[GRUNZ]

Opening holes
As first business, I worked on adding the holes for the lights.
I want to have the two side fog lights and the central fog light at the centre of the front grill.
A close up from the sister car:

And today I also got my new Proxxon drill that I won from the WWSCC ;-)
So what better excuse to start using it and open up some holes in the car.

First I marked with a piece of tape where the openings will be and traced the edges with a pencil.

Then I drilled the holes using bits of different size and square them up using a sharp blade.

My idea is to press through the hole these LEDs (ignores the one bleeding...)

And in these pics you can see how the look like:

 

[GRUNZ]

More holes
Hey I love my Proxxon, so let's make more hole ;-)
As I mentioned I want to have the central fog light in the middle of the grill.
So, first I remove some plastic that is in the front the of the car behind where the grill piece will go.

Next, I drilled a row of holes through the grill, connected the holes with a blade and then squared it off.

Test fit the LEDs I will use:

As a bonus I also put in the front anchor point for pulling the car:

That's it for now.

 

[GRUNZ]

hi Heath
The wires you see here are pre-soldered on the LEDs.
So I am not sure what they are.
If I have LEDs that are not pre-wired then I use a good multi core 36 AWG silicon wire.

 

[GRUNZ]

WOW, this has been on hold for some time now. Poor @MALAFAMA has been eating popcorns for 9 months...

A little diet
I have been procrastinating on this build mainly because I know what I want to achieve but it is not what I am going to get.
Another thing that I have been debating is whether I want to reduce its weight given that it is a large car.
So this weekend I hit the bulled and went for it.
I started with the dremel and a medium round burr.

The starting point of the body alone was 10.84 g.

After 30 min, the overall weight dropped to a whooping 9.89 g.

Then using a scalpel, I tided it up and lost another 0.1 g

Next I worked on the wing just with the scalpel.

Before:

After:

With all the details in: I tared for the two plastic bags....With the lightweight interior it should be around 17 g.

I gave it the first layer of black coat...hope the weekend weather will be good enough to make some progress.

 

[GRUNZ]

I´ve come across this thread on multiple occations, only to be dissapointed that it was discontinued. It´s great to see this project come to life again.

It has never been discontinued...only life sometimes gets in the way. But you are too young to understand that ;-)

 

[GRUNZ]

He is getting there ahahahah ;-)

 

[GRUNZ]

Always educational to follow your builds. Looking forward seeing how it progresses! 😀

thanks Michael. I am not sure that this is going to be so educational...I think it is going to be full of compromises.

 

[GRUNZ]

The chrome finish being one? 🤔

Exactly.

 

[GRUNZ]

Masking and more masking
The weather was not too bad this morning for painting.
Before starting the masking process, I watched a couple of videos. I think the best one was on how to mask canopies for airplane models.
In particular on how to cut very thin strips of tape and use a tooth stick to move it around.
Other tips included keeping your tape dust free and a nice sharp blade for the cutting.

With this in mind I started the process of first masking the perimeter of the area that I wanted to protect and then fill it with thicker strips of masking tapes.

Not perfect but close enough.

 

[GRUNZ]

Looking at the details
I must admit that I took the calipers out a couple of times to check the symmetry in a couple of spots.
But most of the masking was done by looking at the pics I had in my documentation and make some rough estimate.
Also, most of the lines are along the panel lines of the body.

 

[GRUNZ]

Painting
The approach I am taking is to spray a silver base and then spray a clear blue on top of it.
For the silver base, I found in my stash of paints, a Tamiya LP pot named Sparkling Silver (I believe the LP code is 48).
I went for my basic approach being:
step 1 Spray Tamiya gloss clearcote from the can to the airbrush and then use the airbrush to spray the clearcote over the masking tape edges to seal them
step 2 Give a couple of minute to dry, spray the two way thinner through the airbrush to clear it and leave some for diluting the next paint
step 3 Put the silver from the pot in to airbrush and spray it over the model at a low PSI setting
step 4 Once happy with the paint coverage spray the model with tamiya TS13 clear
step 5 Put the model back into a covered container and start cleaning the airbrush of any paint. This gives me something to do to let the paint settle on the model.
step 6 after 5 minutes, remove the masking tape from the model to avoid that the edges between the masked and unmasked parts of the model are not too thick

The results

Not too bad....I have to say that the edges are all good. I did not have any overspray.
Next step: I have to do all the masking again for spraying the clear blue!

 

[GRUNZ]

Don't you hate when you do things that you do not know nothing about suggested by other people that end in big screws up? ;-)

I wanted to buff the silver as suggested by Tamar.
I started using a 3000 grit tamiya sand sponge which removed some of the silver....I had to redo most of the masking and re-spray.
All good now.

 

[GRUNZ]

Yep, all my fault.
Anyway, after all that masking, I did spray the silver again without issues.
Then after letting it drying in the attic for a couple of hours at 35 degree, I took it down again, did some buffing (no 3000 grit this time) again.
I have to say that I put less energy on the cloth but still some of the silver paint started to come off but this time I stopped in time.
Then I proceed to mask the parts that have to remain in silver.

and then...

 

[GRUNZ]

Interior
I have wanted to do an illuminated control/dial panel for a while now.
I found some good reference pictures of the interior of the RC-F as the one show below.

To recrate the display, I used a picture I found for a simulator I think which I modified a little.

Then I printed it in several sizes and used some flat plastic to make the frame of the console

After several attempts at making the frame, I drilled the holes for the LEDs and cut some transparent plastic to put between the black frame and the picture of the display.

Finally I put an LED under the interior (this interior was created from a transparent piece of plastic) behind where the display would go.

Putting the scale display in position and turning the car on...

 

[GRUNZ]

More interior
I also took the opportunity to recreate the net harnesses around the driver and tide up the area around the display.
I added some microtubing on each side of the steering wheel to recreate the air ducts.

 

[GRUNZ]

Decals
I have lost count of how many times I have masked the car for doing some small details or touch ups. Today I had enough and decided to put on the decals.
I added a small grill on the back where the intake for cooling the gear box is (just in between where the wing posts will go).
I still need to clear coat the whole car to seal the decals.
So far the overall weight of the body with paint and decals is back to 10.5 g.

 

[GRUNZ]

Gio, that Dashboard with the led is awesome 😍, in the Curch of Tamar and Awesome Racing Slot Cars you are the Bishop 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼

I want to be the Pope! ahahahahah

 

[GRUNZ]

Whose do you use and how many coats??

Bonus statement: stellar effort with the details, Gio. 👏

I have not decided yet which clearcoat I am going to use....usually I do one coat, but with this one I might try a couple more.
And thanks for the bonus statement, much appreciated Pedro!

 

[GRUNZ]

She’s looking great Gio, I suspect the first few laps will be taken very cautiously.

Thank you, sir. Not sure about being cautious, the paint job is tough enough.