Stop, Drop, and Roll
To have a look back on what we did in the last post, check out the video below
With the chassis work finished, I could move to the underpinnings of the body that mount straight to the chassis.
The actual hubs, rotors, and calipers comes as one resin piece but make sure you get the left and right correctly as they have a build-in camber. Getting these wrong can leave you with some odd and nasty positive camber for your stance.
I glued the provided photo-etch ( PE) Ferrari logos onto the main calipers prior to priming and paint, This make sure they attach to a solid surface and not just paint. They were then sprayed in chrome yellow, which is a darker and richer yellow in my opinion. Once the paint had dried, I took a thin, fine type sanding stick and sanded the upper surface of the PE which helps with the authentic look as well as prevents me from having to try to hand-paint these later. The main hubs got painted Tamiya Titanium gold for some variance.
I was able to achieve the scuffed, worn look on the PE rotors simply by taking a coarse sanding pad and dragging it in the direction of travel. I was not able to get some perfect wear due to the rotors not being fully replicated.
The wheels were simple. The centers primed in TFSP, gloss blacked, and sprayed as a highly thinned mixture through my SOTAR 20/20 which atomizes the paint very well giving it a chrome look. Glued into the turned aluminum hubs was a piece of cake. The only issue I encountered was the tires onto the rim itself. No matter which orientation I tried, it always seemed like the rims were wearing the tires like an over-sized pair of sweat pants.
The inner edges of the tires never really sat flush with the O.D. of the rim which always left a gap somewhere along the bead line which was frustrating. I ended up mixing some clear 2-part epoxy to hold the dissimilar materials and fill in the gap as much as possible. The other part I could not figure out is where the small turned-metal valve stems went on the rim. My final guess is that they actually fit onto the rim itself. Unfortunately I do not have a vice/ drill press combo, nor metal drill bits that would allow me to properly make the holes to mount them correctly.
Oh well, some spare parts for a future build I guess!
The interior is quite simple and goes together very well on this Fujimi kit. Broken down into 3 main parts; the interior tub, door cards, and dashboard. Other parts like the seats, steering wheel and other small ancillaries are added in later steps but do not constitute the majority of the work.
Everything was painted separately at first and then glue together afterwards. Normally, the F-430 has a black dashboard, black carpeting, and some form of leather that adorns the rest of the interior. Since this build is more of a nod to the classic Ferrari of the '50's and 60's, I felt that a subtle two-tone theme would best work across the entire interior. The lighter tan is actually Testors Radome Tan, with the darker color being Tamiya's Deck Tan. Great complimentary colors I think with some pieces being picked out with black and Testors Chrome Silver.
The PE from HD for the kit is fairly straight forward and does not require any modification to the kit parts at all. The pedals and driver foot rest are all separate pieces. The passenger’s food well plate adds some variance to that side of the interior.
You might not be able to tell but the pieces in the foot well painted in the darker Deck Tan are actually PE pieces from HD that help kick the detail notch up a few marks. Other PE of note.
The speaker grilles which, in my opinion, don’t really add that much over the moulded in ones are optional. I only added them in for the sake of it. I would suggest leaving them on the PE fret and putting them to use on another build where they would be better put to use. And then the small PE piece froward and left of the e-brake. Again, not much better look over the kit piece and better to save it for something else.
Last but not least are the small cargo nets behind each seat. They really help add some depth to the interior once the seats are in and you could even go a step further by putting some scale magazines in them just for kicks.
The dash gets a few PE pieces added to it. A small F430 badge above the three center A/C outlets in the center. Some paddle shifters that are thinner and more in-scale finish off the dash. Barely visible are the etched + and - signs, right and left respectively, that indicate which paddle changes gear up or down. Not entirely visible but a great touch.
Here yo can see the final installation of the seats and the the seatbelts. Hobby Design offers a standard and five-point option as does Fujimi straight out of the box. I chase that standard option with the black material.
Finally The engine, while not the fully detailed block offered by Revel, there really isn’t much to see when the body and glass goes on top because the cover doesn’t articulate up. The same procedure was followed here as on the brake calipers. Glue in PE ( this being the two Ferrari logos on the intake manifold and the prancing horse badge between the two), prime, paint, then sand lightly to reveal the metal PE. A small blade was used for the badge as I did not have a sanding stick thin enough to reach it. The oil fill and coolant fill caps seen between the throttle bodies got the same treatment.
We reach the end of another portion of the build. At this point, everything can finally come together. The only things left to do are decaling the body, applying the clear, adding small details and the glass, then mating the completed chassis/ interior and well be set for reveal, photos and final thoughts. I’ll see you then.