1/24 Gunze Sangyo Benetton B187

[Guest]

Hi all - after renewing my interest in F1 modeling I thought I'd post this up here as it looks like a good community

For many years, Benetton were my favourite F1 team. As I'd not built an F1 kit since my school days, I decided to pick a couple of Benetton kits up and attempt to put them together. I saw this one cheap on Ebay and thought it would be worth a look.

So yesterday it arrived. Box art looks standard enough:





The box itself is tiny. I thought I'd misread the ad and purchased a 1/43rd car by mistake. Upon opening it, the reason for the small box becomes clear - you don't get a lot inside it!



Ugh - it's an ex-motorised kit. No underside detail, no engine, no gearbox, no mirrors (or so I initially thought, I've found them now!) no cockpit (!) Rudimentary suspension, no brakes, no exhaust, no radiators, moulded on front wing, single piece front wing, soft plastic that you just know won't glue together properly, hardly any wheel detail.... at least the tyres are cast in some sort of rubber I suppose!

At this stage I started to think about putting it back in the box and forking out £130 for the beautiful looking MFH B187, but where's the fun in that!?

So, I don't think I have much hope of accurising or adding masses of detail to this kit - it would take forever and cost me more than the MFH offering in the long run. I would certainly like some mirrors and a cockpit though, can't do without those! I'll also add the wire wing stays that were a feature of these late 80's Benettons, and some fine weave carbon for the wings and possibly the underside.

The decals look okay, but have yellowed a bit with age. Not the end of the world. Annoyingly, GS have chosen to provide the red, blue and yellow sections of the car as a decal, with the sponsor logos already in place. I want to paint these areas, so I'm going to have to think about how I tackle that. I think I can cut out the Riello Burners logo relatively neatly and match the red, but the yellow is another story. It has a fine "Colors - Perfume of the world" script on the top of the sidepods, along with Goodyear and Ford logos.
Reference material for the B187 is hard to come by (even in the Benetton Ford - Racking Partnership book, shots of the 187 are scarce) but I have found some pics where the yellow areas of the car appear to have the Ford logo and nothing else - if anyone can confirm this please let me know!

For now I have done little work. Just filled in some holes in the floor, and glued the roll hoop and side panels to the body




Just look at the rear of those sidepods! No exhaust detail, just a blob of green plastic. "Paint Black" the instructions helpfully suggest

Any tips or reference pics for this comedy build would be much appreciated!

[lumpulus]

Yeah, I bought a couple of these some years back for $2 a kit...and they aren't even worth that much...

Good luck to you, and Tamiya makes the B188 in 1/20 that is really nice if you're interested.

[Guest]

Yeah, I bought a couple of these some years back for $2 a kit...and they aren't even worth that much...

Good luck to you, and Tamiya makes the B188 in 1/20 that is really nice if you're interested.

Tell me about it! B188 is on the shopping list. This one is a practice run if you like, with regards to masking at least....

I've come to the conclusion that this is never going to be a brilliant kit so I'm just going to concentrate on the paint and make it as best I can.

Started with some work on the brake ducts. I covered these with SMS Carbon/Pewter. Nice solid decal that reacts well to liberal doses of Microset and Microsol.

Here are the ducts after applying the decal:



Then after some scalpel work, more Microsol, and a few liberal cloats of Halfords clear:



Not perfect but they will do.

The body is never going to look right, the tub and nose are all the wrong shape as is the engine cover, but I will never get it right so let's splash on some colour. After a coat of Halfords white primer, I applied the yellow this afternoon. I used Zero Paints Camel Yellow - first time I have used an airbrush and first time I have used this paint. Really pleased with it even if my compressor has a small air leak and is losing pressure (need to PTFE tape one of the unions)



The paint goes on flat so will need a lot of clear afterwards, but I'm chuffed with the colour:





As you can see I have some blemishes and orange peel so I will sand that back and the finish left should be "good enough" for me. Then I can airbrush on the red, blue and green to finish the body. Not looking forward to that, it will be a right masking effort!

[Seiiki]

The Tamiya B192 is nice enough like the B188 if you don't want to spend it on a Hiro 1:20 B187. Besides, you can also pick-up the Hasegawa 1:24 GP editions of the B189, B190, B190B, B191. Wave has the plastic kits of B192, B193, B194 with Revell having the B194 also. All of these plastic kits have engine details and they are much better than the kids' toy Gunze crap.

[rasputen]

Bendigeidfran, you are correct - the "Colors" script and associated wording was added sometime during the season. The Gancia wording and logos on the front wing end plates were also added later.

There were other variations too. Some races had the large Benetton logo on the side pods like the kit, while the later races had a large Sisley logo instead. Also, I think the louvers in the side pods disappeared very early in the season. The kit side pods have a cresent shaped indentation at the rear, but the real car just had a rounded piece cut off of the side pod in that location to clear the exhaust.

[Guest]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions, rasputen. I'll be leaving the "Colors" script off at least.

Back from holiday, not a vast amount done but I decided to be brave and have my first ever attempt at proper masking. I used Tamiya tape and I'm reasonably pleased with the results, considering the complex curves involved. Here is the shell after painting with a few coats of Zero (which is lovely stuff to airbrush with!)









A few problems - the amount of red on the cockpit sides is uneven (one side has more red than the other), there are a couple of spots of overspray due to poor masking, and the actual mask line is not perfectly crisp, but overall very happy with my first attempt. Remember these paints are a matt finish so I will need to lacquer everything at the end.

Next step - green!