Monthly Archives: July 2020
GPMA Club Meet
John Roberts pulled-up in his shiny new Porsche Cayman S
On January 18, 2020, four of us met to hang out and build models. It was good timing, since soon after we were all sheltering in-place. Here’s a quick report on the festivities.
John Zweber came in from Phoenix, AZ to show us how to build models the right way. William (Bill) Bauer had a few things to say on that subject too.
JR deep in thought – what to build next?
Yours truly with proof that I do, indeed, build models.
Bill’s Profil24 Porsche 991 is just getting underway.
@#$%! diffuser . . .
JR showed us his Aoshima/Beemax 935 K3
Our group was excited to see the kit and consider all the possible build options.
Slow progress on my Fujimi BMW Z4 GT3 Red Bull
Looking forward to our next live meeting!
Kevin
Benetton B186 BMW
1/24 Benetton B186 F1
By John Zweber
In 1994, Wave did a series of kits in 1/24 called “Legends of Formula 1”. I’ve always liked the livery on the Benetton B186 from 1986, and this can be built as raced by either Gerhard Berger or Teo Fabi.
I got an incredible deal on the kit, but then I had to build it. The kit is resin and white metal. Lots of hot water and clamps are needed to get the body into some semblance of straight.
The upper body is one piece and the lower is 2 parts, which became 3 when I sectioned the part under the cockpit to allow assembling the seat and ancillary parts. This also allowed the lower pieces to more or less fit the upper body.
The front and rear wings are white metal. Super glue and epoxy don’t come close to holding the parts together, so I now know how to solder white metal. Thank God for the internet! I never knew there was such a thing as low heat solder.
After trying to straighten the white metal suspension parts, I decided to replace
some of them with brass and nickel silver rod from Albion Alloys. Fortunately, there were only a few tiny bubbles on the body to fill. I used Splash Paints 2K grey primer, Splash Brilliant White, Zero Benetton Green, and Splash 2K Clear. Then I applied the decals.
The colored decals were in amazingly good shape for being 25 years old. The white decals were not faded at all, but they were cracked. I finally applied some Microscale liquid decal film to hold them together. This was after trying to spell out Sisley on the side, in what turned out to be more like 40 pieces per side instead of 12.
After another couple coats of Splash 2K clear, I added some A/N fittings to the transmission, scratch-built the brake light from some leftover red sprue, epoxied the parts together, added a nice big bolt from RB motion to hold the rear wing on, and then I was done. Now it’s time for a Tamiya kit . . .
