Y……er ……S2K
Quickly becoming one of the most sought after platforms of the 21st century, The Honda S2000 was Honda's attempt at making a light, driver focused roadster for the daily consumer. A light chassis and reliable 4 banger turning the rear wheels, it was a recipe for success.
If you’re more of a watcher than a reader, check out my In-Box review of the Hobby Design, or keep moving along to read my review.
Whats In The Box!
Well what do you get? Opening the sturdy cardboard container you will find the many plastic parts bags, nose section, and instructions all tucked together. In total there are 8 parts bags containing resin pieces, 1 bag with P.E. and decals, 2 instruction sheets, and of course the one piece nose section.
The nose section is the most eye-popping piece in this entire kit, as well as being the most frightening when you realize you have to take you well engineered Tamiya S2K……and chop it in half!
The nose piece (front section,or nose cone, or whatever you want to call it) is the front bumper, hood, and front fenders all moulded as one piece. This is due in part to the Tamiya S2K being a “ show room” type model, wherein the engine bay an engine are not modelled and features a fixed hood. There are those crazy and talented enough to model the engine and bay but this is not one of those builds. I’m keeping this one purely OOB.
While there are large and potentially sturdy mounting points to the base tamiya body, there’s alot of material you’ll need to hog through to get there. Mainly the large T shaped mould line down the middle and where the firewall would traditionally be . Additionally, the two blocks inboard of the head light buckets as well as the two large block strips outboard of the hood vents all need to be removed for the chassis to fit snugly. Thankfully these are all on the underside so you won’t have to be too careful with the rotary tool.
This resin transkit features the option of giving your S2K a hardtop option if top-down is not your style. Included is the vacuu-formed clear insert. make sure you give yourself some buffer room when cutting this clear part so you only take as much material off as needed. The mould blocks on the inner edge of the windows should not be hard to tackle but take extreme care sanding down the pour block on the underside where the hardtop would meet the upper window frame.
Another large portion of the kit that you need to modify is the removal of the stock bumper and replacing it with the HD option. Removal of the mould block on the left side that you see is necessary to fit properly.
However, be sure NOT to remove the block on the inside of the bumper. This block helps in properly aligning the chassis with the body. Properly aligned installation of the bumper during construction will prevent there being body twist later in the build so make sure when gluing the bumper in you use the chassis to line it up straight.
The side-skirts are on the list of surgery needed for this kit. Again care must be taken here to make the cuts as clean as possible and remove only as much material as is needed. The long tab on the bottom of the door sill and the smaller tab forward where the nose section meets the side skirt are not to be removed and help align the resin parts with the body. The larger pour blocks on the inside of the skirts at the rear need removal however.
The final piece of this resin jigsaw puzzle which requires, yet again, more removal of plastic is the separately moulded taillight buckets. It’s difficult to show here but there is some fine removal of material needed here which I will show in the next post when we start construction so keep an eye out for that if you want them to ft properly. The headlight buckets are also moulded separately and feature a different design from stock in addition to the tail lights.
Do note that should you want the headlights to be a different color than the main body color, these should be left off until final assembly. Both head and tail buckets come with clear parts and thankfully the instructions are very clear on which lens type goes where. Common sense should dictate which way the pour block is orientated IRL in reference to the instructions.
Rounding off the main body components are the front lip, rear quarter panel flares and the vent blades. You can choose to install the front splitter during construction and have it match the body color or keep it off and paint it a separate color later or use carbon fiber decals later. My suggestion would be to keep the mould block seen on the inner right side of the piece as a place to grab/ clamp the part to facilitate ease of painting.
The same goes for the vent blades. Choose to attach them and paint the body color, or leave them off and colorize them differently. The rear quarter flares have a mould block on the base of the flare at the rear as well as on the inside of the flare. The two “tabs” on the inside rear and at the bottom on the front of the piece are alignment tabs which help the flare attach to the bumper and side skirt respectively.
Now what is a good outfit without the right set of footwear to go with it? Hobby Design really go the extra mile in this regard. With this kit you receive not 1 but 2 sets of rims to chooses from,a set of what I think are Enkei’s and the other being Te37’s. Stagger the look and use one set on the rear and one on the from or choose one style while keeping another set for a separate build. The choice is yours.
You only get one set of Advan Neova tires though so you will need another set for 2nd set of rims. There are some pretty hefty injection blocks to lob off but thankfully they are on the side of the tire that will be facing in and hidden. Turned metal valve stems are included for both rim sets.
Brakes are moulded all as separate units. The actual rotor disks are P.E. with the calipers and hub moulded in resin. Make sure you check your box as I unfortunately only receive 1 front and 1 rear caliper. There should be two of each. Make sure you contact Hobby Design’s customer service should your kit have any parts absent. I will be forgoing the hassle of customs and shipping times and simply making my own from styrene sheet
The final bits of resin in the kit are small pieces best kept in the plastic bags so you don’t…. misplace them or have them be an untimely casualty of the dreaded Carpet Monster. These include the very very large rear spoiler, small framed rear-view mirrors, and dual exhaust mufflers
Photo- etch detail is bountiful and spoiled for taste. The first fret in the slide has your metal petals, seat belt buckles and various Honda / S2000 badges to adorn the exterior.
The second fret contains all of the required metal hardware to mount the rear wing.
Third fret has all of the slotted rotor faces both front and rear. Stock mirrors and the rest of the mounting hardware for the rear wing.
The final fret has various small accent pieces. In no particular orientation they are:
Radiator faces
Grille and mesh for the body kit
Window wipers
mirror plates for the resin pieces
Both proud and recessed JS Racing brake caliper logos.
Lastly a very nice assortment of decals are provided with sponsor logos and manufacturer’s logos. I would recommend pairing these with the P.E. badges to give the impression of them being 3D. However the choice solely lies in your own personal choice and what you as the builder, and what you envision he final result to be.
I hope you enjoyed this thorough In-Box look at the contents of the Hobby Design HD03-0362 JS S2000 Detail Up Sets for your Tamiya 1/24 Honda S2000. Be sure to subscribe via email to be notified when new posts are published. I will begin construction o this kit shortly so stay tuned!