Armour modeller builds an F1 car
Basic engine and gearbox parts in a fairly awful metallic grey that makes it hard to see whether you’ve cleaned up the mould lines yet.
Engine painted aluminium with wash and drybrush to shade sand highlight it. The cylinder heads are black with anthracite drybrushing to bring out the details (it looks far starker here than it is IRL, which is to blame on the camera app in my iPad). Tamiya supplies etched parts for the ends that seem superfluous, but I fitted them anyway.
Bits removed from the front wing, per the instructions. On the left (but the right side of the car body) you can see the marks from the diamond file I used, on the other side is where I smoothed those out with the glass file shown.
One of the four front axles, parts 25, wasn’t moulded properly 🙁 I think this is the very first time I've ever seen this on a Tamiya kit.
The rear disc brakes and the front wheel mounts, one with a scratchbuilt axle: 2 mm plastic rod, 8.5 mm long, with a 1 mm hex bolt punched from 0.5 mm plastic card on the inboard end.
Rear brakes and front wheel mounts painted and with the etched brake discs glued on. Again, the highlights here are much starker than in the flesh because of the camera app’s behind-the-scenes processing.
Engine, gearbox, and rear struts bit held together in a glue clamp so I could fit the exhaust pipes. Only three here, because the fourth kept pushing everything off the engine; I installed it after the glue dried, and even then it was a bit of a struggle.
Parts for the body. Notice the location for an AA battery.
Body put together without glue (except for the upper cowling, which is moulded in left and right halves).
Big rear wing, with odd etched inserts for the slots. They sit slightly proud of the wing, and I’m not sure if that’s correct — if not, it would have been much easier to just fill the slots with putty.
Front suspension units. These show well why I’m not enjoying building this kit all that much: you have to keep going back and forth between building and painting, which is very unnatural if you’re used to building AFVs …
Engine, gearbox/rear suspension, and some other bits together.
The comments about this not being the world’s greatest kit proved true here as well: the bar under the horizontal chrome bar looks like it should sit slightly further forward on its mounting pins, but can’t because it hits the backs of the air intakes for the brakes …
Etched bits added to the front of the car. It still needs a bunch of little stays for the front “lip”.
Completed engine (other than the mesh screen over the air intakes) seen from the right rear.
Side plates of the rear wing, and their supporting structure. The support was a little tricky to build, the side plates themselves were OK. I contemplated soldering the support, but decided my skills aren’t up to that, so I glued it all instead.
Left front view of the completed engine.
Underside of the engine.
The engine is supposed to attach to the chassis by a screw. I lost that soon after opening the bag it was in, and couldn’t find it again. Another screw of about the same size (by the looks of it, older than the original issue of this kit) solved the problem. It didn’t want to go in all the way because the head is slightly larger than the kit’s screw, so I cut away a bit of the upper body to fit over it.
The body and legs of the driver figure supplied in the kit. No feet are included at all.
You get nicely printed seatbelts and etched buckles in the kit, but are told not to use them if you fit the driver. So I carved off the moulded-on seatbelts to let me stick the printed ones onto the driver after painting him.
Front roll bars and steering wheel shaft fitted.
Driver’s body and arms in place; the steering wheel is still loose. The arms are slightly too long to fit right, so I had to carve off a bit of the shoulder ends to allow the hands to go more or less on the steering wheel.
Parts for the body and rear wing primed with grey car primer from an aerosol can. Now to find a good blue to put over this …
All of the parts primed in grey have now had a coat of medium blue paint from a cheap aerosol. I’m pretty happy with the way the seam on the upper cowling (lengthwise down the middle) came out, as well as the other bits I smoothed with the glass file visible in one of the early pictures of this build.
After painting most of the non-blue bits on the body, I started applying the decals. Not all at once, because I don’t think you can without disturbing ones that are still drying.
And that’s all of the decals on. This is finally looking like it’s beginning to approach the finish line 🙂
Turns out I put the hoses to the radiator wrong after all, so I pulled them off and re-fitted them so they come out as shown here, rather than at the bottom of the engine.
Body superglued to the chassis.
Radiator pipework, with kinks that I can’t get out 🙁 Tamiya’s recommended length for the top pipes was far too long, so I had to cut them down else they had even worse kinks in them. For the bottom ones, I ignored the instructions’ length and just cut them to fit.
Then the inspector dropped by to check on how I was doing with this kit.
And then with the slogans painted white — not an easy job, and I don’t think I did it particularly well, but it’s passable, IMHO. I also added some clear red over the hubs to deepen the colour, as I think they were too pale before.
The wheels and tyres. I had put the tyres into the fridge for a day and a half, but still couldn’t get the seams off very well. The wheels are mostly unpainted, as the plastic already has the right colour.
Almost there … Just some bits to add.
Driver with his face and overalls painted in their basic colours. The blue is Lifecolor UA512 RLM78 Hellblau.
Not happy with how this came out. I drybrushed the overalls with white and then added a medium blue wash, for highlights and shadows, but it looks more like stonewashed jeans 🙁 Going to repaint him and try again.
The car itself is now basically complete, just the dashboard, steering wheel, driver, and upper cowling remain to be added, probably in that order.
Commenti
16 7 June, 15:08
bossy122Yeah, this probably isn't the kit you want to start your F1 collection with, it's really bad. I don't know if you've gotten to the gearbox or worse still; the exhausts, but none of it lines up properly. Those early Tamiya kits were BAD compared to the later kits. From about the BT 46 going on is when the quality improved. M23, JS11, Lotus 78, 312T, Wolf and this P34 were all more glorified toys than models.
9 June, 16:48
Jakko TBH, the only reason I bought it is because I've always liked the oddball appearance of the P.34. Luckily, I'm not planning on starting an F1 model collection at all, so not a problem there at least 🙂 I very quickly noticed the kit is showing its age, and it seems to have also been available in a motorised version (see the battery compartment in the floor plate) so I guess that also contributes to it being less than stellar …
As for the gearbox, I did get to that already, but it's still loose from the engine — that's why I need the glue clamp to hold things in position to fit the exhausts. Those are easily the worst part of the kit I've encountered so far. Fiddly to clean up because of the bends and the stupid metallic-coloured plastic, they're hard to fit even with the rear exhaust pipes temporarily in place, and the fourth pipe pushes everything out of line even when the glue has dried on the other three …
9 June, 17:30
Jakko If I had known that a year and a half ago (and seen it at the model show I bought this kit at on a whim 🙂 ) I would have gone for that one … as it is, this one is going to get finished! 🙂
9 June, 20:11
bossy122Ooh. Just realizing this is the Japanese GP. That PE rear wing support wasn't fun for me but maybe your armour building skills will help with that. I got one picture of my completed project, went to move it and the whole thing crumnled on me. I had to go back and change to the #4 Depallier car. Be sure to watch the markings in the instructions as I believe each car had different Japanese text on it.
9 June, 21:34
Jakko There's a sizeable sheet of etched parts, but they're all pretty large compared to what you get in typical aftermarket AFV sets, so it didn't phase me, no 🙂 I've put together the vertical sides by now, which was slightly tricky but not too bad. The exhaust pipes were worse, but I haven't got to the "cage" that holds up the rear wing yet, that might change my mind 😉 Still, being a Serious Armour Modeller™, I own a folding tool, which will probably make it easier to put those parts together.
The Japanese text in the markings is transliterations of the various names from Latin letters to their corresponding katakana, so yes, I do need to be careful to put the right ones on 🙂
10 June, 09:01
Jakko Thanks 🙂 Still, the further I get with this kit, the more I agree with @bossy122 that this was probably not the best kit to pick for my first F1 car in 35+ years, and the second ever in my life (I built the Surtees TS 16/03 (Matchbox PK-305, 1:32) when I was young, that's it 🙂)
16 June, 20:26
bossy122Don't feel bad, i've been building F1s for 20 some odd years - including 2 Tamiya P34s - and had my ass handed to me TWICE last year trying to complete ONE P34.
When I saw your completed rear wing PE thing, I recalled that a big problem I had was getting that contraption mounted to the gearbox/rear end/ what have you.
16 June, 23:32
Jakko Oh, I don't feel bad about it — though I kind of wish this one was done already so I can start on that Sherman BARV I've been wanting to build 😉
As for the rear wing, I test-fitted it when the glue on it was dry and it seemed to go on easily enough. However, I'm hazy at the moment on how it's supposed to STAY on …
17 June, 08:38
bossy122Yeah, that was the problem. Like I mentioned before; I went to move mine and it all crumbled.
17 June, 16:40
Jakko I guess I'll take that hurdle when I get to it 😉 For now I'm making good progress, having just painted the body etc. blue so the end is starting to get into view …
17 June, 17:37
Album info
Tamiya's 1:20 Tyrrell P.34 being built by someone used to armour and aircraft … how hard can it be? 😉
