Honda S800 bodywork

I occasionally get comments from readers. Apparently I have readers, who would have guessed; this is encouraging as it lets me know someone is actually interested in what I write. 'Don't encourage him', I hear some of you mumble, 'he'll only do more of it'. To these nattering nabobs of negativism, I say this: modeling is better than the alternative, which is hanging around in bars, blowing the kid's inheritance (such as it might be) on smoking, drinking and chasing women. But I digress.

So anyway one reader commented on the Big Al stories by asking if I ever built anything stock. Good question, so while I ponder how to get the Allison down in the weeds where any self-respecting rat rod belongs, I decided to get back to the Honda S800. First up was to finish the seam that runs along the fender tops in Bare Metal Foil. This went exceedingly well, to my great pleasure and relief, with only a couple of spots where I trimmed too much off. This sort of long, straight application is where the foil works particularly well.



Next I put on decals and three metal transfer scripts. The only problem here was the Honda script across the trunk lid, which was meant to go on after the decal; the plastic backing (predictably) lifted the decal off and the whole thing wound up a wadded mess in the garbage. Perhaps I should have clear coated the decal first. Anyway I got out a 3-0 brush I got from Wheels & Wings a few years ago and free-styled the missing stripe and touched up the foil, followed by a coat of clear. The clear appears to have damaged the stripe on the roof so this may need to be fixed; am I the only one that finds Tamiya decals to be fragile? The clear was Tamiya, not Testor's, although to be fair I may have laid it on a little thick.

Next I had to decide what to do with the inner fenders, which you may recall are supposed to be yellow but are molded in black. (I opened up my S600 kit which is essentially identical; this is molded entirely in white.) I decided to leave the lousy yellow paint as it was, and detail the engine bay with silver paint or by scraping off the yellow where black was needed. It's all going to sit for a few days while the clear sets good and hard, meanwhile I will have a crack at more bare metal foil on the windshield surround.

So a very nice kit marred by choices made by Tamiya as to what colour to mould different sprues, and by fragile decals. There ought to be a rule: all plastic model kits to be molded in white or light grey.