After finishing my Unicorn Gundam, I chose to continue with another Japanese super kit. The started log was lost in the gone forum and I will continue here.
The BT52b was a successful design, winning the world championship drivers title with Nelson Piquet in 1983. It was the turbo era and the BT52b was the most powerful of all formula One cars until today and could generate up to 1500 horsepower in qualification mode. That came with a price, making the car difficult to drive with it´s turbo lag.
I´m not a big fan of turbo powered F1 cars, but the BT52b is an exception, because of it´s radical design. It wasn´t only fast, it also looked like it.
Today, I unpacked the safely stored parts, only to find out, there were blemishes on some body parts and I have no idea, where they came from. The parts cured for almost two weeks before storing. I managed to polish out most of the blemishes, but some are still slightly visible, as I didn´t dare to polish further.



Here are some pictures of my progress with the Brabham:

Monocoque with tons of rivets and carbon fiber decals, which needed to be cut from a sheet with the help of a luckily fitting supplied paper template:





The engine:





Engine with rear suspension, brakes and gearbox:



Loosely mounted onto the resin lower body, where fit is critical:



Finally, I sanded, cleaned, primed, airbrushed, decaled, clear coated and polished all body parts:







Cheers Rob

Edited May 13May 13 by DocRob

That's looking great Rob😀 The carbon decals look perfect!

20 minutes ago, Belugawhaleman said:

That's looking great Rob😀 The carbon decals look perfect!

Thank you Paul, interestingly, MFH supplied a carbon fiber decal sheet for 1/20 cars, which looks right to me here. After application, it looked glossy and ok, but after a semi matte coat, it looked right. It was quite a bit of work, to cut the decals out of the supplied sheet. Luckily it was only the monocoque in the early 80´s.

Cheers Rob

So glad to see this here. I only joined a few days ago so the website was a blank sheet. I had no idea where peoples interest lay. The more i look in the more variety i see which is great. The great thing about other peoples build blogs is they often inspire other people to try something thats new to them and probably way outside their comfort zone. I look at the above build and i can see this is a guy i can learn from, your engine looks superb :-)

56 minutes ago, Paddy said:

So glad to see this here. I only joined a few days ago so the website was a blank sheet. I had no idea where peoples interest lay. The more i look in the more variety i see which is great. The great thing about other peoples build blogs is they often inspire other people to try something thats new to them and probably way outside their comfort zone. I look at the above build and i can see this is a guy i can learn from, your engine looks superb :-)

Great to have you here Paddy, the builds you showed are fantastic. I was with the old LSM for far more than a decade and it was my only connection to the modelling world, as I live a bit remote.
I build everything, which represents a challenge to me, plastic model kits, wooden ships, multi media kits, I need the variety.
One of my driving forces in modelling is replicating materials correctly scale wise. Therefore, the MFH kits are a pleasure to build and paint, but I also like WWI airplanes with rigging, wood, cloth and metal to render.
The loss of LSM Mark 1 to me is very painful, as I used it as a log of painting and finishing techniques I adapted or developed. I like a forum to be an exchange of how to´s, techniques and ideas and like you mentioned, to get inspiration and I´m sure with many gifted model builders like you LSM Mark 2 will be equally great.

Cheers Rob

3 hours ago, Paddy said:

So glad to see this here. I only joined a few days ago so the website was a blank sheet. I had no idea where peoples interest lay. The more i look in the more variety i see which is great. The great thing about other peoples build blogs is they often inspire other people to try something thats new to them and probably way outside their comfort zone. I look at the above build and i can see this is a guy i can learn from, your engine looks superb :-)

Oh that's Rob for sure if and when he post some of his ole builds you will see😉

5 hours ago, DocRob said:

Thank you Paul, interestingly, MFH supplied a carbon fiber decal sheet for 1/20 cars, which looks right to me here. After application, it looked glossy and ok, but after a semi matte coat, it looked right. It was quite a bit of work, to cut the decals out of the supplied sheet. Luckily it was only the monocoque in the early 80´s.

Cheers Rob

Looking great Rob have to agree on the CF decals spot on and you know me and cars but racers.....another pedigree😉

Good to see you back Rob, I was wondering how you were getting on.

I’ve put mine away for a little while, those damn hose connectors are driving me nuts - seems to be a million of them and they are such a pain to drill out. I might see if I can find some stl files for some better ones and print them out.

I think the secret with CF is to get the scale right which Rob has. So often it looks well done but it also looks wrong because its to large a pattern. Very much like wiring and hoses. So many 1/12 kits come with 1mm tubing for plug wires which makes a 12mm plug lead which is almost twice the thickness it should be .

20 hours ago, KevinM said:

Looking great Rob have to agree on the CF decals spot on and you know me and cars but racers.....another pedigree😉

11 hours ago, Paddy said:

I think the secret with CF is to get the scale right which Rob has. So often it looks well done but it also looks wrong because its to large a pattern. Very much like wiring and hoses. So many 1/12 kits come with 1mm tubing for plug wires which makes a 12mm plug lead which is almost twice the thickness it should be .

Thank you Kevin and Paddy, I was astonished, that MFH supplied a CF decal sheet, which originally was made for 1/20 scale, but it looks correct. Like Paddy mentioned CF decals and tubing are often out of scale, like the Tamiya vinyl tubing, which resemble garden hoses.

Cheers Rob

19 hours ago, Nick said:

Good to see you back Rob, I was wondering how you were getting on.

I’ve put mine away for a little while, those damn hose connectors are driving me nuts - seems to be a million of them and they are such a pain to drill out. I might see if I can find some stl files for some better ones and print them out.

I was just taking a break to build the huge Unicorn Gundam beast in between. I needed some pur plastic building for a change, but now, I´m on the Brabham again.
The connectors are indeed a pain to drill, especially, if they are not cast perfectly. If you have problems with that, you should try different types of drill bits. The today very typical bits for PCB are very aggressive while drilling. Classic HSS bits are a bit more relaxed to use. I drill by hand only and very carefully.
If you don´t want to print, there are numerous companies producing connectors in different forms and sizes, which are easy to use. MFH has some, Decalcas and Top Studio and others as well.

Cheers Rob

After a month of pause for another build and one forum version later, I continue with the Brabham. I riveted and finished the side skirts and glued them in place. The skirts are made from resin and one was heavily bended, so I clamped the pieces in place, using Kabuki tape for protection. Nonetheless, I got some marks left and had to polish again.





After the bottom was painted and finished, I added some cooling devices and the electronic box with all the needed wiring. Again the manual mentioned mostly the needed length and diameter of the wire, but only rarely, where the wire leads. You have to browse through the whole manual to eventually find the proper connection, very annoying, especially, sometimes there is no match and I guess the wire is supposed to vanish somewhere under the engine. The embossed aluminum foil on the left side is self adhesive and you get a paper template to cut it out.



Cheers Rob

I got the front suspension done so far, an enjoyable part of the build, especially, as I drilled, prepared and painted the parts before my pause. Again, I used my proven technique of airbrushing highly thinned Tamiya LP-5 semi matte black over the metal parts. The very light translucency of the black paint let a tiny bit of metal showing through on corners and edges, which gives it a more metallic appearance. The white metal parts were primed with Tamiya clear metal primer. Like with all MFH builds I made, the suspension is not working, maybe due to the weight of the completed model.





Cheers Rob

Nice work there Rob. It's probably a good thing it's not functional as it looks so delicate.

1 hour ago, FG2Si said:

Nice work there Rob. It's probably a good thing it's not functional as it looks so delicate.

Thanks Carl, it might be possible, even with the weight, but there is no way to secure the bolts without gluing them.

Cheers Rob

Yesterday, I finished the front suspension and only need to add the brakes. I started to mount all the hydraulic systems to the firewall and wired them. Then I added the inner nose fairing, whihc fitted well.
On the second picture you can see the finalized suspension for the left side. Meanwhile, the right one is finished too. The steering horns were a bit fiddly to add and it pays to work out the best assemble sequence. At the end, there will be some touch up work, but this I will do after installing the brakes.





Today, I managed to get the brakes done, again a bit fiddly with the calipers attached with tiny rivets. The brake lines are not in their final places, bur I added them nonetheless. There is no way to make the front steerable, which is ok for me. The kit includes two types of brake discs, carbon and steel, but doesn´t mention, where and when which were used. I opted for the carbon version, where interestingly the calipers are on the front side. With steel discs, they are on the backside, which may have to do with the cooling.



One reason for choosing the carbon brake discs was, I wanted to try carbon paint, in my case the pigmented paint from Zero Paints. You need to spray with a bit more pressure and a 0,4 mm nozzle, to get the pigmented color through the nozzle. I like the effect and after airbrushing, I finely sanded the inner ring back to metal.



Cheers Rob

Edited May 22May 22 by DocRob

Looks great!! Gary S.

Tidy looking work, Rob. The bare metal parts certainly look better than painted parts.

15 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Tidy looking work, Rob. The bare metal parts certainly look better than painted parts.

Thanks Gary, you can´t beat the real thing. The white metal MFH uses is very good to work with. You can polish it to a high shine finish, like I have done with my Crocker motorcycle build.
Parts like the black front cover here, I prime with clear metal primer and spray it with heavily thinned Tamiya LP-5, semi matte black. Edges keep the metallic sheen after drying, which looks very convincing to me.

Cheers Rob

I agree! It's a very nice effect.

That's looking pretty darn good their Rob now the some terminology question Steering horn=steering knuckle on this side of the pond?🤔

Thanks Kevin, but I have no idea, what you mean with the horn/knuckle thing. As a German, my English isn´t that good, so maybe I failed to make myself understand. And no, I´m either living on this or that side of the pond, I live in it .

Cheers Rob

Getting closer with the front section. I finished the instrument panel with all the levers and brutally tiny rivets (about one millimeter long). The bezels were painted gloss black on top of the semi matte panel, according to photos I have.
The steering wheel was first airbrushed semi matte black and the foam rubber coating was brush painted with a mix from black smoke pigments, Tamiya flat base and thinner. This gives a better structure scale wise than my former experiments with Street Blisters flocking material and is dead flat in finish.

Installing the carbon fiber fairing with the IP onto the body was a bit problematic, as the part was warped and didn´t fit at the front end. Some surgery and a bit of force and added CA made it work. Don´t look too close, there are some touch up´s needed after my rude treatment.







I test fitted the upper front body on top and everything looks promising. Not always the case with MFH kits and I fear, after breaking all my ignition plugs, the backside will be more of a chore. But that´s for later.
I usually take my pictures in a booth, but since I build cars with high shine finishes, I dislike the booth, as it always looks as if there is some orange peel effect visible, which is caused by the numerous LED´s and not my paintjob. Filtering doesn´t really work and I have to experiment a bit more.



Cheers Rob

Steering horn and knuckle are two different names for the same thing.

Impressive work Doc. , I can only drool over the quality and detail.\

Cheers

Martin

2 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

Steering horn and knuckle are two different names for the same thing.

Impressive work Doc. , I can only drool over the quality and detail.\

Thanks Martin, what I thought about the horn thing.

Cheers Rob

I added some more details, like gear shifter and electrical emergency switch, but these are not visible on the actual pics. It is time now, to perform the dreaded marriage between front and rear part. Dreaded because on these steps, there are always fit issues of all kinds and I also knock off parts during the process. This time, it was the second fit test, It looks at least half way promising.
Later, I will post some pictures of what is under the body parts with still lots of work to do, numerous parts and sub assemblies to add and not to forget, glue all the knocked off parts in place, which I lost during the first fit test. I have still no idea, if the ignition wires and spark plugs fit under the body, because they went loose with the first try.





Cheers Rob