Welcome to the next part of this build report.
I left you last time (or should I say long, long ago...) with the images of the primed body, floor and roll cage, showing that there was some work to do to get everything ready for some color.
In this update I will show you how far I got with these parts. I'll start with the body and floor.
Sanding everything back turned out to be quite a bit of work. And of course there were several areas still in need of attention. Especially around the wheel arches there was a lot of additional work left.
Luckily, with the car in tarmac setup, there's not much room left to see the remaining rough spots that have survived the clean up process...
Which leads me to the conclusion that I could have cut some corners in this particular area by only cleaning up the most visible sections. It's a good lesson to check beforehand what is actually visible when the car is built together. I'll definitely be cutting some corners for the other two Xsara's in my stash...
This is how the body and floor look now, ready for the next coat of primer.
After the next round of priming and sanding everything will hopefully be a nice and smooth (enough) so I can hit the body and interior floor with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer White, in readiness for the white gloss coat for this car.
To ease decal application, I'm planning to use Tamiya X-2 (or decanted TS-26) gloss white for this.
The roll cage luckily needed only minimal cleanup as most of it won't be visible once the car is complete. So I only concentrated my efforts on the visible sections.
Before signing the roll cage off I needed to add an additional tube to the roll cage. I noticed on one of the on-board screenshots I have from Duval's car, that the roll cage was missing one more piece.
Next up more work has been done on the interior of the car as there was still more than enough left to sink my teeth in...
The kit dashboard and center console aren't really representative of the dashboard and center console in Duval's car.
So I removed most of the switches/knobs on the molded part with a chisel and rebuilt it according the reference images I have.
As mentioned in a previous update, I wasn't going to use the kit seats. For this particular build I'll use 2 resin seats from Renaissance.
Strangely enough the casting quality is quite diverse among the 2 (otherwise identical) seats. As can be seen in the image below, one seat has (apart from the slightly different color) several defects which needed to be taken care of.
Apart from that there were some air bubbles in both seats along the headrests. So I used some light curing putty from Tamiya to fill these holes.
Another tidbit I took care of was the spare wheel...
I drilled out all the wheel nuts for the spare wheel. I'm a sucker for these tiny details.
A lot of small bits this update. Getting closer to some color.
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I left you last time (or should I say long, long ago...) with the images of the primed body, floor and roll cage, showing that there was some work to do to get everything ready for some color.
In this update I will show you how far I got with these parts. I'll start with the body and floor.
Sanding everything back turned out to be quite a bit of work. And of course there were several areas still in need of attention. Especially around the wheel arches there was a lot of additional work left.
Luckily, with the car in tarmac setup, there's not much room left to see the remaining rough spots that have survived the clean up process...
Which leads me to the conclusion that I could have cut some corners in this particular area by only cleaning up the most visible sections. It's a good lesson to check beforehand what is actually visible when the car is built together. I'll definitely be cutting some corners for the other two Xsara's in my stash...
This is how the body and floor look now, ready for the next coat of primer.
To ease decal application, I'm planning to use Tamiya X-2 (or decanted TS-26) gloss white for this.
The roll cage luckily needed only minimal cleanup as most of it won't be visible once the car is complete. So I only concentrated my efforts on the visible sections.
Before signing the roll cage off I needed to add an additional tube to the roll cage. I noticed on one of the on-board screenshots I have from Duval's car, that the roll cage was missing one more piece.
The kit dashboard and center console aren't really representative of the dashboard and center console in Duval's car.
So I removed most of the switches/knobs on the molded part with a chisel and rebuilt it according the reference images I have.
Strangely enough the casting quality is quite diverse among the 2 (otherwise identical) seats. As can be seen in the image below, one seat has (apart from the slightly different color) several defects which needed to be taken care of.
Apart from that there were some air bubbles in both seats along the headrests. So I used some light curing putty from Tamiya to fill these holes.
I drilled out all the wheel nuts for the spare wheel. I'm a sucker for these tiny details.
Previous part - Next part
Great to see you're back building this WRC Xzara again.
ReplyDeleteI must send you photos of where mine is stalled. Great improvement on the switches.
Thanks!
DeleteI'd love to see your version of the Xsara. Feel free to send me some pictures.
I hope to be back shortly with another update (fingers crossed)...