Ferrari F40 "Blackstar" WIP #5

Welcome back for the next installment on the F40 build.

I thought I had initially finished the chassis last week, until I noticed that I had left a few pieces off on Monday. These were the two air filters and the rear screen, so these were quickly fitted and the chassis is finally finished along with the wheels fitted on as well. So here are a few photos of the finished chassis before all of the interior gets fitted in place.

Onto the interior now. On the instructions, everything is painted on the interior using two colours that need to be mixed up first. Now around 1996/7, I was lucky enough to go for a spin in a F40 and I can vaguely remember seeing bare carbon fibre panels on the interior of the car. Research on the internet confirmed this, but I managed to find some photos of the interior from one of the prototypes and noticed something slightly different. The production cars had the same size carbon fibre weave on the interior construction as on the seats. But the prototype had a larger weave on the body from the seats. So I had to source two different sizes of CF decal for this effect on the model. 

Carbon fibre decal sheets in 1/16th scale is hard to come by, but what I did was to buy some of Scale Motorsport's 1/12th scale for the body and 1/20th scale for the seat backs. Whilst i was waiting for the decal sheets to be delivered, I made up some templates for the main panels on the interior tub for covering out of masking tape. Five templates in total were made, one for the centre counsel and four templates for the side sections. Before adding the CF, I airbrushed the floor and rear panel with the required colours I had mixed.

First the counsel was covered and left to dry, then the lower front corner sections. Plenty of Micro Sol and the hairdrier were used to get the decals to stretch into place. The two front kick panels were next followed by the inner side panels finishing with the outer panels. The front inner panel was measured up and transferred onto the rear of the decal sheet, cut out and then applied to the front inner wall. The last bits to be done was the handbrake opening/tray of the counsel. I cut two strips to run around the sides then two more panels for the bottom. This completed the CF decals for the car interior tub and now just needs the paint to be touched up after it was stained by the Micro Sol.

The dashboard was painted almost to the instructions. Another difference I noticed was the panel in front of the passenger seat was in a gloss black finish, not the same colour as the dashboard. Luckily, I had left this off to make it easier to paint anyhow, so this was brush painted with gloss black before all of the panels/lights, or what they were got painted.All of the dial decals were added after painting and given a couple of coats of Johnsons Klear to seal them. Not I just need to paint the accelerator pedal, gearstick and handbrake lever before gluing them in position. The seats are not done yet because I am doing some modifications to them for the 5 point harnesses and adding some extra detail around their edges. I will update on these later.