Renault RE20 Turbo by DocRob - FINISHED - Tamiya - 1/12

[mtaylor]

7 hours ago, Egilman said:

That's what I'm hoping.... (it's the Trumpy 1/12th scale version)

I did the Revell Monogram version when I was a kid and fell in love with it, it will be a nice fit with the Tyrrell P-34 in the same scale, fell in love with that blue and yellow paint job when I built it as a kid as well...

The original GT-40 was a beautiful car with it's smooth lines.   I think a lot of us in that era built one.  Everyone I knew that did model cars had a model of it.  Much like they a model of the Ala Cart.

[king derelict]

19 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

The original GT-40 was a beautiful car with it's smooth lines.   I think a lot of us in that era built one.  Everyone I knew that did model cars had a model of it.  Much like they a model of the Ala Cart.

The GT40 was very beautiful. A huge favourite of my youth along with the Renault Alpine

Alan

[CDW]

13 hours ago, king derelict said:

The GT40 was very beautiful. A huge favourite of my youth along with the Renault Alpine

Alan

I never recall seeing a Renault Alpine here in the USA. If I did, I didn't realize what I was seeing. I do agree, it is a beautiful car.

[DocRob]

You may think, I was lazy, as I've posted no updates, but no. The nature of the build dictate, that there is a lot of painting and planning ahead involved with this build along with time consuming cleanup. The kit shows it's age, but all is manageable. I sprayed different metal and black shades to the monocoque and front suspension but nothing is assembled now, the pictures are only a mock up.

I decided to use Polished Aluminum from the Extreme Metal range, but it permanently clogged my airbrush, even after in thorough between cleaning. Strange, last week, it sprayed without problems. I opted for Chrome then, which looks bright and shiny and enough like polished aluminum. As a primer, I used Tamiya's gloss black LP color, which is fantastic for the purpose. The designated AK black primer proved horrible in earlier test and never thoroughly dried, with keeping it's tackiness, even after weeks. All other colors were from Tamiya's LP range, namely Sparkling Silver, Metallic Grey, Silver and Semi matte black. All these colors spray exceptionally well, thinned with Leveling Thinner and are very durable.
 

 

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[CDW]

Very sharp!

[yvesvidal]

On 7/21/2023 at 8:20 AM, CDW said:

I never recall seeing a Renault Alpine here in the USA. If I did, I didn't realize what I was seeing. I do agree, it is a beautiful car.

Renault and Alpine have resurrected the famous and original A110: 

 

 

Above is a 2023 model, for $91,000.

 

Yves

[king derelict]

6 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

Renault and Alpine have resurrected the famous and original A110: 

 

 

Above is a 2023 model, for $91,000.

 

Yves

I guess that's going to stay on the unfulfilled teenage dream list them. 

Alan

[DocRob]

After the primer, in my case Alclad white microfiller, which sprayed fantastic and gave a fine satin surface, I applied the firs body color, in this case yellow. The Tamiya LP-8 was thinned with almost two thirds of leveling thinner and sprayed on in fine layers. For yellow is not the easiest color to spray, it went well and with a relatively fine glossy surface. For the first time, I sprayed some pure leveling thinner over the drying yellow color,  which indeed levlled a bit more. I have not a lot of experience, painting car bodies, but I think with a liitle polish and some elbow grease, all will look good as a base for the decals.

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[Egilman]

Being as Yellow is one of the most difficult colors to spray on a model, you did a masterful job.... Surface prep is everything with car bodies, you got it down brother...

[mtaylor]

Nice work.  I'm guessing the painted surface at this point matches the infamous Chevy Orange Peel finish?

[Canute]

Well done spraying the yellow. It and the red shades are the worst to spray.

[DocRob]

On 7/24/2023 at 9:11 PM, Egilman said:

Being as Yellow is one of the most difficult colors to spray on a model, you did a masterful job.... Surface prep is everything with car bodies, you got it down brother...

 

On 7/24/2023 at 10:32 PM, mtaylor said:

Nice work.  I'm guessing the painted surface at this point matches the infamous Chevy Orange Peel finish?

 

On 7/25/2023 at 2:03 AM, Canute said:

Well done spraying the yellow. It and the red shades are the worst to spray.

Thank you Gentlemen. the next steps will show, if the yellow paint will be good enough. It looks, like with polishing compounds, I can get rid of the orange peel effects, without polishing through the coat. The LP yellow sprays well, but somehow build up a bit of orange peel on some surfaces, where I have no explanation for. 
Anyhow, next will be the monocoque assembly, as I need some space on the workbench, before I continue painting.

 

Cheers Rob

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Really nice job on the yellow paint job.  Looks amazing Rob!

[DocRob]

15 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Really nice job on the yellow paint job.  Looks amazing Rob!

Thank you Mike, it looked even better after polishing, but that is a different story, to be read below.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

One step forward, two steps back. I progressed with the addition of the front suspension and cockpit internals to  the monocoque, steps made a bit delicate, because Tamiya decided on a flimsy workable steering and working suspension. The fit was a bit vague in places, but with a bit of wiggling all came together, but without the typical Tamiya snap.
The decals for the dials went on perfectly, the RPM-meter got a self adhesive mirror backing, which was supplied in the kit.
 

The yellow body parts are not mounted as of yet, but only show dimensions, fit and very important with this build, how the parts interact.
 

 
 

 

 

 

Well, two steps back it was, because I was a bit lazy and omitted an old self imposed rule in plastic modelling. Never use power tools, if it can be avoided.
After some hand polishing of the yellow body parts, I remembered, that I own a Proxxon micro drill with a cotton polish bit. To tell a cursing experience short, The bit caught on plastic edges and left marks in my paintjob on two parts .
Repainting is necessary and I decided to airbrush the upper body part in white (Tamiya LP-2) first and then spray all the remaining yellow parts together. Luckily the white lay down very well and shiny.
 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Unfortunately this build is paused for a while, because my trusty old airbrush compressor, which I bought in 1989 passed away yesterday. I hope the new one arrives soon.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

I know, I know, I promised you a pause from my efforts, but today, while cleaning the bench, I thought about my desire to change the engines fuel tubing.
I cut off the plastic connectors and glued on sections of clear brown tubing with an outer diameter of 0,4 mm and 0,6 mm. The first one, I pre-drilled and inserted 0,2 mm micro silver rod, but that proved tedious and simply butt gluing the tubes did the job.

Then I painted all the tube connection points titan silver for contrast and all the screw heads around the engine in silver and sparkling silver.

Last but not least, I found my cylinder head detail work showing not enough contrast, with the pencil onto the anodized blue. I carefully scratched the pencil and blue color away with a blade and voila, now it looks much better. 
Finally, I shortened the yellow ignition wires and bundled them with clamps made by tiny strips of wine cap foil. Now I feel good about the engine.
 

 

 

Only for comparison, how it looked before:
 

 

Cheers Rob

[CDW]

Looks very convincing! Nice work, Rob.

[gsdpic]

4 hours ago, DocRob said:

and bundled them with clamps made by tiny strips of wine cap foil.

I've thrown away quite a few bits of wine cap foil while thinking that it may possibly be useful in modeling....thicker than regular foil but not as thick as aluminum from a soda or beer can.  Maybe next time I'll actually save it.

 

And the changes you made are a definite improvement.

 

[yvesvidal]

The new tubing makes an incredible difference. Well done.

 

Yves

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, CDW said:

Looks very convincing! Nice work, Rob.

 

10 hours ago, gsdpic said:

I've thrown away quite a few bits of wine cap foil while thinking that it may possibly be useful in modeling....thicker than regular foil but not as thick as aluminum from a soda or beer can.  Maybe next time I'll actually save it.

 

And the changes you made are a definite improvement.

 

3 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

The new tubing makes an incredible difference. Well done.

Thank you gentlemen, after getting rid of the idea, applying 0,2 mm rods as tube connectors  and gluing the tubes directly onto the plastic, it took me only about two hours, to finalize the refinement. Means, I should always request my shortcuts, specially when a better solution is simple to achieve.

Wine cap foil is a great material for modelling. I used it not only for clamps, but for flags and towels as well, not to mention tie down straps. Like you mentioned Gary, it has the right rigidity for many purposes and you can fold it to taste without a spring.

The other benefit, you have to open a bottle of wine, to get some and if you are clumsy and waste the cap, a second one 

Cheers Rob

[Javlin]

Now were Talking looks mucha better!!

[Landlubber Mike]

This engine detailing looks amazing Rob.  I'm usually not as much a fan of open engine car models as the kit engines generally look soft or not very detailed to me.  This one, especially with your upgrades, looks amazing.  Great job!

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, Javlin said:

Now were Talking looks mucha better!!

 

16 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

This engine detailing looks amazing Rob.  I'm usually not as much a fan of open engine car models as the kit engines generally look soft or not very detailed to me.  This one, especially with your upgrades, looks amazing.  Great job!

Thank you Kevin and Mike, the engine is a little kit in itself with the Renault. The detail and fit is not exactly up to Tamiya's standards as of today, but it's a solid base. Yesterday, I prepared the exhaust, and this is a completely different story. The nicely matte chromed plastic has terrible parting lines and defects and the fit isn't perfect as well. I needed to scratch away lots of the plating and later repaint everything. There are times, where you feel, you're working on a dinosaur kit.

 

Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Good looking update to your engine, Rob.

[DocRob]

My new compressor arrived after a long week of making up the engine and cleaning parts. A task, not to underestimate wit this kit. Every part has to be inspected, sanded, scratched with a blade, the age of the mold forms is obviously. I will show you a total un-Tamiya look with lots of scratched off material only from the turbo system and gear housing .
 

 

Finally I had to test my new Sparmax compressor and what better to try is spraying yellow onto the body parts. I really like the result, where only minimal polishing will be needed before I apply the decals. I sprayed the heavy thinned Tamiya LP8 with low pressure at about 13 psi or 0,9 bar.
 

 

Next test was spraying lots of the innards with different metallic colors, AK's Extreme Metal Aluminum and from the Tamiya LP range titan gold, titan silver, gun metal, pearl silver and finally semi matte black for the air intakes on the upper body.
 

Cheers Rob

[Canute]

That yellow covered nicely.

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, Canute said:

That yellow covered nicely.

 

Thanks Ken, it went on surprisingly well, with very light coats first, building up opacity and a final slightly flooding layer to achieve a super smooth surface.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Phew, decals are on and I, as an old decal coward have to say, these Cartograph decals are the real deal. They are very opaque and fit like a glove, if you made a precise masking job between yellow and white. Even the superfine pinstripes fittet, bordering the yellow. For the first time, I used Tamiya Decal adhesive and so far, I have no complaints. The standard one was used on flat surfaces and the additional softener type was used on contours. There is one tiny fold on the curved front black stripe, but I hope with some stronger softener this will vanish.
 

Before decaling, I wet sanded all the body parts with 6000 and 8000 grit and the surfaces were absolutely smooth and the color borders got rid of the tiny edge from masking. The rear wing was resprayed, because I polished through the edges on a tiny spot. I painted all the rivets on the body with a precision brush for a little bit more detail.
 

 

Cheers Rob

[CDW]

16 minutes ago, DocRob said:

Phew, decals are on and I, as an old decal coward have to say, these Cartograph decals are the real deal. They are very opaque and fit like a glove, if you made a precise masking job between yellow and white. Even the superfine pinstripes fittet, bordering the yellow. For the first time, I used Tamiya Decal adhesive and so far, I have no complaints. The standard one was used on flat surfaces and the additional softener type was used on contours. There is one tiny fold on the curved front black stripe, but I hope with some stronger softener this will vanish.
 

Before decaling, I wet sanded all the body parts with 6000 and 8000 grit and the surfaces were absolutely smooth and the color borders got rid of the tiny edge from masking. The rear wing was resprayed, because I polished through the edges on a tiny spot. I painted all the rivets on the body with a precision brush for a little bit more detail.
 

 

Cheers Rob

That looks super nice!