25th Anniv. "Benetton Ford B194"
Post-build review

Finally finished this and while I am happy with the final result, the kit has a number of design and quality issues, particularly with decals, I’ll try and go through as many of them as I can so you can know what to expect! It initially looked much easier than the skill level of 4 on the box, but it definitely was tricky and probably the hardest model I’ve built to date.

The parts are generally well produced but mine was completely missing part B24 - it wasn’t broken off, but was clearly a problem with the injection moulding; not enough plastic was injected so there was just a tiny nub of plastic on the sprue but no part. To Revell’s credit a replacement was quickly arranged once I found a UK telephone number and arrived in the post a few weeks later.

Instructions are a high quality colour booklet, but there are a few mistakes - for step 15 (rear wing) ignore the paint scheme in the instructions and go by the cover photo. Likewise the colouring in step 20 is wrong, the white is not needed. I found it necessary to do things in a different order than instructed, particularly with the monocoque (as detailed below). As for the decal guide page, this seems to be using a totally different model as a picture so don’t try and place everything where this shows it to be!

Engine:
Only problem with the engine assembly is the airbox cover on the top, this had really bad sink marks in the top surface which should be flat for the decal so required a lot of filling and sanding. Otherwise went together without issue.

Monocoque/tub:
This section required some heavy modification and deviation from instructions to get a good result. The instructions require you to fit the suspension and cockpit prior to gluing the top and bottom halves of the tub together, but that makes it impossible to paint/decal it properly, so I ended up fitting the upper and lower arms and then cutting them off so they can simply be poked in the holes in the tub after painting. This helped massively! I also removed a lot of plastic from the bottom rear of the tub where it attaches to the undertray so that the cockpit could be inserted from the back after painting. The 2 halves of the tub don’t fit brilliantly so a lot more filling and sanding required to eliminate the big prominent join lines.

Front suspension:
Fitted this after painting and finishing the bodywork, all OK except for the steering arm which was far too short, so the wheels were toeing in at a ridiculous angle. Ended up having to cut it in the middle and glue the front uprights in place so no steering.

Wheels/tyres:
The tyre decals provided are just normal waterslide decals so to get them to adhere properly I had to sand the tyres to remove most of the mould lines, gloss varnish them, then apply the decals, then gloss varnish again and finish off with a semi-gloss varnish. Took a while but they came out looking great. The hub decals are tricky but they do just about fit.

Cockpit and Front wing:
These are probably the only sub-assemblies that I had no issues with whatsoever, everything fitted fine and the decals went on no issue!

PAINTING AND DECALS:
OK this is the big one. It took a LOT of studying and planning to work out how to paint this thing, and what order to do all the overlapping decals, as the instructions are not exactly helpful. In the end it seems you only need to paint the bodywork in 2 colours - light blue (Tamiya X14 + a little X2) and green (Tamiya X28 is perfect). The joins don’t have to be exact as they are all hidden under decals which is a good design. HOWEVER…. The decals are, in a word, a nightmare. The printing is good quality, nice and crisp and bright, but it’s like they never built the model to test them. A lot of them just don’t fit and feel like they were built for a different scale. The main stripe on the front part of the bodywork just doesn’t line up properly, the ones around the camera/fuel inlet have the cutouts in the wrong place, there simply isn’t enough room for all the nosecone logos, and the white logo for the top of the airbox is just the wrong shape, it’s so hard to make it conform to the curved surface even with lots of Microset/Microsol (these products are essential for this kit!). The decals are quite thick and do not like conforming to sharp curves, and one on the rear wing needs to bend over to cover both sides of the element, which is very difficult. I ended up tearing a number of decals and was lucky to save them.

My advice is to photocopy the decals onto thin paper, cut out the bodywork decals and do a lot of “dry-fitting” of them, to understand how they fit and in which order to apply them. My tactic was to start with the mid-blue strip on the engine cover and headrest area, then the dark blue strip going along the cockpit edge, then the white/blue sections in front of the sidepods and go from there.

Conclusion:
I assume the only reason Revell didn’t make this a 5 skill rating is because the part-count is fairly low, but it for sure is difficult to make it look good. I chose this model to get back into the hobby after being out of it for around 20 years, and it required me to learn a LOT of new skills that I’d never needed to use before, I now feel like a very experienced modeller after just this one kit!