Lotus 72D by DocRob - Tamiya - 1/12 - Plastic/Metal - The Legend

[DocRob]

Hola amigos of the 70´s Formula 1 cars. For my next build, I chose the most iconic one of it´s time, the Lotus Type 72D, produced by Tamiya first in 1973. It´s an old kit, which will need a bit of attention. Tamiya re-released the kit a while ago, adding PE parts, seat belts and new decals.
The decals unfortunately don´t have the JPS branding included and therefore, I added a complete TBDecals sheet. Other extras will be MFH aluminum air funnels and distributor and maybe MFH seatbelts, if I don´t use the included driver figure of Emerson Fittipaldi. 



Here are the extras;



For a start, I test fitted the body section, to see, how the fit is and what will be my painting and decaling approach. There will be a lot of sanding and maybe filling to get rid off the seams. I started with the air intake and it took a lot of sanding, to erase the parting line.



Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Over the last days, I did a lot of sanding and test fitting, to prepare the body and wing parts for painting and decaling. I decided to add the front wings to the nose and built up the upper side of the body along the radiator housings for not having to glue these parts later after painting and decaling.
This way, I could ensure a proper fit and alignment of the parts, which will help later in the build.

I primed the parts with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black primer and then sprayed Tamiya LP-1 gloss black on, heavily thinned with leveling thinner. Unfortunately, I had some tiny color runs, which easily happens with paint, thinned so much. After drying, I sanded away the imperfections and today, I resprayed the black body color. Now it looks decal ready with a near perfect high gloss finish.

I also sprayed the cockpit with Ammo´s polished aluminum, which is shining fantastic, even better to the human eye, than on the picture. I read rumors, these Ammo metallic are the same as Alclad, but I don´t know for sure. Anyway, polished aluminum sprays perfectly in very fine layers over a base coat of Tamiya LP-1 gloss black.





Cheers Rob

[yvesvidal]

Fantastic. And thank you for detailing all the "secret" recipes for painting 🙂

 

Yves

[gsdpic]

Off to a great start.  That polished aluminum on the interior is looking especially good.   I used matte aluminum on mine.   The replacement JPS decals look good too....the gold color looks pretty accurate.  As I recall when I built mine, some of the third party decals looked more like yellow and not so much like gold.  Your upper cowl looks good too; mine had a bit of twist/warp to it.   Anyway, you are bringing back some memories.  I am looking forward to see what you do with the kit, I am sure your efforts will outshine mine.

 

[king derelict]

Beautiful finishes on the body and cockpit Rob. The aluminum looks excellent.

alan

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

Fantastic. And thank you for detailing all the "secret" recipes for painting 🙂

De nada Yves, I´m still in the learning process with car body finishes, but have established something like a working process, depending the used type of color. With the Tamiya lacquer paint, I start with a mixing ratio of about 40% to 50% of added levelling thinner. I always test spray, to see, if the paint is leveling well. The second coat got more thinner added (about 60%). It levels beautifully, but is very thin and therefore prone to color runners.
It´s a bit of a struggle, but worth it in the end. I think, the better the preparation, the lesser is the sanding and polishing work in the end, which is hard to achieve in some "hidden" places, like on the wings corners.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

13 hours ago, gsdpic said:

Off to a great start.  That polished aluminum on the interior is looking especially good.   I used matte aluminum on mine.   The replacement JPS decals look good too....the gold color looks pretty accurate.  As I recall when I built mine, some of the third party decals looked more like yellow and not so much like gold.  Your upper cowl looks good too; mine had a bit of twist/warp to it.   Anyway, you are bringing back some memories.  I am looking forward to see what you do with the kit, I am sure your efforts will outshine mine.

Thank you Gary, I remember your great build and am on a bit of a Lotus track myself right now. Photos I have seen suggest polished aluminum for the tub, maybe not as shiny as mine. Not much will be visible, if my plan, adding the driver figure works out.
The gold color of the TBDecals sheet look good and I hope they are equally good to work with. Unfortunately there is no placement guide included, which would have been very helpful.
I don´t know, how you approached the upper cowl. I took the sidewalls, taped them to the floor part temporarily and then glued in the two upper parts permanently. There is no warping at all.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

8 hours ago, king derelict said:

Beautiful finishes on the body and cockpit Rob. The aluminum looks excellent.

Thank you Alan, I have developed a hate/love relation with high shine metal surfaces in modeling. They are difficult to achieve and very fragile, but very rewarding, when properly done. 

Cheers Rob 

[ubjs]

Interesting build. I, like many other children in Sweden, got it as a Christmas present in 1973. 
I remember the black parts that were treated so that they looked painted when you unpacked the kit.
We built many of Tamiya's big F1s in the following years, we learned to use paint sprayers from Badger 
and run our own electrical and fuel lines in the engine.
Everything was thrown away when Ronnie died at Monza in 1978.
I've looked at the updated kit but don't know if I would feel good about building it. Luckily, 
I have plenty of wooden boats on my shelves that need to be built.

Another thing I remember from 73 was the fit. We were used to a lot of Airfix and this kit was amazing 
compared to Airfix.
But how good is it today?

Edited November 19 by ubjs

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, ubjs said:

Interesting build. I, like many other children in Sweden, got it as a Christmas present in 1973. 
I remember the black parts that were treated so that they looked painted when you unpacked the kit.
We built many of Tamiya's big F1s in the following years, we learned to use paint sprayers from Badger 
and run our own electrical and fuel lines in the engine.
Everything was thrown away when Ronnie died at Monza in 1978.
I've looked at the updated kit but don't know if I would feel good about building it. Luckily, 
I have plenty of wooden boats on my shelves that need to be built.

Another thing I remember from 73 was the fit. We were used to a lot of Airfix and this kit was amazing 
compared to Airfix.
But how good is it today?

Thank you, when I was a kid, I only built some Airfix kits or worse. The 1/12 Tamiya kits were too expensive for my pocket money. I built my first Tamiya 1/12 F1 kit two years ago, the Renault RE20 Turbo, a decent, but not perfect kit.
The Lotus 72D is surely a very old mold, but got updated in parts. There is a PE fret included, fabric seat belts and new decals, unfortunately without the JPS-branding. How it will build up, remains to be seen, but I´m optimistic overall. I will add some hoses and wiring along other details, like aluminum funnels and metal distributors.
The MFH kits I built are of a far superior quality, but I think, with a bit of love, the Lotus can be build into a nice replica.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After the three jars of Tamiya LP-1 have cured, I started with the decaling. The TBDecals are very good to work with, the carrier film is very thin and they can be slipped off the backing paper within seconds. Some of the stripes folded over, but none teared. I used only warm water with a drop of detergent for decaling, luckily there are not many curves to contour the decals around. The multi piece pinstripes on the body and nose were applied quite rapidly in one go, to get them aligned perfectly and symmetrical. I hope the decals are not too sensitive concerning a later clear coat to seal everything in.





Cheers Rob

[MAGIC's Craig]

What a treat to see, Rob!!

[Canute]

Those gold pin stripe decals lay perfectly on your gloss black paint. That all looks very smooth. Looking forward to seeing Emo in  scale. I was a fan.

[DocRob]

3 hours ago, MAGIC's Craig said:

What a treat to see, Rob!!

 

2 hours ago, Canute said:

Those gold pin stripe decals lay perfectly on your gloss black paint. That all looks very smooth. Looking forward to seeing Emo in  scale. I was a fan.

Muchas gracias Ken and Craig, until now, it´s smooth sailing and I hope the rest of this 1973 kit is holding up. I was a bit young to see Emo racing in the Lotus 72, but just love iconic historic racers.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Decaling is mostly done. I have to do some touch ups and the Fittipaldi helmet. The pinstripes proved to be difficult to apply, especially around the cockpit. The front with the Texaco sign was a nightmare, because the pinstripes are separate decals, easy to guess, how fragile and difficult to arrange they were. I could have used the Tamiya decal for that, but there is a lot of carrier film all around. On the back of the cockpit, I used Tamiya´s pinstripes, which luckily have the same color. I will let dry for a day now and then clean off the water residues before clear coating.



Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After 24 hours of curing time, I dared to look at the body parts a little closer. The Zero Paints Lacquer Clear was phenomenal to work with once again. I first sprayed a thin layer un thinned, to seal the decals, without harming them, blowing the color dry with the airbrush for faster curing and less reaction time. This layer has a bit of orange peel, but that doesn´t matter now.
After about half an hour, I thinned the clear for the second coat with about 30% to 40% of leveling thinner and had a much better surface quality then before. Until now, no probs with the decals.
The third and fourth coat followed after shorter periods of drying time, as I wanted them to melt into the former layers. The clear was thinned with about 55% to 60% of leveling thinner. The surface becomes almost perfect, but the black #6 decals got some tiny bubbles, a reaction with the clear coat or the thinner, unfortunately. 
I´m thinking about sanding the bubbles away very carefully and apply the Tamiya #6 decals onto them, which hopefully have the same size. I will check that before sanding with the #8 decal.
I´m not sure, if I polish the body parts, as they look near perfect right now. I will decide that after two or three days of further curing time, before, I won´t touch the parts.









Cheers Rob

[gsdpic]

Strange that the reaction only happened where the black number decal was.  Maybe it was somehow related to having two layers of decals there.   Otherwise, the finish looks fantastic.   Good luck resolving the issue with the bubbles on the numbers.

 

 

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, gsdpic said:

Strange that the reaction only happened where the black number decal was.  Maybe it was somehow related to having two layers of decals there.   Otherwise, the finish looks fantastic.   Good luck resolving the issue with the bubbles on the numbers.

Thank you Gary, the reaction on the numbers is a bit weird, as they are from the same decal sheet as the gold decals. You may be right about this happening only to double layered decals, because there are smaller black backed decal on the rear wing, without this reaction.
In a day or two, I will evaluate the situation and hope, I can solve it. My preferred plan is to sand the bubbles away carefully and then add the black numbers from the Tamiya decal sheet. Hopefully, they have the same size, but I will test before sanding with a spare #8 decal.

Cheers Rob

[kingslug]

This looks nerve racking..I've seen this happen before..

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, kingslug said:

This looks nerve racking..I've seen this happen before..

Until now, I´m pretty calm, because I have a plan, let´s hope it works. Actually, I never had these issues before, but I´m very careful with applying the first coat of clear, didn´t help here.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Yesterday, I tested the Tamiya #8 onto my affected #6 decal for comparing the size and they fit like a glove, phew. Today was the day to rescue the finish of the Lotus. I took all my courage and cautiously sanded away the bubbles on the number decals with a fiber pen and the edge of a sanding spoon. I was eager not to destroy the underlying golden decals.
It looked like this then:



I then decided to polish all the body parts with Tamiya polishing compounds. This was ignited, because I watched some of the build videos of the 72D on YouTube and was shocked by the very bad surface quality of some of the paintjobs. I would not dare to show these. 
I used the coarse compound only on the number decals, which were sanded before and polished all the body parts with the fine- and finish compound.
Lastly, I applied the Tamiya #6 decals over the old ones and despite it not looking perfect, it has to do. I´m satisfied with the finish now, with the black glistening like a Steinway grand piano and it looks even better than on the photos.







Cheers Rob

 

[gsdpic]

Great recovery!   That picture of the air box really shows off your fantastic finish.

 

[ubjs]

It's starting to take hold, now you just have to clear coat as many times as you can with wet sanding in between. :)

But it's just a fairly modern plastic body and not a Rolls with real sheet metal so this finish will probably be enough.

Is this the best looking F1 with advertising?
Of course the Alfas, Silver Arrows and the green Lotuses were better looking. :)

[DocRob]

On 11/26/2025 at 3:35 PM, gsdpic said:

Great recovery!   That picture of the air box really shows off your fantastic finish.

Thank you Gary, I like the finished black color as well, the repaired numbers, hmm, they are a compromise. I didn´t dare to sand and possibly fill any further, so under certain lighting situations the bubbles are slightly visible through the decal. 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, ubjs said:

It's starting to take hold, now you just have to clear coat as many times as you can with wet sanding in between. But it's just a fairly modern plastic body and not a Rolls with real sheet metal so this finish will probably be enough. Is this the best looking F1 with advertising? Of course the Alfas, Silver Arrows and the green Lotuses were better looking.

This is already clear coated and polished ubjs and I will not clear anymore over the added numbers. With fails, you have to have a story. Mine is, the numbers were changed sometimes from race to race, so maybe they weren´t applied to the highest standard.

Cheers Rob

[Danstream]

Glad that you recovered so well the number decals. As you said, the finish looks like a piano, simply beautiful.

Cheers,

Dan

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Danstream said:

Glad that you recovered so well the number decals. As you said, the finish looks like a piano, simply beautiful.

Thank you Dan, after finishing with the finish, I have to actually start building the Lotus now .

Cheers Rob