It's been a very long time since i posted a completed kit on here, mainly due to failures and lack of interest. I have been building though, just not F1... A few images included to prove i'm not lying
Tamiya F-16N and Aoshima's 270Z Widebody kit. But anyway, onto the star of the post, the MP4/31. This is actually the second Ebbro Mclaren i've built, and it builds up almost exactly the same as the 4/30. Sometimes i'd have to stop and check to make sure Ebbro hadn't copied parts from the old kit (they hadn't). I built it up to represent Button's car at the USGP that i went to, and Tabu provided the fill in decals. (I know they made a late season that is more accurate but i already had this). Studio 27 full CF decals were used, and boy that bogged me down. I also stole the super soft tires off of my 4/30 kit, as i liked the look of them better than the softs provided with this kit. There was over 300 decals on this sheet, about 100 of which were for the front wing area. Because of all of these decals, this has taken me about 2 months to complete.
This is actually my first ever airbrushed paint job, using Gravity color's Mclaren predator grey (full stop, you can argue all you want on this color but seeing this car in person, gravity is by far the closest to the varying shades this color takes on) and a UPOL clear straight from the can. I'm actually very pleased with how it came out.
As for building the kit, its pretty straightforward. There are so many fiddly bits that it is really imperative that you plan your steps well in advance. The biggest issue that i had that messed me up a lot was the fit of the lower body panels around the rear suspensions. Maybe i was doing it wrong, but it just would not fit right and would cause the entire body shell to sit to high in the back. Long story short, if your building the kit, i found out it was the little stubs on the front of these two pieces. I cut them off, and voila the whole thing fit.
I got this kit for about $55 from my LHS. Was it worth this? No way at all. Its just to fiddly and some of the engineering is a bit odd (mainly around the little add on bits). However, it would be worth the $30 or so HLJ has it for. I made quite a few mistakes and a lot of the decals show it, but if nothing else i'm proud of the paint job i did.
