Lamborghini Aventador - 1/24 Fujimi

[mattbacon]

Next up on the bench, the new Fujimi Aventador. Very crisp mouldings, and excellent fit so far. There have been a fair few complaints about the fact that it's "kerbside," but I'm going to treat it like the Hasegawa Miura, which I thought was absolutely fine.



I've fitted together the "body in white" - the bits that will be orange, rather than black/grey/carbon, so that I can spray it in one piece after addressing the fine mould lines. The sills fit great below the doors, but actually don't need the moulded recesses for the tabs ahead of the rear wheel arches, and need to be shimmed out. I have a cunning plan relating to the kerbside nature of the kit, which the chap in the seat is part of. Who is he? Some say he drinks a pint of MEK for breakfast...



It's going to be the deep orange, so, I shall be using the black wheels. The front tyres have been criticised, so these have a pair of Pegasus replacements for the fornts, which are lower profile, and stretched slightly to go over these rims. They look OK to me...



And this is what's taken most of the time so far - chain drilling and opening up all the vents for fitting the photo-etch mesh parts. There are more in the engine bay and floor pan, which I've also done. Not much fun, and I'm now wondering how much they'll need to be blanked to avoid the "see though" look as well. Time to look more closely at my pictures of the real thing...

bestest,
M.

[sesquipedalian]

Presume they don't have a visible engine like a Ferrari then (under a glass/clear plastic panel) ?

[mattbacon]

Oh, they do have a visible enge, of which more below...

Finally... some progress worth reporting. There has been a lot of priming, polishing, coat after coat of orange etc, and it seems to have been going quite slowly until suddenly lots of bits started to come together.



Body and panels primed with Halfords white plastic primer and polished with 4000 and 6000 micromesh. I've actually started the base coast today, but it's not ready to photograph yet.




Did I mention the orange? Lots of coats of Vallejo Game Colour Fiery Orange to get this far. The cabin is very simple - only 9 parts - and only two colours, really. I tried to make it a little more interesting with varied shades of black (the majority is Vallejo German Grey) and some washes. The decals work well.



The engine bay. I'm confident it'll look fine underneath the segmented rear window. It would be hugely complex to engineer the rear chassis and suspension and a full engine, and make it very hard to build and get all four wheels on the ground as well. Personally, I'm glad Fujimi took this route or I'd still be doing it next year! I need to see exactly how it fits into the body and decide whether I need to build some gizmology underneath the grilles...



Stig -- "mostly 'armless". I need the driver to be turning left, so I knew some modification would be needed. I used some softish aluminium tube to pin arms, having first chamfered all the joints so they could move more freely. I firmly fixed the tube with superglue at one end, and let it slide in the hole at the other. When I was ready to set it up, I used "90-second" epoxy to give me time to adjust everything to fit. When he was fully set in the cockpit, I removed him (I'd left the dashboard press-fitted in place so as to be able to remove him easily)



Good old Milliput is perfect for filling the gaps and re-sculpting the figure. Ready for painting the rest of him, now. And that darn visor!



...and finally for tonight... the front brake discs. As you can see, I'm going for the full Clarkson... more on this later!

bestest,
M.

[Jagewa]

Man that is nice work. Great glow on the brake discs.
We just had that episode of Top Gear last Sunday, JC certainly had those brake discs glowing...

Cheers
Jim

[Dirkpitt289]

Nice work on the Stig.

[JamesPerrin]

Presumably you need to sand all the tread off the tires too since TopGear appears to be mainly about the conversion of rubber into smoke.

[mattbacon]

Brakes finished:



Once again, simple, but finely moulded, and the decals work very well...



This is the Zero Paints two-part Arancio Argos going on. Top is the base coat completed, bottom is three coats of the top coat. Methinks it needs a bit more "blood red" topcoat to be the way I want it...



Chassis is done. The parts fit superbly - ie you have to remove the paint layers from mating surfaces for them to fit! The polycaps are a dog to get into position, but do the job brilliantly. And this convinces me that we will be able to see the braking effect when it's done!

bestest,
M.

[bromo]

Stunning work Matt,what do you reckon to zero paints? i used them with my Tamiya M1 the other year and thought they were fantastic.

[sesquipedalian]

I orange on the brake discs make them almost look rusty...!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, gents...

Here's where we are tonight:



Lots of orange...



This is just the Zero base colour. I think they are superb paints, but I found it took a while to get the two-part colour to be even and the right colour depth. Make sure you spray the doors and engine panel and body all together to finish, so the colour is identical! I think this is ready for clear now, though...



The close-up's a bit unforgiving, but Stig is nicely under way now.

bestest,
M.

[splash]

I love the hot discs.

[Jagewa]

Wow, that is going to look hot.

Cheers
Jim

[mattbacon]

Thanks, chaps... heat is the theme tonight:





That's the clear coat on. This is Zero Paints two-pack clear, which is currently at the "tack-free" stage. By the weekend it should be thoroughly dry, and I can polish out the odd speck of dust. If anyone wants to offer advice on polishing Zero 2K, then please jump in - I have some Novus plastic polishes, which is what I was going to use, but if anyone has any better ideas, fire away!

bestest,
M.

[JamesPerrin]

Wow, that does look hot.

[mattbacon]

My driver's finally turned up for work...





Not much else to see at present - I've been fitting the etched grilles everywhere, and masking and paint the glass. The clearcoat on the body is hard enough to polish out a few dust speckles now, which will be the next task, then there will be a flurry of assembly. I also need to finish painting the head and tail light interiors, which are HIDEOUSLY complex...

bestest,
M.