Axel's corner

The build of the Corvette is coming along slowly but steadily. After all the work on the body everything had to be smoothed. This was done with putty, sandpaper and sanding sticks in different grades. At the moment most of the sanding work is finished and the model is almost ready for primer. Here's as few pictures of the current state of the build: In the meantime I managed to prepare all the small(er) parts primer/paint. Only a small section of the parts is visible in the picture below. As I've decided to glue the body to the floor, I won't be spending a lot of time on the engine, suspension and other internals. I will paint them and might try a few weathering tricks on the parts, but won't be detailing the parts. It will stay OOB. For the cockpit I'm planning to go a bit further because it is a very visible area and I've found several useful reference images. Sadly I had to conclude that Revell has left out several details for this specific ver...

This build has also been a victim of being left to rest for a few years. Apart from that it has also become a victim of sloppy storing by myself because when I picked this one up to finally continu this build I noticed that the hood was damaged. There was only one solution: Sand the paint down and paint the hood again. As I had to paint the hood I decided to also sand down the damaged spots on the trunk so I could repaint these spots along with the hood. Luckily I still had some of the custom paint mix leftover. Just enough for a few thin layers of respraying. The picture below was taken after the first layer. Taking a closer look at the wheels I just couldn't ignore the paintless spots on the hubcaps where the sprue attachment points had been. I tried to paint them with a bit of Alclad chrome. But the difference was very visible to me, so I decided to remove the hubcaps, strip them of their chrome layer and repaint them with Alclad chrome. They just need t...

The next episode of the Corvette C5-R is here. Looking at reference pictures on the internet I stumble upon more and more things that aren't correct when building a Le Mans 2003 Corvette C5-R. This is what I've been doing thus far: Around the door windows there was some kind of frame which wasn't present during Le Mans 2003. I removed the frames with my motortool. I don't know which source Revell has used when deciding the frames should be there. I actually haven't seen anything like it on the reference images I've found. Here and there the surface is a bit rough... Maybe I should have been a bit more patient when removing the frames. But it's nothing that can't be solved with a bit of putty. The outlet opening for the radiator has also been taken care of. Some touching up still needs to be done, but I'm happy with the progress so far. At the front of the body I have opened up the cooling openings next to the indicators and I also r...

In the previous post I already mentioned that the moulds had seen better days as this is quite an old kit (original moulds seem to be from 2000/2001). A direct result of the age of the moulds is the fact that the kit is based on the early version of the C5-R, more precisely on chassis no.'s C5R-001 to C5R-004. The version of the car that can be build from this kit is the Le Mans 2003 version, being either chassis no. C5R-008 or C5R-009. I found a lot of useful information on the C5-R on the this site. I tried to highlight some (but not all) differences between the different versions of the C5-R below. As can be seen are there quite a few challenges ahead if you want to build your Corvette as it raced at the 2003 Le Mans event. I will try to rectify the most obvious differences, but won't be taking on all of them. My original list of modifications was looking like this: close the naca ducts (2). removing the louvres of the radiator outlet (3). increasing the ra...

Not much has happened here since the last update. Only work I did was on the wheels. I primed them, gave them a gloss black coat and finally covered them in Alclad chrome. They look pretty good IMO. Now I only need to paint the center gold... I also found me some solder of the correct diameter to get working on the exhaust system. Concerning the dashboard I'm still not quite sure which way to go. I'm even considering giving 3D printing a go. More to follow in the next update.

Since I first decided to close the wheelarches I have since backtracked on that decision and removed the attached pieces of styrene. I couldn't get it to work properly and decided I'd take a closer look at how big the gaps would be with a thorough dryfit of the model. There are still some gaps visible and I haven't yet decided how I'm going to tackle them. In the meantime I've been working on the bonnet of the car. The instructions from Renaissance for adding the PE parts to the resin bonnet aren't entirely clear to me, but after studying some reference images of the real car I was pretty sure that the PE grilles needed to be glued on the outside (on the top) of the bonnet. A first dryfit showed that the PE and resin parts didn't quite match, so I had do do some sanding and puttying to get it all to fit properly. More next time.

Due to the fact that the engine cover was slightly deformed and I couldn't get it aligned with the rollover hoop I decided to glue the engine cover to the body and make this car curbside. I have another one of these kits (the B190 version) lying around, and will try to get it sorted on that version so I'll be able to display the engine too as it looks quite nice. Although I glued the engine cover to the body there was still some work needed, filling some small gaps and getting everything correctly aligned. The original kit decals were a bit yellowed. I know there are ways to restore the decals to their original condition, but in this case that didn't help much. Luckily Shunko has released a new decalsheet for this kit, so bought that from MediaMix Hobby . The rear wing has also been assembled. After priming I noticed that I had overseen a few ejector pin marks. These were filled and sanded again. The body and other parts have been primed too to che...

For several years I've been a member of the Dutch IPMS division. To get a bit more involved with the IPMS and to restart (again..) my hobby I decided to do a build (and review) of a model offered up for review. My choice fell on the Corvette C5-R Compuware by Revell. Model specs: Subject:   Corvette C5-R Compuware From:   Revell Kit no. : 07069 Scale:   1/25 Image source: Scalemates.com About the original car: (excerpt taken from Wikipedia) The Corvette C5-R was part of a plan by General Motors and their Chevrolet brand to create a factory team to participate in grand touring races not only in North America, but also elsewhere in the world, most notably at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. General Motors chose the Pratt & Miller group of Michigan to build and develop the new racing cars, as well as to organize the racing team in preparation for a debut in 1999. The C5-R initially used a 366 ci (6.0 liter) V8 engine based on the road car's LS1. Th...