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

[gsdpic]

Looks great!  And yes, for me also, "phew" is the proper reaction to getting decals applied nicely.

 

Have you, or do you intend to, put additional clear coat over the decals?

 

[DocRob]

22 hours ago, CDW said:

That looks super nice!

Thank you Craig, there is one tiny fold remaining after a day of drying, with the application of a strong solvent. In all, it loos nice, given, that decaling is one of my most dreaded tasks in modeling.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, gsdpic said:

Looks great!  And yes, for me also, "phew" is the proper reaction to getting decals applied nicely.

 

Have you, or do you intend to, put additional clear coat over the decals?

Thank you Gary, the clear coat will remain another phew opportunity hopefully. I plan to apply a layer of MR. Hobby GX-100 as a protective and unifying coat and to give the paint and decals some depth. GX-100, is used by many fellow modelers to great satisfaction, but I had mixed results, or being moe precise, fantastic ore terrible results, so i long for a 'phew'.

 

Cheers Rob 

[DocRob]

I finished the body parts, with a generous coat of clear coat. To be precise, one fast drying very thin coat, to protect the decals from the thinner and then a heavier coat of GX-100 for the deep shine. The clear coat sprayed very well and I figure, my bad results with GX-100 resulted in mixing the stuff with thinner in a plastic jar, which may got spoilt by the thinner. Reminder to myself, always use a glas jar for adding the leveling thinner.

After a proper curing time, I used the three differently grained Tamiya polishing pastes and finally the Tamiya polishing wax and got a near perfect surface. Near perfect, because I had some dust issues during spraying, something I never had before, given the normally high humidity here. There is nothing, I can do about it, but I will look a bit deeper into the subject, to see, if the new compressor might be involved into the issue. There is always a hair in the soup, literally .
 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[Javlin]

That looks real Rob just like replacing the f/lines added authenticity.

 

[DocRob]

Thank you Kevin, besides the dust issues, it's being fun seeing the paintjob develop from primer to finish. I don't have great expertise when it comes to high shine paintjobs and therefore, I learned a lot.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today it's about 40° Celsius with a humidity of 10 percent, yesterday it was 22° Celsius with 95 percent humidity, what better to do than spent some time in the relatively cool cave, instead of getting a heart attack.

My worktop is absolutely cramped with half build sub assemblies, pre-painted parts, so I need to get a bit of order into the mess and assemble some of these.

I started with the seat belts. The kit supplied ones look good, but I had a set of Hiro belts and decided to use them. Some of the buckles are cast white metal, the rest is made from PE. Assembly is a lot easier than 1/32 seat belts from HGW, but I had difficulties to find a CA glue adhering to the ribbon. Later, I realized, that the ribbon parts should have been glued with the supplied two sided adhesive tape. Would have been great, if that would have been mentioned in the manual. The seat looks super cool now and again I have to say, I really love the semi matte black from the Tamiya LP range.
 

 
 

Next were the front suspensions with many snap fit parts. naturally one of the arms broke, but it could be repaired easily. The steering does not work like suggested in the manual, but I think it's impossible to get it working at all. The Tamiya approach with working steering and suspension is until now the area of the build, causing the most problems.
 

 

On to some detail work. I butchered an old laptop, which was waiting to get binned to get fine electric cables and added some to the instruments and racing computer.
 

Cheers Rob

[CDW]

The seatbelts look like the real thing. The entire model is looking very realistic in this scale with the work you are doing. I like it a lot.

Ive been thinking there must be a better way to model the Tamiya snap on tie rod ends. These parts from Tamiya disappoint me.

[DocRob]

Thank you Craig, I would prefer to have a fixed and glued in place suspension. I doubt, that the Tamiya construction has the correct setting in the end and the steering, well, I wrote about it. 
The extra work is very time consuming for exampl, I added 'blue anodized' resin connectors for the cooling circuit. Where I failed, was to attach silver  braided line to these connectors. None of my CA-glues would bond. If anybody has an idea, how to achieve this I would be thankful.
I may try to insert a 0,5mm brass rod and hope the braided line bonds with this.

 

Cheers Rob

[Egilman]

3 hours ago, DocRob said:

None of my CA-glues would bond. If anybody has an idea, how to achieve this I would be thankful.

Gators Grip, only glue I would use for such....

[Canute]

Similar product to EGs is Canopy Cemrnt. The RC aircraft folks developed it to hold their canopies on. I've used it to bond brass parts to plastic. Holds up to variations in temperature  for the dissimilar materials.

[DocRob]

12 hours ago, Egilman said:

Gators Grip, only glue I would use for such....

 

11 hours ago, Canute said:

Similar product to EGs is Canopy Cemrnt. The RC aircraft folks developed it to hold their canopies on. I've used it to bond brass parts to plastic. Holds up to variations in temperature  for the dissimilar materials.

Thank you Egilman and Ken, a fast search showed what I have feared, There are no quickly accessible sources for either or, it seems. I will look a bit deeper into the glue subject. It needs to be a relatively thick glue, so that the braided line not get soaked.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

As mentioned before, it was time to get some sub assemblies off the bench and I installed the air coolers and turbo chargers. You have to have an affection for clean up, if you build such an old kit of a turbo charged car. Lots of tubes and connecting parts with ill fit and lots of flash and burr.
For the air coolers, I added some resin connectors which were drilled out and inserted brass rods, but they are buried under the air ducts, out of sight.
I glued the turbo charger units to the air intakes and engine and fitted everything into the chassis for a test. With a bit of tension, everything snapped into place without braking luckily. 
The chassis gets more and more cramped, to maintain the real car couldn't have been an easy job.
 

Cheers Rob
 

 

[DocRob]

The engine is now permanently attached to the fire wall and then I started adding some silver braided lines instead of the large diameter black tubes, supplied by Tamiya, which looked downright horrible. To attach the braided lines, I inserted 0,2 mm nickel silver rod into the ends and secured these with a tiny drop of CA. Then these rods were inserted into pre drilled holes.
I also started to make some order to most of the fuel lines and added the oil tank (?) to the firewall, which was before fitted with pre painted and pre drilled resin connectors, instead of the simple lug, Tamiya provided.

 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[mtaylor]

10 hours ago, DocRob said:

The chassis gets more and more cramped, to maintain the real car couldn't have been an easy job.
 

Cheers Rob
 

That is very true.  Other than pit work, anything else involved taking one in the garage area and tearing it apart.   When the change to rear engine happened the concept of pit maintenance/repair in the middle a race completely disappeared.

[Egilman]

9 hours ago, mtaylor said:

 When the change to rear engine happened the concept of pit maintenance/repair in the middle a race completely disappeared

Actually Mark, it happened long before '63, more along the line of the late '20's... Looking at the history that is when you begin to see cars retired from the race for simple stuff like belts breaking & water leaks etc.etc.... Before that they would fix it and send the car back out for lap money, the amount of money you get for running the race increased the more laps you could complete... (we must remember that the Indy 500 is an endurance race not a speed sprint after all)

 

The first rear engine car was run at Indy in '63, Colin Chapman of Lotus brought three Lotus 29's powered by Ford V8's across the pond to run at Indy... His #1 Driver was Dan Gurney, #2 was a Scotsman, Jim Clark... Dan qualified the #1 car for the race in the 12th position... He also tried to qualify the #2 car, but mechanical issues stopped that... Jim Clark qualified the #3 car in 5th position... They knew that they had to show well to get another shot...

 

Dan finished the race in 7th position, Jim finished the race in second position behind Parnelli Jones who was driving one of the standard Watson/Offenhauser's that had dominated Indy for the last decade... Jim put up a very spirited challenge to Parnelli Jones and actually lead the race for 29 laps swapping back and forth over the last quarter of the race...

 

It was a great showing for a rookie team, Lotus, and a rookie driver in his first 500......

 

In '64 Chapman brought the team back to Indy, (still the only rear engine cars running) and this time qualified three cars, two Lotus 34's, (Gurney & Clark) and a Lotus 29 (Bobby Marshman) Clark took the pole position with Marshman at #2, Gurney settled in at #6... Unfortunately all three cars retired early with mechanical issues, Marshman exited first on lap 39 after leading for 33 laps due to a lost oil plug finishing 24th... Clark exited right behind him on lap 47 after taking over the lead from Marshman due to a minor suspension issue finishing 23rd.... Gurney finished in 17th place after abnormal tire wear caused his retirement in the 110th lap... All of these issues could have been repaired relatively quickly in the past, but the race had gotten so fast that in the time it would have taken to fix them there would be no chance of completing the race...

 

But what came from this was everyone else running cars at Indy realized that the rear engine cars were the future and were poised to dominate in the very near future... That's how dominant the Lotus's were in the short time they were on the track... 

 

And in '65, history was made.... Jim Clark took a Lotus 38 to a absolutely dominate victory leading 189 of the 200 laps, (with AJ Foyt leading the other 11 laps in a Lotus 34, AJ's car retired after 110 laps) and Parnelli Jones piloted a Lotus 34 to second place..... Lotus's dominated taking 3 of the top 4 final positions and 5 of the top ten... (the top 5 positions were the only cars on the lead lap at the finish) The 9th finishing position was taken by Al Unser driving a Lola T-80/Ford...

The rear engine car was there to stay....

 

In '66, rear engine open wheel formula cars, from 4 different manufacturers, took nine of the top ten starting positions... (a Watson 66/Ford took the 8th starting position, the last time a roadster appeared in a top ten starting position at Indy)

 

In two short years, decades of auto development at Indy went into the trash heap of history, it was a revolution in racing....

 

[DocRob]

The first half of the day was very frustrating. The exhaust to turbocharger tubes were the worst fitting parts, I ever have seen on a Tamiya kit. After two hours of nerve wrecking test fitting, I decided to glue them step by step into place as best as I could, using CA for a fast bond. Some tubes, I heated a bit with a flame and altered the radii to fit better. All in all, it looks horrible, but that's the way it is. The tubes were painted matte black and then received a misted coat of Extreme Metals jet exhaust, followed by metallic blue.
 

 

The better part of the day was used to marry the engine section with the firewall to the front body. Here the fit was surprisingly good, given the amount of parts, which had to fit at his step simultaneous. After dry fitting three times and looking for all the connections, I finally glued everything together with CA-glue. 
Afterwards, I connected some hoses and dry fitted the whole assembly into the chassis, to check if everything fits, which it luckily did after some wiggling. 
 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[yvesvidal]

It is interesting to see how Renault designed the air intakes on that car. I like the distance between the exhaust and intake impellers, on the Turbo devices, allowing for excellent cooling between the two sections. That model helps you discover some of the engineering and technical challenges, the Renault engineers had to deal with on that F1 vehicle.

 

Yves

[DocRob]

On 8/14/2023 at 6:31 PM, yvesvidal said:

It is interesting to see how Renault designed the air intakes on that car. I like the distance between the exhaust and intake impellers, on the Turbo devices, allowing for excellent cooling between the two sections. That model helps you discover some of the engineering and technical challenges, the Renault engineers had to deal with on that F1 vehicle.

 

You are absolutely right Yves. The kit helps you understand, how this car was designed and build and often you can contemplate about used materials and function as well. 
You can clearly see, how the turbo chargers influenced the layout of most of the main components with the Renault.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

The rear section was mostly finished today and is ready to be attached to the engine. Again, the moving parts design proved to be a bit fiddly, but beside some very crude moldings, which needed lots of clean up and later lots of masking, all went together well. Have I ever mentioned, that I absolutely love Tamiya's LP5 semi matte black. It sprays so evenly and has the right near no shine to replicate plastic or metal black. I added some resin connectors again, which were drilled out and added silver braided line with inserted brass rods.
 

 

Since the beginning of the build, I was pondering about de-chroming the wheels and wings, a process, I never did before. With my oven cleaner stripping was easily done in a minute on a test part and were followed by the rims, which didn't look real. The wings didn't look too bad with their plating, but then I decided to strip them too. Lets hope, I can lay on a decent finish.

 

 

Cheers Rob

[yvesvidal]

24 minutes ago, DocRob said:

I find interesting the use of dual four pistons calipers on the rear brakes. Plenty of braking power, for sure.

 

Yves

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, yvesvidal said:

I find interesting the use of dual four pistons calipers on the rear brakes. Plenty of braking power, for sure.

I think like always, the most braking power is performed by the duo calipers on the front wheels, but seeing the large air intakes, I guess, the double rear calipers are about heat distribution.

 

Cheers Rob

[CDW]

Doc, all your hard work to clean up the "old-mold" Tamiya parts is paying dividends. It's building up to a very realistic, highly detailed model. 

[DocRob]

19 hours ago, CDW said:

Doc, all your hard work to clean up the "old-mold" Tamiya parts is paying dividends. It's building up to a very realistic, highly detailed model. 

Thank you Craig, clean up is indeed the most time consuming task with this build. I have to pull out a feelgood kit afterwards, after the USS Arizona, the Arado and now the Renault. Surprisingly the short run Fly Arado kit, was the best of these in terms of clean up. Maybe a Tamiya P-38 in NMF, ...
The detail grade of the Renault kit is not bad and I guess, even a modern kit would not be much better detail wise, but the moldings are not up to todays standards. You can endlessly hyper-detail these 1/12 kits, but I found, exchanging the tubing and connectors added a lot of realism.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

The Renault is coming together. Yesterday, I married the rear part with suspension and gear case to the engine and added more braided lines to substitute the ugly thick vinyl tubing, Tamiya provided. The chassis is finished, except some details and the exhaust system, I can see the chequered flag .
All the parts waiting for chrome paint, were airbrushed high shine glossy black. I thinned down the Tamiya LP color with ca. 75% of leveling thinner and it gave flawless results. I have to remember that mixing ratio for my John Player Special Lotus Type 79.
 

 

 

Cheers Rob

[yvesvidal]

This is simply amazing. Professional pictures, too.

 

Yves

[Canute]

Beautiful work, Rob. really nice.👍

 

Take notes as you work. A couple of highly respected modelers I know stress that in their presentations. Keep a pack of stick-it notes handy as you work. Compile them in a full size notebook. 

[DocRob]

Thank you Yves, many years ago, I was like a semi pro photographer, but that were the analogue times. I got rid of all my analogue equipment, when it was not anymore possible to purchase my beloved black and white slide film anymore.
My favorite subject was to work with as little light as possible, often with an exposure time of minutes or even hours and to paint with the light, so to say and create pictures, which can't be captured by the human eye. 
The transition to digital photography was a slow and rocky one. I always think, the infinite possibilities of digital photography lead to the loss of instinct for the only thing important in photography, to capture the exact right moment, at least in my case it is.
I detest post processing and still think, that only the top 1% of digital cameras offer the same density of color than a good analogue slide.
Anyway, I have a decent camera and lenses now and try to improve my photographic skills all the time, but find capturing models a difficult task.

 

Cheers Rob
 

[DocRob]

59 minutes ago, Canute said:

Take notes as you work. A couple of highly respected modelers I know stress that in their presentations. Keep a pack of stick-it notes handy as you work. Compile them in a full size notebook. 

Thank you Ken, I'm not only trying to give something through my build logs, but also use them selfishly as notebooks . Sometimes, when I forgot, which color I used in the beginning of a build, I reference back to my older posts, specially the long term threads, like the Arado 234, which took about three years to finish.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Thank you Peter, I added more bits and pieces and painted Alclad chrome paint onto the gloss black based parts. I was fearing this, because chrome finish is so difficult to achieve, but all went well. Alclad is less durable than Extreme Metal, but as there is onl decaling and no further painting and masking involved, I hope, I leave the parts unharmed to the end.
 

Black base, I  love the Tamiya LP gloss black with 75% leveling thinner, looks like polished.
 

 

Alclad chrome, misted in very thin layers with low pressure setting. It looks even better to the natural eye and much better than the plating.
 

 

Cheers Rob