A Platform For Success
If you missed the first post on our collaboration with Hobby Design and their LB Works F-430 resin kit, you can watch the video of the first episode of the build.
The Basis
After leaving off on the body, I primed it with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer to adhere to both the plastic and the resin. After surface defects had been removed, Splash Paints SP-283 Verde Belnhein was sprayed over the entire surface, 4 coats with 10 minutes between each coat for the paint to flash off. The entire model was given about an hour for the paint to completely flash off and cure before a seal coat was added prior to decal application. Just to be sure I didn’t get any paint bleed.
But the focus on this post is more to do with the chassis and what goes under the body, so I’ll hop into that.
Work began with the rear diffuser. It is a theme across alot of Hobby Design’s kits that their instructions aren’t like traditional instructions where they tell you how to put a part in and where to cut. A lot of the time, it really boils down to an educated guess-timation on how to cut a certain part of the body. Hopefully with these more instructional posts I can show you where to make the correct modifications . I also hope in the future that I can work with Hobby Design to improve their products as well as their instructions to better serve their customers.
The resin diffuser comes with so great alignment tabs to best seat itself on the chassis. How i determined where to cut the chassis plate by eye, placing the resin diffuser upside down on the bottom of the kit chassis.
As you can see, there is a step that lined up ( as close as I could tell) to the end of the resin diffuser. This is the point I used as a reference to make my cut.
A long hobby - styled saw works well here to make sure your cut is straight. Using a knife blade or shorter saw blade might be more difficult and would require some patience and steady hands. Plus these larger saws only end up costing 10 bucks or so even for the Excel versions.
The aftermath of the cut. A nice straight separation to evenly align both edges.
And therein lies my mistake. Thankfully the gap is only .020 of an inc thick and I have some sheet stock in exactly that thickness, but I would cut this at least .030 inches back from that step I pointed out earlier and then sand it back with some acrylic blocked pads.
Easy fix for the gap is to add some plastic steps to better seat the shim piece and cut a thin strip to cap it.
This is it for now, I’ll start the next post showing the end result using the Hobby Design provided photo-etch on the brakes, the interior, and engine bay. Well see you back then.