Ferrari F430 Challenge

[Nacho Z]

I thought I would post my latest project. This is Fujimi's Ferrari F430 Challenge kit. I fell in love with the livery the moment I saw it. It was not an easy kit to find. It had been out of production when I learned about it. A buddy of mine found it on eBay for me.




Progress will be slow due to a ridiculous work load at work.  I began by working on the body.  No complaints on the molding.  The entire kit appears to be very well done.  I rescribed all of the panel lines.  After shooting the first coat of primer I found a few areas that needed a little more work. 





Once I was satisfied with the body work, I shot Tamiya gloss black right out of the can.  My first attempt left way more orange peel than I am used to.  I let the paint cure and I shot several heavier coats right over the top of the previous coats.  The paint leveled out nicely, with no runs, but I ended up get a few specks of dust in the paint.  I had to polish it out.

[Nacho Z]

As with all of my other threads, this one will follow the same format. I am posting work that has been done a while back. In real time, I am further along with the build than what I am posting.


Work continues on the body paint.  There are a lot of decals which will cover up a lot of painted area.  I am not sure if I am going to clear coat this model after I decal it.  There are a lot of curves on this Ferrari and you just cannot get into all of the nooks and crannies with your finger tips.  I use Tamiya's cotton swabs for getting into all of the hard to reach spots.






This is not the final result on the front trunk.  More work was done on it.



Finally for today, the lower nose area must be painted red.  On the real car, it is bright red.  I painted the area white first so that the red would be brighter than if I had painted the red directly of black.  Personally, masking is probably my least favorite thing to do.

[Nacho Z]

Time for an update. The body is polished out. It is almost a shame to cover it up with decals.

This picture is a little over exposed, but it shows the level of shine.

[Eddie]

Looks great, can't wait to see how it comes out!

[oldcoyote]

WOW! That paint is spectacular!

[Nacho Z]

After a year and a half, I have pulled this one back out and will try to get her finished up.  As with most of us, life has a way of getting in the way of bench time. It looks like it has been about a year and a half since I've updated this thread. Fortunately, I have built other models in this time frame. I've recently had a minor surgery and am off of work, so I thought it would be a good time to work on this model. I would like to have this finished up by the end of September so that I can enter it in a model contest. I have decided to keep this model "box stock" so that I can enter it in that class at future contests. On to the update!



The tire on the left has the decal applied and the tire on the right has the decal coated with dull coat.



Working on the rear diffuser. The car has the Italian flag colors on the rear diffuser. I had to paint this. It was a little tricky to get this done. It came out OK but not perfect. I also had to paint a small piece for the front chin.

[Eddie]

Great to see you back on this, would love to see the other builds you've done.
I haven't done any modelling in a long time now as with running my own business and raising 3 boys I find very little time, or energy for it.

[Nacho Z]

Interior is done and installed on the chassis plate. As I stated earlier, this is being built for "box stock" or "out of box" categories for model contests. Unfortunately, there are no seat belts, decals or otherwise, included in this kit.   What a stupid oversight on Fujimi's part. The seats are a nice flat red. They are showing up a little overexposed in the following pictures.

[Eddie]

For some reason I can't see the pictures on your latest post.

[Nacho Z]

Although this model is done, I will continue to post a few progress photos and explain what I had to do to finish her up.

After the interior, I worked on the engine.  It looks good sitting in the engine bay.  It is not a full engine, just the top side.  It took some careful masking to get it to look right.  I often use Silly Putty or Blu-Tac for masking.

[Nacho Z]

For the most part, it is just the body that is left.  I have always said that my least favorite part of modeling is masking.  My favorite part decaling.  Although on this build I had a bit of a disaster which I will show you a little bit later.

First picture is of the decal sheet for this beauty.  This thing is almost a foot long!




I always try to trim my decals as close to the image as possible.  I have a good pair of scissors that I only use to trim decals.




I couldn't help myself, I had to do a quick mockup with the body on the chassis.

[Nacho Z]

Looks like it has been around 8 months since I last posted on the thread.  I understand that the forum is pretty much defunct, (which was my choice as Admin.), but I see that we still have a good number of visits to this site every day and I thought it would be good to keep posting here.  Maybe someone will see something that inspires them to build or try something new.  Anywho, on to the update.


I'm going to skip over the rest of the in-progress pictures because they are all just various stages of decal placement.  Following are a few pictures of the finished model.


















If you have read through this thread you may have noticed that I said I was building it "Box Stock" so that I could enter it into that category at model contests.  That is how I built it and I am happy to say that it has placed in every show it has been entered in.  I am pretty proud of the fact that it received a Gold medal at an IPMS show.  It has received a Best Import and a Judges Best in Class.  So I would have to say, mission accomplished!

[Eddie]

Looks fantastic John.

It's great to see someone else still visits this ghost town. since photobucket did their thing its very difficult to post anything.

[Nacho Z]

Hi, Eddie! It is funny, if you look at the statistics at the bottom of the page you will see that there are nearly 100 visitors here on a daily basis. If only people would post and participate here, this would be a great place.

[oldcoyote]

Great build sir. I'm really glad you finished it. You have amazing talent to pull off such a gorgeous piece of racing history. Well done!

[Nacho Z]

Sept 1, 2019 7:46:54 GMT -5 oldcoyote said:

Great build sir. I'm really glad you finished it. You have amazing talent to pull off such a gorgeous piece of racinh history. Well done!

Thank you, OC, I appreciate the kind words.

[fireguy14]

Fantastic build!