there's lots of angles on the curves. I usually ended up w/ decals that had wrinkles and a few tears here and there.

I think part of the reason it went that way is because i'm a noob when it comes to cf decals.

OCTANE,

project used the following:

Tamiya Z-tune
Tamiya Z-tune Photo-etch parts
Aoshima RB26dett
Aoshima TE-37
SMS 5 pt. model harness
plastruct styrene rods and sheets.

The aoshima engine doesn't have a lot of detail, if anything it's more of a engine bay frame w/ half a mold of the RB26 block. I started by cutting out the engine mold from the frame and went from there. In addition to that you have to chop and shave bits off the engine bay frame to be able to make it fit into the front. IMO if i could've gotten a tamiya R32 that came w/ a whole engine/tranny model i would've gone that way.

If you need some engine ref pics i have some that i can upload for you if you'd like. I also have some good ref pics of some clean GTR's to get some project ideas from if you guys would like.

[energon]

I only just noticed that the car has a c/f hood. I LOVE a black car with C/F. This is gonna be good!

[cyberkid]

Originally Posted by Mtxzptlk

I did use micro sol and micro set when i attempted to CF the hood the problem lies in the shape of the Z tune hood, there's lots of angles on the curves. I usually ended up w/ decals that had wrinkles and a few tears here and there.

It sounds like you tried to Cf the hood with one piece of decal... with a complex hood like that its a good idea to cut the decal into pieces that 'fit' the shape instead of trying to stretch it. Just be careful to make the CF patterns match. The wrinkles and tears are signs that you are pushing/pulling the decal too much. Just one other note: Don't touch the decal to help it shape once you have used microsol/set. Let it do its job by itself.

HTH,
Steve.

PS: Maybe you could post a pic of the hood after you decaled it. That would give us a better idea of what went wrong. What brand of CF decals are you using?

[Mtxzptlk]

The decals were SMS hi-def.

I did try to CF the hood using the least number of pieces possible. 1 piece for the body of the hood and 4 smaller pieces for the vents. the outcome wasn't excellent, it was more borderline decent but small tears and folds did appear if you really stared at it long enough. Unfortunately i can't provide pics of what happened from that attempt. Like i mentioned before i had since stripped the hood and started over, hence my rants about it (hood) being dinged and scratched up from the stripping.

I did ask someone from AF who was working on a similar project about how they CF'ed their hood and they said that they managed to get it done using the same method so i figured i'd give that a shot, sadly i couldn't duplicate their results

I will post some progress pics this weekend as well as the hood. I would've done it tonight but the batteries in my camera died out.

Thanks again Steve.

Energon seems pretty hyped up over this project, i guess there's some pressure to make sure it comes out good. lol

[tonioseven]

Hi! I forgot all about that kit! I had a spare body but I used it to build this...

[Mtxzptlk]

Slow and steady wins teh race...










hood pics (needs to be stripped down and puttied/sanded/repainted as cyberkid suggested)