Agape forum member John (DHKollektr) shared these images of his gorgeous F1 racer. Great work, John!
This F1 racer is one that I bought while in Japan on a business trip over 20 years ago, and is one of the few kits that I bought and built within a few months. I think from memory that it was my first ever Tamiya kit, and it certainly whet my appetite for more offerings from Tamiya.
I don’t recall there being any issues with the way it went together, and overall I remember it as being a very easy build and therefore gave me a lot of pleasure at the time. At the time I didn’t have access to any photos so I just took a punt as to how the spark-plug leads were routed; the way I have them may be totally wrong.
I remember that I used a rattle-can for the aluminum radiators, chassis base topside and body rear section, the rest was all hand-painted – including the raised ribs on the rocker covers. I cheated a bit with the painting – as the body & shell were already yellow I just masked and painted the white areas without primer. In retrospect (how come hindsight is always 20/20?) I should have primed it all and painted both colours. Also I think that the interior of the body shell probably should have been all black. But despite these couple of minor blemishes I think it has come up quite well.
The decals weren’t any trouble but did take me at least 2 evenings to finish. After I finished the decals, I put on a clear gloss coat. From memory it was Tamiya acrylic, and I think I’m extremely lucky that it didn’t react with the enamel paint, particularly as it was brush-painted. I found that the clear dried very quickly and you can easily see brush marks on the rear spoiler, and a few other places which aren’t quite so noticeable.
Cheers, and keep walking with God.
John
