1/24 Maserati 3500 GTi, and an embarrasingly messy desk

Models in progress... including non-F1 models.
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whatisdeletrazdoing
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1/24 Maserati 3500 GTi, and an embarrasingly messy desk

Post by whatisdeletrazdoing »

Hi everyone,

This is a rare one for me - a road car. My model club (Brooklyn Plastic Modeler's Society) is having an Aurora-themed contest in June. All entries will be Aurora kits or reboxes of them. The kit I've chosen is a Monogram rebox of the Aurora 1/24 Maserati 3500 GT. The kit has the Lucas mechanical fuel injection, making it a GTi. I'm calling it a 1962 as all the references I have (a video from Jay Leno's garage and a Bring a Trailer listing) are 1962 model years.

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Here's the boxart, it's not great. As you can see, the wire wheels are pretty bad. I will be replacing them with a set of Borrani wheels from Fujimi - if I can find a set!


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And here are the box contents. It looks like the parts have spent a long time jiggling around, with loose bits are scratches abound. I will sand and smooth out all of the bodywork before painting. But everything is there!


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Since the front and rear clips are separate, the body requires some glueing and filling. Overall the body looks pretty good. I understand there are some shape accuracy issues, but I won't bother with that. I did have to add a thin piece of plastic card to get the grill opening to fit the grill itself.


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After filling holes and gaps, I sanded the body with 500 grit sandpaper, then 600 and 1000. With opening doors, hood, and trunk, the only panel line on the body I had to be careful with was the gascap cover. You can see a healthy bead of C/A glue on the inside of the rear body shell.


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I tackled the inside of the body before the outside. The headliner (and interior floor) is Tamiya acrylic Sky Blue toned down with some light grey. I then painted the rest of the inside of the body matte black. Here you get a good glimpse at my horribly messy desk.


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I then primed the body with Mr. Primer Surfacer 1000 to fill any minor defects. After some light sanding in problem areas, I gave the body a healthy coat of Tamiya white fine primer.


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I am going to do a two-tone paint scheme, with a cream white top and a metallic blue body. The first color to go on is TS-7 Racing White. I will airbrush a Mr. Color metallic blue in a few days.


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Here's the interior floor. The other side is a semi-gloss black, and the interior side is the blue/grey mixture I used for the headliner.


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I felt the floor was a little too dark, so I went over the whole thing with a wash of white to tone it down. Also pictured is the battery compartment door. I have a battery from my spares box and will build the whole compartment later on.


More to come!
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CelicaGT
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Re: 1/24 Maserati 3500 GTi, and an embarrasingly messy desk

Post by CelicaGT »

Nice start! Looks like it will be a beauty when you finish.
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whatisdeletrazdoing
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Re: 1/24 Maserati 3500 GTi, and an embarrasingly messy desk

Post by whatisdeletrazdoing »

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Most of the parts have now been given some paint. My references showed the underside of the chassis is almost entirely matte black, so I used up a lot of Tamiya acrylic flat black. The main chassis piece will get a few little details added in the future to make it more interesting.


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Other bits got varying shades of silver/metal. Overall I'm impressed with the quality of this kit. Nicely detailed and the fit has been decent. There are plenty of worse kits that are far newer than this one.


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Front suspension/crossmember subassembly together. This was a little tough as the gaps are a bit large and required generous amounts of C/A.


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And here's the subassembly mated to the chassis. It's starting to look like something!


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Here's the engine in an early state of assembly. I drilled 12 holes in the head so I can wire up the spark plug wires (this engine had two spark plugs per cylinder). I will also drill holes in the injector trumpets to add fuel lines from the Lucas injection system.
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