Tamiya Ferrari F40

 Purchased January 15, 2015

I wanted a challenge and wanted to finish the model without the regrets of not doing something extra. So, I bought SMS carbon fiber decals and Studio 27's photoetch set.

I purchased this kit from Ebay for a reasonable price. The parts were sealed and saw no damage except from a couple pieces detached from the tree, but were still okay. This is the older production of Tamiya's F40 kit, which you can tell by the box and item #24077 .

I started sanding the mold lines around the front fender of the hood. This followed all the way down to the front lip of the front bumper. I was very careful sanding around the headlights, as I didn't want to lose the detail of the panel lines there, which I will probably end up re-scribing anyways.

There were also mold lines by the door the ran across the handle and by the gas tank.

The engine block was glued together (3 pieces). Also sanded down where the seals were.

 

Did some putty work on these parts, as they had a few sink holes. Still some work to be done on the chassis of the car, but the others are pretty much finished.

Muffler was glued together. The detail is very nice and crisp on this Tamiya kit.

 Here's most of the pieces cut out and organized in my box.

I started working on the photoetch pieces for the muffler yesterday. It consists of 3 pieces and all have to be bent in shape of the muffler. It may see like its not the best fit, but when the pressure and glued is applied, it will look a lot better.

Here is one of the other pieces that had to be bent. It will be placed over the gap on either side.

Here is some of the progress that got done this past week:

 The photo etch for the muffler is almost done. Just need to fix up and glue another piece onto the other side.

Started to shave off the air duct piece on the window. This will be replaced with styrene and attached to the body.

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It's been a super long time, and I have been longing to pick up the F40 build. I forgot to post some updates I made back in Summer of 2020, where significant progress was made.

The fitment of the engine lid is a widely known issue with the Tamiya F40 kit. As such, I had to make some adjustments in order for it better align when the lid is closed. This consisted of sanding the bottom rear compartment and adding a piece of styrene next to the rear wheel arch pin hole to prop up the left side which is where most of the fit looked off. Below is the before and after all of the fitment related work.

I also made modifications to the side windows to better match the body of the car in real life. This is sometimes overlooked with the stock kit but the triangular area that is originally a piece of the side window is actually suppose to be part of the car's body. I shaved off the clear material of the window and replaced that space with styrene (angled and glued into place) so when I paint the body it will all be one.

Now onto the engine! As I was building, I was inspired by Alex Kustov who built an extremely detailed F40 in Giallo Modena (yellow). Similar to his build, I used a mix of Model Master metalizer paints to capture the weathering effect of various engine pieces. For additional details, I used ProTech braided lines and bolts from Tech Deck skateboard trucks as the fittings, along with the photoetch pieces in the Studio 27 set.

Cam covers were primed with Rustoleum's Textured spray paint and then detail painted / fixed with red engine wire (DTM-1025). I predrilled holes, glued into place, and used black wire for the plugs.

 

I test fitted the engine to the bottom compartment, and honestly looks like a beast! In this picture you'll also see the white piece of styrene I placed near the pin of the rear wheel arch to fix the fitment issue. I made some progress on the interior as you can see, but neglected to capture a lot of photos throughout the process. The interior has also been very time consuming given the carbon fiber decals of the tub and on the back of the seats. Still working through some of the finer details which is where I want to prioritize next alongside getting the body painted.

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The seats were primed using Rustoleum's Textured spray paint to mimic the texture of the real seats and then covered in flat red Tamiya acrylic. I then carefully applied Shunko Models satin weave kevlar pattern decals (SHK-D318) to the back of the seats. I used masking tape to create templates that I then cut out of the decal sheet and used Micro Set / Sol to fit everything nicely. 

The seat belts took way longer than they should have due to the PE set I purchased (Detail Master 2261). The ribbon material that came with the set was way too thick to loop through all of the pieces, so I did some research and bought textured medical tape to find out that even that was too thick (even after painting it red). I then resorted to 3M red masking tape which I stuck two pieces together and cut thin strips out of using a new x-acto blade. I fixed all of the PE pieces by looping the material through, folding in the ends, and sealing with super glue. This was all done with the help of tweezers as well.

I then staged and super glued each completed strip to the seat themselves, which ended up turning out great I think.