Andy

I know that it’s very little time left until the end of the contest, but I’m struggling with the final assembly. I hope I can make it in time. Here’s what I have so far.

While the final assembly is full speed ahead I prepared some parts.

The seat and seatbelts are ready. I used everything out of the box even though I understand that seatbelts are better to be textile. For 1/24 scale models I always use textile belts, but I should do this for 1/43 scale also. Even in this scale it makes the difference. With the buckles I wanted to make a bit of chaos to bring some realism.

I also painted, added carbon decals and clear coated suspension parts.

Last two weeks were dedicated to clear coat curing and polishing.

1 week of curing for 1k gloss clear and then polish with sponges 4000-6000-8000-10000 and finally Hasegawa Ceramic Compound. Usually I’m quite bad in polishing, but for GWCC I decided to push myself a bit further. And no regret, I’m satisfied with the result.

While the body is curing under the clear coat for a week, I work on other small parts. Now I started to assemble the wheels. Even though Tameo manual suggests to paint metal part in silver, I believe that natural metal looks way better, so I left them unpainted. Another credit to Tameo - tires. They are pre-printed and already have signs of wear. Just assemble and you are ready to go.

It wasn’t very hard but rather pleasant process, even though some decals were fragile and difficult to apply, I think I managed it pretty ok. I still need to fix few flaws but I will do it after clear coat. I really love Tameo decals, they are thin and at the same time can stand well with strong decal liquids. And in case of disaster there is a spare decal sheet in the kit.

I painted the body according to the Tameo's manual into the Mica Red. Honestly, I don't fully agree that it should be metalic color but I decided to give it a try. It worked quite well. Let's see how it will look after decaling and final gloss clear. Looking forward to it.

Moving forward. Before going to the main red color I have to apply white base to avoid pale or greyish red.

Now the priming is done and I'm quite satisfyed. I used AMMO grey primer that is suitable for any surface and I was surprised that it stick to the metal pretty good. Even though that primer required a bit of sanding but in the end it turned out well.

Pre-assembly is done. Now prime-time

Wings are the most delicate parts of every formula build, therefore it takes a lot of time and patience to get everything right. You don't want to mess it up during the final assembly, cause these parts are the most prominent in the model.