Another of the ubiquitous Tamiya 1:24 "Porsche 959"

[4knflyin]

It seems it could be a sort of right of passage. It's my first passenger car. The greatest significance of that is that it has an interior. That's like another skill set all together. I tried adding to the interior by getting the Quinta 3D decal set.

Very conservatively, the work so far has be split 25:70:5, build:repair:naval-gaze. In all honesty, the repair portion is likely bigger. I'm not sure I can sustain that. I'm going to try to build least two more kits and see if I can find it rewarding to build at what I think I now know is my skill level. If not, the rest of my kits may be on the market done in a year or so. Why?...

I'm not aging gracefully as I had always expected (gym rat, good food, etc.). To add to the unsteady hands I noticed when I started back at this hobby a year ago, I also could swear that I wasn't able to make detailed visual distinctions and judgements very well. I have to take a picture of anything I want to know if it's correctly done, which gets annoying and not done as often as I should. The short of it: I finally went to an ophthalmologist a couple weeks ago and, no, I wasn't imagining it. Options aren't great, so for now I see how it goes.

The moral of the story is, if you're still under, say, 65 and putting off building that model you've been thinking about, maybe now is a good time to start it.

Back to my right of passage. I bought the kit a year after Porsche stopped producing the car, 1994. Hand painted some parts on the sprue, actually glued three pieces together (that's them falling out of the bonnet, or mating with the box, I'm not sure), and that was it until last fall.

Edited January 14 by 4knflyin

[4knflyin]

This is where I'm at now, and have been for over a month. I think what I'm going to do is just show the progression of certain parts, which is a lot of build, break, rebuild worse, etc. If anybody wants an explanation beyond any I provide, please ask, I'm eager to respond. Observations/suggestions (other than find a new hobby), really, please, make them.

The current state:

 

Actually, I'm going to show you the only thing that worked right away and that was satisfying way beyond it's utility. I couldn't stand picking up the chassis and having the front wheels flopping around. The unhinged right rear, I could deal with that. But the fronts really bugged me. The very effective solution: 2.4 mm of 1.7x1.5 brass tube. Press fit. That's all it took to give me a tight front end and great satisfaction.

However, even here, if you noticed the two tiny holes in the subframe, they're the ends of 0.5 mm SS rod that's supporting the standoffs on the other side that I broke off. I'll bet nobody else has found a way to break those off. And so it begins, the lasting legacy of this build: repair, repair, repair. I still turn the wheels left and right every time I see the chassis. Very satisfying.

 

Edited January 14 by 4knflyin

[4knflyin]

An inauspicious start: I was so tired of reworking the F1 models I started my return to the hobby with, that I pulled out the last of the purchases from 1994, this 959, because I just wanted to look at it. I literally thought to myself how nice it was going to be to start with a clean sheet.

A fly landed and, not something I usually do, I swatted at it. It was on the other side of the 959 shell on my desk. The underside of my forearm came down on the roof of the car and, before I even intended to start on it, I broke the B and C pillars at their tops, and creased the A pillar. You will see in various photos the size of the B pillar grow in girth from more than five repairs. Then, finally, I scraped it down and did it right. Amazingly, the bottom part of it never separated from the door. That was 2 June, for reference.

Edited January 14 by 4knflyin

[4knflyin]

So, I buried the lead on this post when I first submitted it. This experience is what cemented in my mind that I am not seeing details normally. I’m basically not seeing fully stereoscopically.

The paint job, that I'm not all that unhappy with, went through three cycles of prime, paint, varnish. Three cycles without ever stripping it. LOL. I won't do that again. As I was advised on an earlier model, just strip it down.

It wasn't my plan each time to do a complete cycle, it just ended up after failing at spot repairs and so forth that I just sprayed the whole thing with primer to hide the mess.

#1 - Somehow I missed that I hadn't completely erased the parting lines until I'd primed it the second time.

 

So I had to do this. What you see on the fender is primer on top of silver gray on top of primer. And in the middle of it all is putty because I had wrecked the shape of the fender.

 

#2 - After putting a coat of the color down, I still hadn't erased the lines. This is the vision thing. It sucks. What really helped me decide to repaint it was that the engine cover looked noticeably different than the bulk of the body. The two remaining cycles of painting were done with the cover on the car so I could know it was getting exactly the same treatment as the rest of the body.

 

#3 - The primer always looked awesome. Very tempting.

 

Why doesn't it look as tight as the test spoon? Spoon has only one coat of color coat!

And, more importantly, I still haven't noticed the lip of paint that had collected over three cycles of painting, that had collected at the top of the rear window opening.

 

Still #3, the final major repaint. What the photo doesn't quite show is that the gloss coat is satiny smooth, like the "frozen" colors way too popular these days.

 

Now I'm on to the lip. It has to go.

 

 

That scratch in the paint? I told myself before I repainted the roof that it would be the end of chasing perfection for the paint job. And I stuck to it. So it stays, preserved under gloss.

 

Removed the tap covering the grill opening and also removed some paint I wanted to stay put. The only solution I could think of was putty. It worked great. Totally unnoticeable. From the tape I removed I was able to measure how thick the three cycles of painting was: 0.12 mm. That probably only sounds thick to somebody who knows paint. 

 

I was finally comfortable that it had seen it last repainting, so I was also comfortable enough to paint the trim. I'm often curious how other people tape off for painting.

 

This is the final product, as it is today. The headlamps are a mess.

 

Three complete paintjobs piled on top of each other. And my only regret, besides the headlamp bezels, is that I stopped at two coats of color. The roof, which has a fourth coat, has a much tighter grain. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15 by 4knflyin

[lordairgtar]

It doesn't look that bad in my 70 year old eyes. I understand about the age thing. All in all, Tamiya kits build up well.

[Bainford]

It's coming along well despite the troubles. Kudos for the efforts to get it right. 

I haven't built this kit yet, but I have read of people struggling to mate the body with the chassis during final assembly. Apparently, it's quite a bear. Hopefully someone with actual experience will chime in with details.

[4knflyin]

2 hours ago, lordairgtar said:

It doesn't look that bad in my 70 year old eyes. I understand about the age thing. All in all, Tamiya kits build up well.

 

2 hours ago, Bainford said:

It's coming along well despite the troubles. Kudos for the efforts to get it right. 

I haven't built this kit yet, but I have read of people struggling to mate the body with the chassis during final assembly. Apparently, it's quite a bear. Hopefully someone with actual experience will chime in with details.

Great screen name, m’lord. 
 

Wow, John, you’ve got a great memory, especially for someone who hasn’t even built the kit. Yes, I’ve read the stories. We shall see!

[SpikeSchumacher]

Nice work on this Marcus! My biggest challenge when building my version was that rear wing/decklid cover.

[4knflyin]

4 hours ago, SpikeSchumacher said:

Nice work on this Marcus! My biggest challenge when building my version was that rear wing/decklid cover.

Thanks for saying that, not just because it's nice, but you are giving me an entrée to feed my ego. I read your 959 thread, and Kurts, too. I wish I had his patience — and skill — to make a couple intercoolers.

Now for my starving ego: that engine cover got hours and hours of my attention. With each repainting and the changes to gaps that causes, I maintained my goal with that thing: I added the gap, not by just raising the deck, but by sanding what is actually almost a flat line from where it meats the fender skirt up and over the sharp peak. And more important to me than the gap was maintaining the sheet metal (reinforced fibre, I believe) curves that are complex back there, complex and beautiful. At each stage that I took photos of the car, I always included one showed that unbroken flow. If I you didn't give me an opportunity to tell you about it ad nauseum, nobody would have noticed. Still, not many, if any, will get it. Hah!

And the opening under the spoiler. Damn. About 30 sec. of careless sanding in that tunnel resulted in my having changed the shape of the semicircle at either end. Than 30 sec. cost me 10 hrs. or more of body repair work. If anybody knows what the pink polyester putty it is that lots of builders are using, please, please post it here. Thanks.

Now I'm going to show you stuff that only I think warrants this much attention!

It started out innocently enough. Just a bit of light sanding since I was repainting it anyways.

 

Then started big investment of pride in the outcome. Not to mention the big investment of time in "care and feeding" of the beast.

Subtle use of Tamiya epoxy putty, which I found oddly soothing to maticulassly feather it to blend with the body.

 

But fixing that 30 sec. of damage to the tunnel, that was not soothing, relaxing, or anything else pleasant.

 

 

 

 

Many very frustrating hours into it, I figured I just wasn't going to be able effectively sand in those corners. And then a eureka moment that lead to results way better than I was expecting, though leaving lots of room for justified criticism from the highly skilled.

What you saw there took a long time to do. Tens of hours in all tolled, I'm pretty sure, on just the engine cover/spoiler/fender meeting point. Mathias, you almost certainly get it.

It has beautiful lines.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 15 by 4knflyin

[Ulf]

An impressive build, this Tamiya kit is not as many think either a regular Porsche or a shake and bake kit. I know it is difficult to mount the windshield because the glass is insignificantly larger than the opening. You are absolutely right in your admonition not to postpone modeling, it was an essential part of the overall arguments for me to retire earlier (modeling had no place when I was working). Now that I finally have the opportunity, some other conditions for building have also changed but I take it based on the conditions offered.
I will follow your build in to Under glass.

[Funkychiken]

Cool build, and what a journey, i certainly don't have the patience to perfect  a model like this. 

The biggest problem i had with mine was the fit of the body shell to the chassis. There are some tabs in the engine bay that conflict...

Good advice on the aging and just do it now!

[TransAmMike]

Clearly this is a bit of a challenging kit that I have had for quite sometime and am hesitant to build.

You're doing a great job Marcus in spite of the issues you have had.   I know it's gonna complete out very nicely.