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.

[Count0]

On 3/22/2026 at 8:30 AM, DocRob said:

how hot the turbo gets when run to full power

I was at the Merc dealership picking up parts years ago and I was looking through something,  a calendar, maybe, of all these crazy photo's stressing MB quality. Like an entire S class body shell being held in mid air by just the door latch on the B pillar. Stuff like that. 

One of the photo's was the impeller inside the exhaust side of the turbo. White hot. Idk if that was a stress test, or if that temperature is common. It was certainly amazing.

Not in F1, but other forms of racing, they change Turbo's, hot, during the race. This was common in Group B. And my buddy who was on a 24 hours of Daytona team said it was not a job anyone wanted.

 

[DocRob]

Here I am again at the dreaded point of every MFH build, test fitting for final assembly. You know it before and it is always like that, something isn´t fitting. Trouble is, you can´t do it before, the sub assemblies have to be finished and mounted before a valid test fitting can be done. Unfortunately at this stage everything is full of fragile detail which is prone to knock off, which I did a lot.
I added the huge coolers to the side of the engine, the angled one is already fixed, the other only loosely fit. I also added the floor pan and some still unpainted columns to the pan, which determine the height of the body. After a lot of wiggling and experimenting, I got the body on top in the hopeful correct position, which I need to verify with the front body parts. Unfortunately, all spark plugs and wirings were broken loose (among other parts) as they seem to not fit under the body. To my eye, the engine sits absolutely perfect and there is no way to get it lower. 
I had that same issue with the Cobra Coupe, but there, I could fix it, in parts with thinning the bonnet and adding a millimeter of height to the body, both is not possible with the BT52b.
Yup, I´m really frustrated and I may let the kit rest for a while to regain my mojo.

BTW: I think MFH got the color for the top of the cooling units wrong, they call for silver, but all photos I checked showed them white, which I used.

 









Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Sorry to hear about the fit issues there Rob. The body looks so different to what I'm used to on an F1 car. More wedge shaped and not the crazy organic shapes they are now. 

[Count0]

26 minutes ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Sorry to hear about the fit issues there Rob. The body looks so different to what I'm used to on an F1 car. More wedge shaped and not the crazy organic shapes they are now. 

This is the difference between a car designed by traditional engineering and the modern computer Cad/Cam cars.

 I see it in the McLaren. The packaging is very tight around the suspension and engine, but nothing like the modern cars where they are able to envelop all the mechanicals so tightly that if they get it wrong the cooling systems won't work. But it yields that flowing shape.

In this case, the unique shape is Gordon Murrey's vision. I believe this is one of his "Mid" career cars, but it carries the idea's of the BT 44. They looked different in their day as well.

[DocRob]

I think the Count is right here, the missile shape of the BT52 was very unique in it´s time or in other words murrayesque. The engine and especially the turbo needed a lot of space and a lot of cooling, that´s why the slim front leads to the wide rear part.

While being at it, I tried the body fit a bit further. The (only) good thing, the body seems to close properly, but while trying, I knocked away more parts, some of them hard to reach. I hate these steps during MFH builds, but they are necessary and it is almost bodily pain, to loose all the parts during the process.

 



Cheers Rob

[Nick70]

You’re doing a great job Rob, and you are ahead of me so I have all of this to look forward to… 

Im still plodding on with mine, and enjoying it but there are times I question whether I’m up to the job. But keep making (slow) progress. 
You have got the white right on the radiators, I’ve got the Haynes bt52 book and they are shown as white in all the relevant photos. 

[BlrwestSiR]

That second photo makes the car look like a rocket. Which it was! 

 

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, Nick70 said:

You’re doing a great job Rob, and you are ahead of me so I have all of this to look forward to… 

Im still plodding on with mine, and enjoying it but there are times I question whether I’m up to the job. But keep making (slow) progress. 
You have got the white right on the radiators, I’ve got the Haynes bt52 book and they are shown as white in all the relevant photos. 

Thank you Nick, I always dread the final assembly stages of MFH kits. Everything is so fragile and with the paint on, you can ruin a lot. I always try to get ahead mentally and solve the probs before they occur, but I reached this point with all my MFH kits, except for the Crocker motorcycle.
With the BT52, there is no body material to grind away, it is preciously thin, where it hits the ignition wiring.
You can notice, the BT52 is an older kit from MFH, not as refined as the newer ones and with many white metal parts heavily bent, which was not caused by my cleaning efforts. Even very large parts, like the frames for the coolers are deformed and you need some force to get them right.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Over the last days, I did a lot of preparation work. I cleaned all the body and wing parts, sanded them slightly, after drilling all necessary holes and give them a good thorough wash with soap water. 
I decided to cut the vacuum formed windscreen and drill it, where the rivets have to be added later. The windscreen will be fixed with transparent double sided adhesive tape, which also holds the rivets then.



The resin body parts usually are heavily loaded with static and therefore a dust magnet, even more after sanding all surfaces very lightly with a fine sanding sponge for better paint adhesion. That and the residues from resin casting, is why I washed the parts very thoroughly with soap water and let them dry overnight. 
I primed all the parts, using Mr. Color grey primer #1500, thinned with leveling thinner and let dry for some hours.
Then I tried the Number 5 BT52 blue paint and found that my usual approach of wet in wet coats with more leveling thinner added with every coat didn´t work here. I had some reactions with the primer, luckily only on test parts. These colors are hot and needed a change of approach.
I started misting the paint on and let dry for half an hour at least between coats. I slowly build up the color with six coats of paint. Initially the paint looked a bit rough, but leveled supersmooth while drying. These colors doesn´t finish glossy and I have to test, If I clearcoat before decaling.





Cheers Rob

[PanzerWomble]

Just asking ...is your regular job 'Brain Surgeon' Rob ?

Your precision is exquisite 

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, PanzerWomble said:

Just asking ...is your regular job 'Brain Surgeon' Rob ?

Your precision is exquisite 

It´s more about lame brain Rob sometimes, PW . My talent seems to be into hiding my failure. Take the windscreen for example. If you look closely, there is a cut at the left end, which isn´t supposed to be there, my blade slipped. After some profound swearing, I decided to shorten the screen and it´s sill at that cut. Well, now you know my secret and the five others of millions of web users .

Cheers Rob

[Nick70]

Looking great Rob.

Which paint brand are you using for the blue? Looks good!

[DocRob]

42 minutes ago, Nick70 said:

Which paint brand are you using for the blue? Looks good!

Like I said, it is Number 5 BT52 blue paint. To me it looks a tad to light, for a second one, god beware, I would try Zero Paints BT52 blue.

Cheers Rob

[Nick70]

Ah ok, I wasn’t aware number 5 is a brand. 
I’ve got the Zero paints blue to try, I’ve had good success with their other colours on previous builds, although have to be careful as they are very hot

[DocRob]

I managed some more important steps after painting the blue base color. I decided the finish is smooth enough to decal directly onto the blue paint and the decals were very good to work with and very opaque luckily. Some contour around wild body shapes, which they did well with the help of a hairdryer. For application, I used only warm water with a drop of detergent mixed in. 
Strangely, there are two different decal sheets supplied, one with and one without a protective clear foil on top (typical for MFH kits with non Cartograph decals)
The larger sheet has some tiny imperfections all over the surface and I hope, This will be invisible after clear coating. 
Initially, I found the blue tone a bit too light, but the appearance changed with all the white decals and I think, it looks good now.



One headscratcher I found with the rear wing decals. There are two options for the rear wing. I will use the smaller one. The other is huge and has even more side wings added. The decals are supplied only for the larger wing supports and you have to somehow cut the decal, which doesn´t even perfectly fit and try to use the red pinstripe from the remains, to let it look right. MFH, this is embarrassing.

 

Cheers Rob

[GusMac]

The bodywork is looking great with the decals on.

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, GusMac said:

The bodywork is looking great with the decals on.

Thank you Gus, I was very happy to see the decals fit and ability to smooth themselves out around curved shapes. The decal on the front body part was propably the largest, I ever applied.
I have to re-think the rear wing decals though. I think I cut away all of the red pinstripe around, as it would look silly, when it doesn´t match the contour.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, DocRob said:

One headscratcher I found with the rear wing decals. There are two options for the rear wing. I will use the smaller one. The other is huge and has even more side wings added. The decals are supplied only for the larger wing supports and you have to somehow cut the decal, which doesn´t even perfectly fit and try to use the red pinstripe from the remains, to let it look right. MFH, this is embarrassing.

I have to take back some I´ve said. It seems, there were two options for the kit, A: with a large rear wing and B: with the smaller rear wing, like I will build. 
The manual is for both versions and there are all the parts included for both options except the decals, which are on a small extra sheet. 
I stay with embarrassing and head scratching though, For a 500$ kit, MFH should have included both decal options .

Cheers Rob

[Nick70]

Body panels are looking really good Rob!

I will be also be doing the smaller rear wing - I looked at the bigger one and thought ‘he’ll no’ - far too fiddly for me!