Attaching the engine

Today is the big day: the monocoque will be joined forever with the engine, until death, or a cat, does them part... The operation was not straightforward. Without the bottom black tubes, the engine fits quite easily: the bracket slide in and the engine is put into place thanks to one plug on each cylinder bank. With the tubes, nothing moves, so I have to widen the holes at the bottom of the rear bulkhead in order to give more room to them. Nothing is quite rosy though, as the engine seems to be tilted upward at the rear...

Roll bars

I am about to end the building of the Lotus quite soon, or so I guess. There is not much paint job left, and lots of assembling to do. I put the roll bars in their place but had a bad surprise. The front bar does not fit the model at all! Its left hand attachment point is completely out of the body of the model, and looks weird (see picture). There is not much I can do about that except replace the bars, but I have no material at hand, nor talent enough to do so.

Tyres

The tyres provided in the kit are made of soft rubber. It is still stiff enough to stay firmly in place when the tyres are fitted on the rims. I am not sure whether they are true to the real tyres, I simply have not enough documentation. There are pictures from 1967 showing no side markings, markings outside and inside, whitish markings and golden ones... I have not found any proof of the "F" logo, or at least of a highlited one. So it will be kept free of paint. Another weird detail: one side of the front tyres have "Fireston" with a missing e... The main "Firestone" and circle are painted ochre #15 (Andrea Color). They look golden on pictures, but gold paint looks always bogus on a model, except for metal parts. For obvious reasons, the metal particles in the paint are not scaled down, so it looks somewhat off. The ochre paint will have a better finish, especially on pictures. It is hard to paint accurately, so every area where the brush went a bit too wide was cleaned up with a toothpick. Unfortunately, that means that the paint does not adhere to the ruber that well either and will be vulnerable later.

Wheels

The spokes of the rims are in chromed plastic too but I am no fan of that at all, especially because the real spokes are not chromed. I painted them semi-gloss black but left the rest of the rim in all its blingy glory. The overall paint was sprayed, but the sides were touched up by brush. It is highly unlikely that it will be spotted out once assembled. In order to highlight some details, I painted the nut assembly chrome silver, then titanium gold for the washer and titanium silver for the threaded end. Due to the poor covering of those titanium paints, I would advise to paint a metallic undercoat to get a better looking visual impact.
Both parts of the rim were then glued together and finally the brake rotors are attached.

Brake rotors

The brake rotors are painted boltgun metal. On every colour picture I have seen from the cars in 1967, the rim of the disks were fairly rusted (due to heat probably), so that was painted Tin Bitz.

Front wheel hubs, part 1

Like the rear hubs, the front ones are painted semi-gloss black. The brake stirrups are painted chrome silver and enhanced with boltgun metal. I want them to look like they are made of different parts.

Carbon fiber decals

Yes I know: I usually complain about how difficult I find to place the supplied decals, and now I want to put CFRP decals everywhere... No logic here, but only the wish to get one more notch in detailing the kits. CF decals come in plain sheets, mine were bought at Scale Motorsport. They keep decals for the main modelling scales and have different weaving patterns. I chose one which is quite common (1000 series) as I wanted to try it on a few selected parts, but others are available in different patterns and colours (to simulate aramid fibers for example). There are some bits of advice coming with the decals and they prove quite useful.

My first trial is on the endplates of the front wing. The outside face is painted dark green but the inside one shows the base material. I used the Formula Perfect book to find the general orientation of the fibers. Since there is no template, the first thing to do is to create one. In order to do so, I put a piece of masking tape over and around the shape of the part to be covered. I cut it out directly on the part and then place the tape on the decal sheet and then cut out the decal. After the mandatory time in warm water and the usual soaking of the surface of the part with Microscale softener, my first surprise was to see how thick the decal is. With thickness usually comes stiffness and I suddenly was confronted once again with what I hate most about decals. How will that stick to the part, and with how much damage will I end up? The vortex generator of the end plate was indeed a challenge and I wanted to find out what gives better results: a larger excess piece of the decal or a smaller one. How will either wrap around the bulge of the part?

I was a bit disappointed to see that the softener did not seem to have any effect on the decal (thickness at play here again). However, the use of a hair drier (at lower setting) made wonders! Used with a Microscale soaked cotton swab to push the decal around the part, everything took its place with no fuss. A dry swab was useful to remove bubbles and creases, and now the thickness had a positive effect: the decal is strong and does not want to tear easily. It showed me that a smaller surplus of decal was better: the larger one has to fold over itself. I am not really bothered by that since I wanted to put CFRP decal only on visible areas, thus excluding the underside of the endplates. I finished the job with the larger, flatter pieces, which were much easier to put into the right place.

Masking the body (red areas)

The relative ease with which I cruised past the first masking stage of this model backfired in a twisted way once I decided to prepare the parts for the red paint application. I used the same method as for the green areas: a first counter-mask identical to the decals supplied with the kit, to be used as a guide for the actual masks.
First, it took me a whole week to get things right. On the one hand I am dealing here with continuously curved surfaces, there is very little aid to place the decals or masks correctly. I have the feeling that one of my masks used on the Lotus 49 was not centered on the nose cone and I did not want to repeat history. So I tried and tried again until I found something hopefully suitable. The engine cover and the sides of the cockpit were easy to deal with and the main challenge was the nose once again. I could use the Castrol logo found at the tip of the red stripe as a gauge for the width between the masks, but it had to be placed evenly from right to left and exactly perpendicular to the axis of the body. I find it difficult to be sure and the next un-masking operation will tell...
On the other hand, it looks like the decals supplied are a bit larger than they should. I am convinced that the bottom of the green area is too low. If I want to keep a white separating stripe which will look proportionate with the model, the top of the red area will also be too low. That should translate in the Loctite logo being partly on the side pods, where it should not be. Once again, time will tell...
This time I chose to keep the whole front of the model assembled before being painted. Runs of paint will give me hell for it I am sure!

Green areas

The Park Green spray paint is easier to use than the white paint. It covers the model much more and is more opaque. The masking tape was removed without any difficulty but revealed a few surprises. I did not mask the sidepods enough and some spray went onto areas whcih should stay white. I guess I will have to brush some touch up eventually. Same story at the border of the masking tape: there are a few runs of paint but nothing too disappointing. I sanded the edge of the front suspension cover: as layers of paint tend to accumulate, the fitting of the parts is a bit impaired. Anyway, that part will be cemented to the cockpit, so I do not need to care too much about the interior of it.

Formula Perfect Manual

The early 1990s are definitely somehow pre-historical. No internet with Imageshack or Flicker or any image bank, no digital photography, merely magazines and VHS tapes to get visual references. At that time Tamiya was in full swing with their 1/20 F1 models and they published a few books full of close up pictures for some of their kits. I recently got this one, 5th in the series, to help me with my new kits.
Those books are today somewhat hard to find, except at Mac's, on-line shop which I have just discovered and now heartedly recommend for modelling supplies. So here's to you and your great sense of customer care Ian!