Honda RC166 - Tamiya - 1/12

[DocRob]

Since a while, I desired to start the build of the famous Honda RC166 from Tamiya, driven by Mike Hailwood, who won the world championship in 1966 and 1967 with this bike. What a change after the big Cobra of the same scale, I finished recently. Instead of the big block, there is a tiny machine build in, but it´s very special. It has a displacement of only 250 ccm but has six cylinders, generating about 60 PS with a max of 18.000 revolutions. The max. speed was 245 km/h.

The Tamiya kit dates back to 2009 and I will add all the available extra sets from Tamiya, which I got for relatively small coin directly in Japan. There is a set of metal parts for the front fork, clutch and air intake funnels, another for the metal spoke wheels, one for the numerous metal rivets and one for building up a PE chain. The latter I won´t use, because I have a 3D printed chain set from Falcon.



Cheers Rob
 

 

 

 

 

 

[DocRob]

I started with the engine and I have to say, this kit is absolutely fantastic, even by Tamiya´s standards. I built their big F4-U and the 1/48 P-38, which were excellent kits, but the Honda is even better. 
The engine is very complex, but so well engineered and the parts are fitting perfectly. The cooling ribs are a piece of art and are only possible to be casted in plastic, as there are several thin parts, which get stacked onto each other, genius.
I used Extreme Metal colors for the engine, matte aluminum for the block, titanium for the oil pan and other parts and a mix from titanium and copper for the carburetors. The air funnels are turned aluminum and the clutch consists from PE clutch discs and a pre fabricated metal cage.
I used a brown panel liner for accentuation and painted all the screwheads with silver.











Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Rob, that engine looks stunning. Nice to see a motorcycle on here. 

 

[FullArmor]

Good looking engine👍

I once had the opportunity to hear this engine running...absolutely incredible sound.

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Rob, that engine looks stunning. Nice to see a motorcycle on here. 

 

1 hour ago, FullArmor said:

Good looking engine👍

I once had the opportunity to hear this engine running...absolutely incredible sound.

Thank you Carl and FA. The precise fit and great engineering make that engine a pleasure to build. I thought it would take much longer, being used t very demanding and lengthy builds lately. It was intended to be an in between build.
The engine sound must be - unique - I guess, unlike you compare it to dentists drilling machines.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

The engine got a bad hair day with the tubing. I used the supplied vinyl tube, albeit it may be a bit on the thick side, but I want a relatively quick build and not hassle with preparing all the connectors with tiny brass rods. Not much of it will be visible, anyway. The frame was sprayed with Tamiya LP gloss black, which again was perfect with it´s shiny finish. The light brown "things" might be capacitors, if I´m not wrong, which will be connected with the spark plug wires.
The footrests are made from turned aluminum and are supplied with the original kit, nice touch, Tamiya.



Cheers Rob

[KUROK]

Following along.

I have a couple of these Tamiya motorcycle kits too.  I've been wanting to take the plunge.

[FullArmor]

Yes very exciting to watch.

A few Japanese youtubers are building  excellent motorcycle kits. Almost therapeutic to see.

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, KUROK said:

Following along.

I have a couple of these Tamiya motorcycle kits too.  I've been wanting to take the plunge.

 

1 hour ago, FullArmor said:

Yes very exciting to watch.

A few Japanese youtubers are building  excellent motorcycle kits. Almost therapeutic to see.

Thank you Kurok and FA, these recent Tamiya motorcycle kits are phenomenal. I built a Ducati some years ago as my first motorcycle kit and then got hooked. Every now and then, there will be one on my bench.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Next, I started with the wheels, an extra set made by Tamiya to substitute the not too shabby kit wheels. But what looks better than plastic, right, metal. The rims are turned and the spokes are pre lengthened and pre bent. I recommend to study the manual very thoroughly and check twice, as it is easy to make mistakes. There is a line engraved into the jig for alignment with the valve and I nearly interpreted a cast blemish for the marking.

First you add the spokes to the ABS hub and roughly align them correctly. The manual calls for using whit glue to fix them temporarily, but I thought, I try masking fluid instead, Worked great and will be easy to remove.



After the second of four sets are aligned in the opposite direction, it´s time to put the rim and the spoked hub into the jig. With a pair of tweezer and very light bending of the spokes, you insert them into the rims holes.



Finally, you add the spoke nipples from the outside. I used an old, very sharp pair of tweezers for that, holding the nipples by their middle hole and inserted them. Sometimes, a little wiggling with the spoke was necessary to insert the nipple properly. Then the nipples were secured with CA and whoops, half a wheel is finished.

 

Cheers Rob

[belugawhaleman]

Nice work Rob! I've been eyeing that kit on Plaza Japan for some time, but I was a little intimidated after going over the

instructions I downloaded from scalemates. It certainly looks like a beautiful kit! Are the spokes metal? Using liquid

mask to hold the spokes temporarily,... A great idea.

[Count0]

Guy at the kit show was selling one of these with all the metal goodies. $100 bucks. Kicking myself now, that should have been a no brainer purchase.

Looks like it is coming along nicely.

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Nice work Rob! I've been eyeing that kit on Plaza Japan for some time, but I was a little intimidated after going over the

instructions I downloaded from scalemates. It certainly looks like a beautiful kit! Are the spokes metal? Using liquid

mask to hold the spokes temporarily,... A great idea.

Thank you Paul, the kit is a beauty and would look nice out of the box. The Tamiya extra sets raise the bar though. you can´t substitute metal for metal. The spokes are made from stainless steel and don´t need to be cut or bent.
The chain set, I won´t use, it seems to be very delicate to assemble and after the MFH Crocker´s chain experience, I try to exchange motorcycle chains only for 3D printed ones. For the RC166, I have a Falcon Model chain set.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Count0 said:

Guy at the kit show was selling one of these with all the metal goodies. $100 bucks. Kicking myself now, that should have been a no brainer purchase.

Looks like it is coming along nicely.

Muchas gracias Count, The extra sets seem to be hard to find right now, so yes, your mentioned offer was a good one. I had the kit for a while, searching for the extras, which were available in Japan two years ago for good prices, but are seemingly gone now.

Cheers Rob

[Count0]

7 hours ago, DocRob said:

which were available in Japan two years ago for good prices, but are seemingly gone now.

Found a set of the wheels on eBay. The loony wants close to $700 dollars for them. I don't think so.

[DocRob]

Today, I finished the front wheel any difficulties and started with the rear wheel. After fiddling the spokes into the rim, I secured them with liquid mask and set the rim and spoked hub into the rim. Next, I inserted the spokes carefully into their holes in the rim, where some needed slight bending.
Then the troubles began, while I tried to add the firs spoke nipple, some spokes flipped out of their holes in the rim, nasty. It was caused by slight movement of the hub in the jig and therefor, I used some blue tac to fix the hub like shown on the picture. During applying the nipples, a straining task, two spokes came completely loose from the hub, caused by too small heads, which slipped through the hole. Somehow, I got them fiddled in with a lot of swearing. On the pic below, one is still missing, but I fixed it now.



Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

6 cylinders for 250 cc … They DO love designing engines at Honda 🥰 …

Nice wok, Rob 

Hubert

[BlrwestSiR]

1 hour ago, HubertB said:

6 cylinders for 250 cc … They DO love designing engines at Honda

They did a motorcycle engine in the early '90s that was a 32 valve 4 cylinder. Yup, 8 valves per cylinder. 

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, HubertB said:

6 cylinders for 250 cc … They DO love designing engines at Honda 🥰 …

Nice wok, Rob 

Thank you Hubert, the RC166 is not only special, it´s also a really beautiful bike

 

1 hour ago, BlrwestSiR said:

They did a motorcycle engine in the early '90s that was a 32 valve 4 cylinder. Yup, 8 valves per cylinder. 

...and don´t forget, it had oval Pistons, Carl.

Cheers Rob

[Count0]

1 hour ago, BlrwestSiR said:

They did a motorcycle engine in the early '90s that was a 32 valve 4 cylinder. Yup, 8 valves per cylinder. 

European Honda RC 30's had oval pistons. Better spread for the valves, better breathing. But probably poor ring life, so the more litigious US market got the standard round pistons.

Rumor has it that the 1000 horsepower (qualifying engines only) V6 F1 twin turbo engines had oval pistons as well. Honda has never confirmed this. Or the rumored ceramic block same engine may have had.

2 hours ago, HubertB said:

They DO love designing engines at Honda

Everything (so they say) they do is done with an eye on improving their knowledge for making better consumer products. Also, faster race machines. So they try out a lot of weird idea's. It's how they train their engineers. They built a GP bike with the fuel tank under the engine, for better center of gravity. Seems like a great idea, but the riders hated it.

It's why their initial Hybrid F1 engines were so bad. They wanted to do it their way. But the learning curve wasn't fast enough for Mclaren. Now, that engine has given Redbull 3 constructors championships.

[HubertB]

I agree that Honda’s motto has always been that the engine was at the heart of any car - or motorcycle for that matter - and should deserve their core attention … A pity they have not invested as many efforts in the design of the outer body of their cars in the last 20 years : their designs have been pretty lame and uninteresting in this time period …

Hubert

[DocRob]

Today, I finished the second wheel, but somehow, it was a chore. I had lots of difficulties to fiddle in the shorter spokes, one half being a fraction of a millimeter to short, the other half too long, that they needed heavy bending, to get them into the rims holes. Anyway, it´s done now and looks better than the plastic wheels for sure.



Cheers Rob

[GusMac]

Definitely worth the grief Rob. You couldn't get that realism with anything other than actual metal. Does look horrifically fiddly though!

[BlrwestSiR]

Having laced up several sets of bicycle wheels in the past, that doesn't look any easier. But the results look great. 

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, GusMac said:

Definitely worth the grief Rob. You couldn't get that realism with anything other than actual metal. Does look horrifically fiddly though!

 

10 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Having laced up several sets of bicycle wheels in the past, that doesn't look any easier. But the results look great. 

Thank you Gus and Carl, the wheels look very good indeed and it was worth the extra work. I don´t know, where the difficulties arose. I guess there were tiny tolerances with the jig. I´m happy, that it´s done now and fortunately there is no "ping" test necessary, as it´s not Mike Hailwood´s live depending on it.

Cheers Rob