The F1M Forums

Good afternoon,

Having built a Kit over the Winter usually at about this time of year I go out, enjoy the Weather, do other things & return to building in October maybe November. However current World events have somewhat derailed that plan.

In response I thought that I would carry on building things and, given that I'm usually terrible at recording & posting any work in progress, I'm going to start & mantain a WIP Thread.
I tend to build very slowly & take my time so I don't expect this to be at all quick.

So here goes, another of my all time favourite Cars, FW18. Very happy memories of a great team at the top of it's game. A driver that clinched a championship, & in so doing wrote history by becoming the Only (Until 2016) Son of a Champion to become so himself.

I've already made a few intial modifications but all require more tweaking before they're correct.


(Red line) - The Head protection faired into the Airbox/Engine cover with quite a pronounced & very strong corner/ line. I've softened this by sanding but may have have taken off a little too much, I'll add some Putty & reshape it until I think it's more accurate.

(Blue Line) - The Roll over structure should blend into the Head protection with a very smooth radius but the Kit was a very abrupt corner . so I've added putty & sanded a radius.

(Green line) - The internal radius of the Head protection was again, very abrupt so more putty added & sanded to a smoother, more accurate shape.

(Purple lines) - The longitudinal area of the Head protection features "cut outs" for the Drivers Shoulders & the point at which the Seat meets the rear section. These area's of the model will be removed to more accurately align with the real thing. (See below).
Near the front end of the Padding it narrows inwards very slightly, so I'll add some material to replicate this.

See Pics/ Red line.

looking forward to seeing this progress

I saw Jacques win Indy so for a while he was who I rooted for in F1. I like the car and looking forward to your building of it. I like you attention to detail and really looking forward to that paying off in the end.

Jordan

A quick update.

I'm waiting for some wet & dry Paper to arrive so my modifications thus far are a little rough & need tidying up.

I've removed the Shoulder recesses from the Head protection as detailed in my first post & removed some material to accomodate the upper Seat radius. I added this on FW17 using part of a Highlighter pen top & it worked really well so I'm doing the same again here.
I still need to add the material to thin the forward part of the Head protection as mentioned but will get to that at some point.

I noticed a big error on the sidepod Walls & was a little suprised that I hadn't noticed it before. Studio 27 appear to have added 1997 FW19 sidepods to the FW18. FW18 doesn't have an undercut Sidepod, the Walls are vertical (See Red line) in the Pic below.
Where as FW19 features a very prominent undercut profile.
Having seen this, I couldn't "un see" it & decided to rectify it. Initially I wasn't entirely sure how to aproach it but fortunately
the Kit has a lot of material in this area & it's easily removed resulting in the correct (vertical) profile.
Finally I noted a horizontal swage line just inside & ahead of the Rear tyres & roughly machined these in place. They're a little low at present but I'll rectify this when the Wet & dry paper arrives.

Thanks for looking. More to follow "as & when".

KB.

Hi all,

A bit of progress with FW18.


I've added some Miliput to narrow the Front of the Cockpit as described in my first Post.

Rebuilt the bodywork Head protection where it blends into the Engine cover. The original was far too large & too defined. Unfortunately I removed a little too much. It's now more accurate.

The Rear end had alot of material, this made it look a little heavy, so I hollowed out the inside of the Engine cover. I have spent alot of time reducing the thickness of components elsewhere too, things like the Front Wing end plates, The forward part of the Floor (the Tea tray), Bodywork sitting in amongst the rear Wheels & anything else that looked too thick or too large.

I raised the swage line as detailed above & then started cleaning up the White Metal components, drilled & threaded the Screw Holes as required. Then assembled the rear suspension for a dry fit. It was immediately obvious that the lower wishbones prevented the Bodywork from mating correctly with the Floor Pan, the gap was approximately 1-2mm.

The solution was to File a slot into the rear of the Sidepods.

The shut line/Gap was almost perfect but I felt that the Slot was a little too tall, so I added some Putty to reduce the Height.
Finally, all of the White Metal components have been cleaned up, wet, dried with 2000 Grit Paper, Primed & painted with Satin Black ready for Carbon Decal.
The Photo Etch components have also been cleaned up & Primed ready for Painting.

That's all for now! More to follow.

Hi all,

I hope that this finds you well.

Just a small update, the Chassis/ Bodywork modifications have been completed & a coat of Gloss White has been appplied.

With the Weather not quite warm enough for any more Painting I moved onto the Front suspension. I had a quite a surprise & found quite a big inaccuarcy. The track rod/Front most Wishbones "should" be at (approx) 88-90 Degrees in relation to the Chassis/ Monocoque, the ones supplied with the Kit are 50, maybe 60 Degree's. The lean rearwards WAY! to much & are completely the wrong shape. I bent them to the correct angle but then the rear Legs were about 4-5mm too short. I did some thinking, asked some advice on here (thank you to everyone that replied, it's appreciated) tried to figure out a solution, maybe extend the existing Legs or something else? Eventually I found some scrap 1mm Aluminium Plate & a Friend (thanks NR!) Dremel CNC'd four new Wishbones for me. After much detailed Filing & sanding I have four new Aluminium Front Wishbones that are accurate & much! stronger than the originals.


The Right hand side shows the Wishbones supplied with the Kit, whilst the Left hand side is a newly fabricated one.

After alot of detail work, new scratch built upper & lower sets have been fabricated, fit perfectly, are stronger & far more accurate.
Thanks for looking, more to follow "as & when".

looking good. i built this kit years ago. i still have nightmares about it.

Hello,

It seems that you have a lot of work to this kit, your modifications look perfect.

Cheers

Franck
www.gf-models.eu

Thank you for your comments.

Mr.Grumpy wrote:looking good. i built this kit years ago. i still have nightmares about it.

It's certainly needing much more work than I had anticipated, not just cosmetic stuff that I want to change but structural, design issues too!

Can you remember any specific problems that you had when building it? Anything to look out for? Anything you can remember would be of great help to me.

Many thanks,

KB.