Lotus 49C - Ebbro - 1/20

[DocRob]

I was not sure, if I should WIP this build, but hey, there are not so many car builds around here. Ebbro the producing company is unfortunately not longer existing and we modelers lost a great source for 1/20 historic F1 cars.
The Lotus 49 started it´s career in 1967 in the green and yellow Lotus livery. The later 49B and 49C models, were the first to sport full sponsorship brand colors, in red white and gold. My build will show the 49C as Jochen Rindt´s, who won the Monaco Grand Prix in 1970. By that time the 49´s where replaced by the Lotus 72, but Rindt disliked the later type.

The kit itself is nicely designed with black, grey, white and chrome sprues, along a yellow tinted clear sprue for the windshield. The tyres have the branding and stripes already printed on, nice. The manual sports some similarities with Tamiya´s.
I will add some extra detailing for the engine with Model Factory Hiro details and fabric seat belts from the same company and some piping and wiring.



Cheers Rob
 

[DocRob]

I started with the cockpit, which was a straight forward construction. The light grey tub receives the seat and some spars, gear shifter and of course the instrument panel. The kit supplied decals for the seat belts are not my cup of tea in this scale and I substituted them with fabric ones from MFH. Fiddly to build, but they look way better. You have to cut the fabric to length and add the buckles and then glue the fabric with supplied double sided adhesive tape, which I also used to hold the belts in place. I like that solution, because you don´t have to mess (literally) with CA



Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Next were the body parts, which I initially wanted to paint red and use the supplied decals for the white and gold trims. The parts were primed with pink Mr. Surfacer 1500, a good base, then followed by Number 5 Lotus red, which sprayed beautifully, thinned with Mr. Leveling thinner. The wing parts were left on the sprue, which I rarely do, but it would have been difficult to hold the parts during the painting stage

Pink


Red


You may noticed, I also sprayed the front wings and little spoiler with Number 5 Lotus 49C gold, but the hue looked completely off and was completely different from the color of the decals. I then rummaged through my car color stash and found some Wolf Racing gold from the same brand, which fitted almost perfectly.

Wolf gold left, the completely off Lotus 49C gold right.


Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

I test fitted the red airbrushed and gloss coated body parts around the tub and to my surprise the fit was very good. The instrument panel received the supplied decals for the dials, which were than sealed with a drop of Pledge for a better glass appearance. The later visible backside got the instrument housings drilled with a 0,5 mm bit and I added some 0,4 mm black and red cables for further detailing.





Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

My initial plan of decaling the white and gold livery with the supplied decals went wrong, I had some tiny crinkles, which I may could have solved with a hairdryer and some decal fluid, but I misaligned one decal and was not too keen of cutting all the edges of the decal with a sharp blade.
Luckily I made copies of the decals as backup, to use them as templates for masks. After removing the decals, I masked everything with Kabuki tape and sprayed the white and gold onto the red.



Then I applied the decals, which were ok but not great quality wise. Some colors are a bit strange and there is a slight offset for example on the Union Jack´s.
They needed some Micro Sol to get them settled over the rivets. Meanwhile, the parts are gloss coated with Zero Paints Lacquer clear, which sprays extremely well.



I usually spray three to four layers per color or clear coat for car bodies. I thin the paint or clear with Mr. Leveling thinner. It has proved best for me, to start with a first coat of color with about 30 to 40% thinner only misted on. This thin coat dries super fast and the risk of damaging the plastic or decals with the hot paints and thinners is reduced. The next coat is applied a bit heavier and possibly thinned with another 10% of thinner. The third coat has 50 to 60% thinner, which let it level very easy and the surface is very shiny. The last coat, if necessary is thinned with about 80% of thinner, which levels even better, but care has to be taken not to produce color runs.
The first coat needs to dry properly, as it works as a protective shield for the plastic and decals, the others are applied with only some minutes of drying time, which causes the following heavier thinned coat to eat into the one before and level better

Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Some great work on the Lotus Rob. The belts look very convincing and much better than a decal. 

Carl

[DocRob]

6 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Some great work on the Lotus Rob. The belts look very convincing and much better than a decal.

Thank you Carl, I think you can´t get away with decal belts in an open racer in 1/20 scale. 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Next was the assembly of the front section and around the cockpit tub. While the red and white body parts fitted well, the front suspension and radiator proved to be difficult to get together. I had to widen many holes with drill bits to and did some cutting to accept the fitting parts. My expectations were a bit higher fit wise, but I was wrong, which showed when I added the front body parts and found out, that there is no way to glue them in the correct position.

Here is how it looked inside the nose with suspension and radiator in place







After half an hour of carefully detecting the culprits, it was clear, the radiator was too far to the front for about two millimeters and I have no idea, where I made a mistake. I then decided to cut the radiator framing and cooling hoses and glue the radiator directly into the front cone. All the struts are completely hidden in the body, so no harm done other than a wounded ego. 

Now the front body parts went on easily and I added the wings as last step before the engine will get build.





Cheers Rob

 

[Landlubber Mike]

Just catching up with your log Rob.  Nice job!  Coming along quickly and excellently per your usual!

Thank you for sharing your painting process.  Just to confirm, you do the multiple coats with added thinner percentages for both colors and clear coats?  I haven't quite figured that out yet, but seems like a good approach versus trying to get the color down in one coat.  This is probably especially helpful with colors like reds, yellows and blues that may not reach the full color on a single coat.

[DocRob]

8 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Just catching up with your log Rob.  Nice job!  Coming along quickly and excellently per your usual!

Thank you for sharing your painting process.  Just to confirm, you do the multiple coats with added thinner percentages for both colors and clear coats?  I haven't quite figured that out yet, but seems like a good approach versus trying to get the color down in one coat.  This is probably especially helpful with colors like reds, yellows and blues that may not reach the full color on a single coat.

Thank you Mike, I indeed use the same multiple coat process for paint and clear coat. One reason is, the later added layer levels the layers applied before with the higher thinner ratio, when sprayed after only 10 to 20 minutes of curing time between the layers (for the usual suspect colors from Zero Paint or Number 5 for car bodies). The other reason is, these colors are very hot. When I sprayed my McLaren MP4/6, the white color ate through the primer and into the plastic, which caused a lot of sanding and respraying. The first, relatively less thinned color layer is sprayed thin and got dried with the airbrush and is a protective barrier for the later coats.

Cheers Rob 

[BlrwestSiR]

Nice recovery there Rob. Glad you were able to solve it without damaging the lovely paint work on the body. 

[Landlubber Mike]

5 hours ago, DocRob said:

Thank you Mike, I indeed use the same multiple coat process for paint and clear coat. One reason is, the later added layer levels the layers applied before with the higher thinner ratio, when sprayed after only 10 to 20 minutes of curing time between the layers (for the usual suspect colors from Zero Paint or Number 5 for car bodies). The other reason is, these colors are very hot. When I sprayed my McLaren MP4/6, the white color ate through the primer and into the plastic, which caused a lot of sanding and respraying. The first, relatively less thinned color layer is sprayed thin and got dried with the airbrush and is a protective barrier for the later coats.

Cheers Rob 

Would you take the same approach for paints and clears other than from Zero paints - i.e., like colors and clears from Tamiya and Mr. Color?  Those definitely don't run as hot, but I do like the idea of the multiple coats that help level things out.

I've been working on trying to build a "flower power" VW Samba Bus T1 for one of my daughters, and had a bit of a time trying to paint a decanted Tamiya blue color for the body.  A big part of it was that the plastic parts didn't have a clean edge to be able to mask properly, so there was a lot of touch ups required.  Other problem was it seemed I would get a different shade of blue between sessions, but after multiple thinner coats, the panels seem to all have hit the proper shade.  I finally got it straightened out, but I might try the multiple layered coats in the future.  

It's nice with planes and other subjects where you can hide paint defects with weathering, etc.  Much harder with cars where you generally want a pristine finish!