The Legend - Lotus 72D - Tamiya 1/12

[DocRob]

13 hours ago, GusMac said:

All the angst was worth it Rob as that looks great

Thank you guys, angst might not be the right term, Gus, but I feel always some tension with car body works, until the last coat of clear has dried. There are so many possibilities to ruin the kit during the process.

Cheers Rob 

[Landlubber Mike]

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob!  Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones.  I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with.  Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Spoiler

 

 

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob!  Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones.  I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with.  Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Thanks for the warning about the decals of Revell´s VW flower power bus. I thought about getting one, but will let go now. 
The TBDecals finally had some issues. I will show the probs in my next post with some pictures.

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

[BlrwestSiR]

Wow, a surprise reaction from the decals, especially since it seems isolated to just the #6 decal. 

Hopefully you can fix it without too much grief as the rest of the finish looks outstanding.

Carl

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Wow, a surprise reaction from the decals, especially since it seems isolated to just the #6 decal. 

Hopefully you can fix it without too much grief as the rest of the finish looks outstanding.

Thank you Carl, it only affected the black numbers. All the golden decals from the same sheet had no problems at all. The bubbles started with the third coat of paint, crazy.

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 dar 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

[FullArmor]

27 minutes ago, DocRob said:

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 dar 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

Nice save!👍

[Landlubber Mike]

Wow, I could feel the stress levels rise as I was reading your post.  What a brave approach, but it worked out fantastic in the end.  Well done!

That's so odd that only those portions of the decals reacted that way.  

[GusMac]

SHINY! Looks great Rob and as others have said, that's a nice recovery on the numbers.

[BlrwestSiR]

Wow, the black paint looks even better. Nice recovery. 

[DocRob]

On 11/26/2025 at 3:37 PM, FullArmor said:

Nice save!👍

 

23 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow, I could feel the stress levels rise as I was reading your post.  What a brave approach, but it worked out fantastic in the end.  Well done!

That's so odd that only those portions of the decals reacted that way.

 

18 hours ago, GusMac said:

SHINY! Looks great Rob and as others have said, that's a nice recovery on the numbers

 

12 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Wow, the black paint looks even better. Nice recovery. 

Muchas gracias amigos, I´m absolutely satisfied with the shiny black finish, which looks even better to the eye than photographed under LED lights. The repaired numbers came out ok, but far from perfect. You can still see, where the bubbles were under certain lighting angles, but I didn´t dare to sand and possibly fill any more. The risk of damaging the finish was too great. There seems to be always something with car finishes .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

This update took a while, non the least, because Mr. Fittipaldi was a bit renitent. Actually, it was more the helmet and visor, which gave me headaches. Tamiya provides a driver figure and decals for the helmet, which wouldn´t go on wrinkle free. I used quantities of Tamiya extra strong and a hairdryer, before finally clear coating the helmet. 
Even more annoying was the visor. I wanted it tinted in smoke, like in real live, but equal which color and technique I used, it came always out bad. I tried AK crystal smoke and Tamiya smoke, sprayed or dipped, with misted layers or heavily applied, it never looked right. 
Finally, I tried my best, spraying AK crystal smoke lightly in numerous layers onto the before hand Future dipped visor and clear coated it. It still looks poor, but having stripped the visor umpteenth times, there may be no better result.
The rest of the Fittipaldi figure was airbrushed and painted with Tamiya acrylics.

I also tinted the clear windshield (not on the pictures) yellow, which came out better but not perfect. After a final clearcoat, it looks now very good. 
If somebody out there has a working technique for tinting larger clear parts evenly, pleas share it.







Cheers Rob

[PanzerWomble]

Way past my comfort zone, I'd be covering it in mud and moss at this stage . Nice one Rob

[Count0]

On 12/1/2025 at 10:40 AM, PanzerWomble said:

I'd be covering it in mud and moss at this stage

It probably had mud and moss on it at least once during the season.

[DocRob]

On 12/1/2025 at 6:40 PM, PanzerWomble said:

Way past my comfort zone, I'd be covering it in mud and moss at this stage . Nice one Rob

Thanks PW, no mud this time, the glaring black finish was too much work to cover it under mud and grime. Building a dirty Le Mans car or Rally car sounds tempting though.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Some progress at last. I finished the cockpit tub with the seat, fire extinguisher, and paddings and installed it into the body. The front suspension is only temporary installed and proved to be very fiddly to assemble. If it would be movable remains to be seen, but I doubt it, seeing the design. I also installed the radiators with their PE grills into their fairings.
I have a lots of mishaps with this build lately, which are no fault of the kit, but mine. I airbrushed the three color front rims for the third time now, always finding some inacceptable flaws. Same with some of the firewalls and inner traverses, where the AK polished aluminum color showed some flaws, possibly a reaction with the plastic, despite being primed with gloss black. Overspraying, this time with Alclad led to the same result and I finally used Tamiya´s LP gloss aluminum, which worked.
I´m not used to these kind of issues, I usually plan my approach thoroughly and do it once. Everything there´s something new, even with what looks like routine.



Cheers Rob

 

[BlrwestSiR]

That's annoying with the paint reactions. The final results look good. I never knew the Lotus had inboard brakes. 

[FullArmor]

8 minutes ago, BlrwestSiR said:

That's annoying with the paint reactions. The final results look good. I never knew the Lotus had inboard brakes. 

Yes. It reduces the mass of moving parts. This has also been used in some British-made passenger cars.

Also hmmwv got inboard brakes. 

[BlrwestSiR]

I've seen them before on other cars including the Hummer, just never an F1 car but it makes sense that Lotus would have tried it. 

[FullArmor]

5 minutes ago, BlrwestSiR said:

I've seen them before on other cars including the Hummer, just never an F1 car but it makes sense that Lotus would have tried it. 

Yes. In Formula One, they've probably tried everything possible that might help their chances of winning even a little bit.

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, BlrwestSiR said:

That's annoying with the paint reactions. The final results look good. I never knew the Lotus had inboard brakes. 

Thank you Carl, it´s not easy to get into some kind of building flow with all the ongoing issues. About the brakes, you could have guessed, there are very prominent venting domes on the nose part of the car, where the brake disks are hidden under.
My last build, the Brabham BT45 had also inboard brakes, but only for the rear.

Cheers Rob