WIP 1/20 MFH Lotus 49/49B/49C

[edi956]

1/20 MFH Lotus 49B-R7 #22 Joseph Siffert, 1968 British GP winner

This is my first attempt to write a WIP for f1m, so sorry for my English and for pics quality.

This is the first Lotus 49 I finished, and it is part of a project of building the most important cars of this series (not so big as Derek’s P34 project):

49/R2 #5 Jim Clark, 1967 Dutch GP winner: first 49 and Ford Cosworth victory, on their debut;
49/R4 #4 Jim Clark, 1968 South African GP winner: last Clark’s victory and last GP with Lotus in green & yellow colours;
49B/R5 #9 Graham Hill, 1968 Monaco GP winner: “duck tail”;
49B/R7 #22 Jo Siffert, 1968 British GP winner: first Seppi’s victory in F1 (and I was a Siffert fan);
49B/R6 #1 Graham Hill, 2nd 1969 South African GP: the only GP with aerofoil both front and rear;
49B/R6 #2 Jochen Rindt, 1969 United States GP winner: first Jochen’s victory with Lotus, low wing;
49C/R6 #3 Jochen Rindt, 1970 Monaco GP winner: last 49’s victory

As a Siffert fan, the first 49 I did it was his one.
Now, on the desk are Clark’s 49/R2, 1967 Dutch GP, and Rindt’s 49B/R6 1969 US GP, while waiting Roberto of Icaro send me the other 49s I ordered.

After having done the first 49 and before speaking of it, an overall consideration has to be done: I bought all these kits because they are the only 1/20 scale on the market and we know the quality of MFH, but it is quite a real challenge to build them, so I want to give some suggestions to avoid mistakes and/or difficulties I found on building.

(1)Get lot of reference material: MFH say they make their kits only with pics of the time…but I seem they made some mistakes, so I get all magazines (Autosport, Motor Sport, Sport Auto, Autosprint, etc.) and books (among them, the bible is “Lotus 49 – Story of a Legend) I could find.
(2)Try and fix all parts of the kit: there is none that right match, especially the inner part of the pieces (where two pieces have to be joint). Moreover, enlarge all the holes you find and reduce all the fittings…and it’s not enough. Every time you meet a hole, ask to yourself “what kind of piece will be fitted here?”. Well, you try to fit the piece in that hole and you understand that the hole has to be enlarged. But, when you try to joint the engine to the chassis, for example, you can see they don’t match quite right…so you have to start again to try and fix and enlarge and so on…
(3)Don’t follow the instruction: study well them, and then study again…now you can really start the building as you like. I’ve make the first 49 following MFH instruction, but for the others I’m going to build I’ll follow my scheme.

Anyway, following MFH instruction, you can build parts separately and then join them: chassis/bodywork, engine, gearbox/rear suspension, and so on.

Fig,001 – MFH instructions begin with chassis and bodywork: my own suggestion is to build them and then painting (with masking), since some putty is needed, particularly behind driver’s neck, where the upper part of the central tank meet the body (A) and where there is a gap of about 1 mm that is impossible on the real car. Another suggestion is not to glue the front part of the engine to the chassis (B), but make engine and then glue the whole engine to the chassis.

[edi956]

Figg.002-003 – As to the bodywork, MFH made holes instead of rivets: after having painted the bodywork I was not quite satisfied, so I removed colours and I put rivets that I’ve ordered to Scale Hardware: they are 0.4, 0.5 and 0.7 mm, with drilling of 0.35, 0.4 and 0.5 mm, respectively.

[edi956]

Fig.004 – This piece has two holes (A) for seatbelt….arrgh: no seatbelt on Siffert’s car for all 1968 (and for works 49 too, a part of Oliver from Canada forward and Hill and Andretti from US forward). Therefore those holes had to be filled. I generally use a putty I took by a frend of mine who has a body shop: it is quicker to dry and easier to work instead of modeling one.

[edi956]

Fig.005 – This piece of body has to be treated alone, since it changed during the 49’s career: for 1968 British GP Siffert and Hill had it in this way, while Oliver had fuel filler cap separated from access hatch on his R2. About this I can better explain in WIP of the next Lotus 49.

[edi956]

Fig.006 – For rear wing I didn’t use rivets, but an aluminium sheet treated inside and then glued on the original MFH wing. IMPORTANT: for this GP the rear wing was painted in body colour and not aluminium as MFH instructions say.

[edi956]

Figg.007-008 – Seat: I don’t know which reference MFH found for such a kind of seat!
I could see a lot of difference among years and among drivers, but no one used that seat.
Moreover, the MFH seat it is too large and cannot be put into the chassis in any way.
For sure, all 49s had one piece for each side into the chassis to protect driver’s legs: so I cut them from the original seat and put them inside the chassis.
I couldn’t find any reference pic of the time which clearly shows Siffert’s seat, but I realised that he had one piece for his “side B” on the chassis (cut where is the red line; on Fig.008 we can see the position where it was, covered with black skin supplied by MFH) and another piece (that with the “ears”) behind him…and so I did.

[edi956]

Figg.009-010-011-012 – Dashboard: the original one was anti-reflex (I don’t know if it is the right English word), so I glued abrasive paper on plasticard which I previoulsy cut using the dashborad of the kit as template, and then I painted with semi-gloss black.
Moreover, I made holes for the instruments that I made in this way: I cut tubes of the right length; I applied the decals and, while drying, I cut from transparent plasticard their covers (with the device which makes holes in the belt); finally, p/e parts for rounding instruments, switches and so on; cables were painted according to reference pics of the time
The original Lotus 49 had the steering-wheel a little on the left (to make confortable the use of the gear-lever) and MFH did it right. On this model, it was black.

[edi956]

Figg.013-014 – Front suspension: on the “B-Type” the ‘A-arm’ top rocker arms, which had previously been at a 90° angle to the monocoque, were swept forward and MFH did it right. All pieces of front suspension are in white metal, so I polished them without painting. The only changes to the box are the springs (which have to be black and not chrome silver) and the cables that I added according to reference pics of the time. Pay particular attention to the mounting of the front upright, disc (not ventilated) and caliper: the final surprise may be it doesn’t enter into the wheel rim (so it happened to me…).

[edi956]

Figg.015-016-017 – Radiator: on the “B-Type” there was the radiatory only inside the nosecone, since the oil-tank was put on the rear, above the gearbox. I built this step out of the box: only the bottom of the radiator, instead of painting, was covered by a brass piece of bare metal foil.

[edi956]

Fig.018 – Engine: MFH did a very good work. I built engine out of the box, since no particular had to be added. A part of the pieces painted gun-metal or semi-gloss black, the whole engine has been polished and then coated with Tamiya smoke. Instead of using clear tube, I tried to paint them with transparent yellow and I seem that plug cords appear better.