Brabham BT52b - The Guided Missile - Model Factory Hiro - 1/12

[DocRob]

10 hours ago, Nick70 said:

Wow you build fast!!! You’ve achieved in days what has taken me weeks. Admittedly I don’t get too much time to build but it seems to take me an age to make any progress with mine. 

A bad weather spell helps a lot, but I generally like to get into something like a meditative groove when modelling. I don´t build for the display shelf, but for the building experience itself. Prep work with MFH kits is time consuming and the painting stage dictates it´s timing due to curing times, but with the assembly phases, I can determine my building speed myself. I usually work myself through one or more often two pages of the manual as one step.
At the beginning of a build, I try to determine, which steps will be the hardest for me to achieve and try to get them out of the way first. With the Brabham, it was the carbon fiber decaling, which proved easier than thought.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Phew, the real powerhouse of the BT52b took some effort to get right. I can only estimate, how hot the turbo gets when run to full power with all the heat shielding. I should have aluminum wrapped all hoses and tubes, but installation was difficult enough, so I omitted it.
The exhaust manifolds, turbo parts and exhausts were painted with AK Extreme Metal stainless steel and accentuated with black smoke of the same brand and finally touched up with Alclad jet exhaust for a reddish brown shine like on my reference pics. The black cover of the turbo is a clear vac part, which I painted translucent black. On the original it is made from carbon fiber, but I was too lazy to decal it, as it will be hidden very deep into the car. I had difficulties to get good color reads off the pictures from the original engine.
The embossed aluminum foil needs to be cut and glued to the PE parts. It needs a bit of fine tuning, but it was not easy to get the foiled parts in place. Specially on the tiny cylindrical pot on top it was tedious, with the microscopic three rivets to be placed there.

 















Cheers Rob

[FullArmor]

Impressive details. 

Did you embossed aluminum foil yourself or did it come with the kit?

[FullArmor]

Those red and blue hose nuts adds extra color nicely.

[DocRob]

3 hours ago, FullArmor said:

Did you embossed aluminum foil yourself or did it come with the kit?

thank you FA, there are two types of foil included in the kit, self adhesive aluminum foil and self adhesive embossed aluminum foil, along a sheet with the paper templates to cut them.

3 hours ago, FullArmor said:

Those red and blue hose nuts adds extra color nicely.

The fittings you mention are beautiful, but also cause for some headaches. Many need to be drilled with a 0,8 mm bit, being only of slightly larger diameter than 1 mm. Sometimes, they are not that well cast and it is hard to find the exact middle point for drilling.
The other problem is the manual, which often does not show, where the wire or tube leads to and there are lots of connections.

Cheers Rob  

[BlrwestSiR]

Some incredible detail there. The foil adds another dimension.