Audi S1: on to the body

So the combination of Dupli-Color Automotive Primer/Sealer with Testor's white in a rattle can appears to work just fine, given the constraints of rattle cans around things like droplet size. (Now that I am retired, there may be an airbrush in my future). I have no idea why I have had such problems with Tamiya paints in pale colours in the past, but there you go. Any ideas would be most welcome.

The chassis is painted and the engine installed. The intercooler is now level but too low and doesn't line up with the grille; fixing it would require shifting the compressor side of the turbo so that the air outlet from the compressor to the intercooler runs above the exhaust pipe from #1 cylinder, not under; I think I'll leave it alone if only because this will play havoc with the exhaust from the turbo and wastegate. These so-called multi-media kits, with resin and spun cast bits, aren't 'paint-by-numbers' like a styrene kit from AMT or Tamiya; lots of trial fitting and fiddling with bits is a good idea and I have probably been treating this a little too much like a styrene kit. The S1 and the Abarth (which still needs a few finishing touches) are providing useful information and experience before I get back to more demanding stuff like the Aston Martin DBR1 from Profil 24 or the monstrous little 908/03 from Model Factory Hiro. (Look through older posts for details on these.)



So with the chassis painted, the body now has a couple of coats in white, plus the yellow has been put on after taping it all up. I foolishly forgot to spray on a coat of clear over the tape before going to the yellow, so there are a few spots where yellow seeped under the tape and which will need to be fixed, but nothing major. One nice aspect of using Testor's rattle cans is being able to do touch ups with a brush. I took advantage of this benefit in several places and will continue to do so going forward.





The decal on the hood proved a challenge. The decals are fairly thick; normally I like this but the hood has a couple of blisters for clearing the shock towers, and no amount of Micro-Sol setting solution could get the decals to settle down over this compound curve without cracking. I will tidy this up with a very fine brush and some enamel, meanwhile the rest of the car is largely flat surfaces so there should be no repeats of this particular problem.



The air scoops all have photo-etched grilles (6 in the hood alone) that look quite nice. This is a step up from having to paint, then wash in some flat black, although the grilles are fragile and it is possible to lay on way too much CA glue. As with polystyrene glue, toothpicks are helpful in limiting the amount of glue on any given part.

I will be busy with other things for the next day or two, then away from the bench until November, so updates will be sparse for the next while. Please feel free to comment on anything you see here.

Lancia Stratos: completed!

I came across a Tamiya lime green rattle can in the stash, which provided the perfect shade, see here: http://silodrome.com/lancia-stratos/. For some reason the can doesn't have a number, it just says TS Lime Green on it. A one off?



Separately it would have been nice to put Webers on the motor but I didn't seem to have anything in the parts bin that has the barrels as close together as the manifold requires. I do have a set of Webers for various Ford motors, 260 through 350 cubic inches, from Historic Racing Miniatures, but it seems to me that it would be a shame to put such a nice set of carbs on this slightly ratty kit; I was saved from this dilemma by the fact that they won't fit. So the standard air cleaner, which hides the carbs, was the way to go. All in flat red, of course; isn't there a rule that Italian twin-cam cylinder heads, especially when there are two of them, need to be topped by red valve covers?

Moving on to the body, the pop up headlights are mounted on a clever little lever-operated hinge that allows you to move them up and down once assembled. I glued them shut as they look dinky when up. Sort of like a TR 7, but I digress.

Similarly I skipped the aero bits and rally headlamps, a well as the Alitalia decals which are probably unusable after 40 years in the box.

All went well until final assembly. The chassis needs to mate with the body under the front valance just so, and a good bit of filing was needed to make that happen. Then the fit around the rear just under the doors was also tight and needed lots of attention.



The result looks good with the engine lid open but the fit when closed is very poor. I thought maybe I had put the hinge on backwards, but apparently not. I am guessing a large part of this is the hinge, which is quite sloppy; the engine lid can be pushed forward to meet up with the roof but the fenders are too wide, a result of the body shifting in 40 years on the shelf.



Other minor issues are the front track, which looks too narrow, and the knobby rally tires that don't really suit a road car. Nonetheless it is a fine looking model of the original wedge design, penned by Bertone in his prime and still a wicked little bomb today. The wedge is gone, killed off by bad knockoffs like the TR 7 (no, I don't like TR 7s), but this one shows what can be done with the concept especially when the machinery is all in back.

So anyway, another one done, in record time (under two days), and a good fit with the other mid or rear engined exotica on the shelf. As this was a new start, there are still a baker's dozen in various states of completion on the bench, including the little Abarth in the centre of the photo which just needs a few items such as the front hood hinges sorted out. Another day.

Lancia Stratos: Revell OOP kit

While waiting for the Testor's white enamel to harden properly on the Audi S1, I tackled the out-of-production Lancia Stratos from Revell USA. This kit came from Model Roundup's OOP page, and on opening it I discovered an official invitation to join the Revell Modelers Club, dated 1977. Two dollars got you a bunch of (probably cheap) swag, Please Allow 6 weeks For Delivery. How times have changed.



The kit suffers from major flash and sinkholes. While the 2.4 litre Ferrari V6 is present, detail is limited. The two main body components (body and rear engine cover) are poor fits and will require lots of fiddling. The Hasegawa kit that I have described previously has no engine detail but at least the body fits. So the ultimate outcome will be limited by kit quality.



I decided to target the lovely first generation cars, without spoilers, flares or rally lights, as shown in the photo below taken from the internet. What a lovely muscular little shape, the beginning of the wedge era which reached its nadir with the Triumph TR7. All the aero bits distract from this.



The first step, after lots of trimming of flash and sinkholes, was to cut off the spoiler and trim the rear flares. The tires will still be fat but the square flares can be trimmed back for aesthetic if not legal purposes.



Next was Tamiya primer followed by a coat of Tamiya Pearl Green (TS 60) which turns out to be a poor replica of the violent lime green I recall seeing on early road cars. I'll sand it out and decide whether to look for something more representative of the 1970's.



So another kit started ... trust me, other kits are being completed and will be reported in due course. Yes, really!

Audi S1: chassis and drivetrain Part 3

Another attempt to spray Tamiya White (TS 26), this time over automotive-grade primer/sealer, also failed and ended back in the alcohol bath. So it will be Testor's.

The engine is essentially complete. These kits require a lot of trial fitting, and I highly recommend drilling out any dowels and replacing with pins made of brass rod of 1/16" or less. In this case, the turbocharger, intercooler and intake manifold benefited from this approach. In spite of this the intercooler is slightly cockeyed, which deliberately does not show up in the picture.



The body has been cleaned up and washed in alcohol, and the largest sinkholes (all underneath) have been filled with putty. I'll sand out the putty and primer the body tomorrow, and I am sure that will be followed by lots of sanding to smooth out rough bits. I'll get to the hobby shop for paint by Monday or Tuesday, at which point the engine can go in permanently along with the drivetrain and interior. Once I get paint to stick, we will have made more steps forward than back...

Audi S1: chassis and drivetrain Part 2

Now before anyone gets the idea I was dumping on resin in my last post, I wasn't. It's a great way to get highly detailed models of stuff Tamiya or AMT will never release. You just need to tackle it properly, that's all.

So I soaked the chassis in a mix of Tamiya thinner (an expensive mix of n-propanol and butyl alcohol) with pharmacy-bought iso-propanol for an hour while I ran out to get automotive primer at the local auto parts store. This took off most of the Tamiya primer as well, and required a lot of scraping in corners where the toothbrush doesn't reach. A small brass wire brush in the Dremel helped here but be careful not to dig in too deep.

Next was two coats of Dupli-Color primer/sealer, the heavier of the two Dupli-Color primers available. It fills in small scratches and pinholes, and is probably a good choice for resin even if you haven't had to scrub off some earlier problems. This is drying overnight while I decide whether to risk the Tamiya white again, or to move to an enamel from Testor's. There is a problem with pale Tamiya colors and this is unrelated to styrene versus resin. However the Testor's will be harder to fix if it goes wrong. Decisions, decisions... meanwhile I painted the engine block red using Testors in a bottle, so there is progress. Stay tuned! Pictures will come as there is something to document.

Audi S1: chassis and drivetrain Part 1

A number of acquaintances have asked about resin, so perhaps I will use the Audi S1 to illustrate challenges and solutions as I go along.

The Audi is the third Profil 24 resin kit I have tackled, the other two (Aston Martin DBR1, Renault 40 NM) being stalled. There are clearly a range of quality levels when it comes to resin, usually reflected in price.

At the top of the heap is Model Factory Hiro. The resin parts look like styrene and need little or no fiddling to get them to fit. The spun-cast white metal bits need more work, with part lines and dowels needing cleaning up, sockets needing drilling, etc. You pay the price, though, in cash, with prices in the 30,000 to 40,000 yen for the few 1/24 scale kits they still make. (That's $300 to $400 depending on currencies). Add in shipping and you've got yourself one hefty bill. Case in point: the Abarth OT 1300 went together well and is essentially complete; if you look back, you will see that my ongoing challenges with the Porsche 908/03 arise more from the white metal than the resin bits.


The MFH Porsche 908 forward chassis. Excellent resin bits but the spun cast white metal chassis tubes are easily bent. Superb quality at a price.

At the other end of the spectrum are the large number of transkits provided by Jimmy Flintstone. Poor surfaces, lots of flash and sinkholes, and thick castings that are frequently not straight make any project an exercise in hand-fitting the new body to the donor chassis. The high-quality builds you see in online forums arise as a result of many hours of primer, paint, sand, repeat, followed by (I am guessing) hand fabrication of suitable brackets and mounting braces to get the stance right. Ooof. The low price tag, in the $20 range before shipping, is long forgotten once you make it to that stage.

The styrene hood from the AMT Starliner kit is a poor fit on the Jimmy Flinstone body. Heck, even the Jimmy Flinstone interior is a poor fit on the Jimmy Flintstone body. But, for $20, it's hard to complain.

Profil 24 is in between these extremes: much cleaner molds and better fit than the Jimmy Flintstone stuff, at a significantly lower cost than the MFH kits which are becoming rare and have always been very expensive. So expect plenty of trimming, sanding and filing, but it all fits.

The Audi is probably a good first resin kit to tackle (and is the first Profil 24 kit I bought) because there is very little structural white metal, meaning you can't bend a chassis tube and have it screw up the rest of the build forever; on the other hand it requires a very different mind set than styrene. So here goes.

Washing in alcohol yielded very little in the way of the brown goobers I have seen when cleaning up other resin kits, said boogers being the residual silicone-based mold release agent used in resin. Either I already washed this kit and forgot that I did so, or Profil 24 has done something to make this step unnecessary (using no mold release agent, or one that doesn't stick to the part, or maybe they rinse before packing).

Next was a high level cleanup of flaws in the engine parts and the chassis, then a first coat of Tamiya primer. So far so good; the primer showed up a multitude of little seams and flaws that needed more work. Primer, scrape and shape, primer, repeat. Resin makes more dust than styrene and you should try not to inhale the stuff.

The Tamiya primer went on the chassis well but the Tamiya white, frustratingly, did not. So back into the alcohol bath it all went, and off I went to the auto parts store for some industrial primer. The issue of pale colours in Tamiya paints remains. I have had problems with Tamiya yellow on styrene so I am beginning to think the issue is the paint, not the material; in both cases the standard Tamiya primer went on first. And the Tamiya French blue on the Renault 40 NM worked well. Options are Testors, which is an enamel and requires thinner to remove if it doesn't work; or auto paints that will be pretty permanent.



The chassis includes a number of items that are molded in, such as gearbox, driveshaft and exhaust pipe. This leads to lots of cleanup required to get rid of ugly lumps of resin. While this is admittedly in a location where most people will never look, the door pockets are a problem and will also require lots of grinding.

So two steps forward, three back. Stay tuned...





Molded-in door pockets and roll cage will be difficult to clean up.

Rallye cars: Back to the Audi S1

With a series of stalled projects now moving again (and which will all be documented shortly), it is time to get back to the rallye world. Initially I considered the Renault R5 Turbo from Heller, but on closer inspection the kit turns out to be very poorly detailed, and hardly worth the effort to assemble -- the photo below shows the entirety of this kit. This was an unpleasant surprise, frankly, as Heller has a reputation for well-engineered and very detailed kits, in particular of the Delahaye 135 or Citroën 15 which I have, and of the Bugatti T50 which I do not.



So while waiting for a more realistic kit of this little monster (Profil 24, are you listening?) I decided to look through the more detailed stuff on the shelf for the next project. The stash includes a good selection of resin (Audi S1, Lancia Delta, MG Metro, Porsche 550, Talbot Lotus, Toyota Celica) and styrene (Ford Escort, Ford Falcon Sprint, Lancia 037, Peugeot 206 and the aforementioned R5). The Lancia 037 would be a prime candidate but I am on a waiting list for an upgrade kit, so I decided to leave this on the shelf for a while longer.

Quite some time ago I ordered the Audi S1, in resin, from Profil 24. This kit has now been re-issued, and the nice folks at Profil 24 sent me a new hood to replace the one that was just a bit narrow due to resin not completely filling the mold, as well as a radiator which also had some flaws.



I figure it is now time to make some progress here, so the first step was to head over to the local pharmacy for some more isopropyl alcohol. I discovered the importance of this for removing mold agents here, a lesson that won't be soon forgotten. Next was some initial work to remove scarf, drill out holes, sharpen up dowels, plan for the odd pinned joint, and put a coat of primer on the engine components and the chassis. Photos to follow; this is going to be a very different build from a Tamiya kit, so stay tuned.