Now, I guess some of you will be wondering why there are photos of a finished model of a Nissan GT-R posted below. Well the answer is simple, I never finished this project. Externally, she looks finished, but I never got around to fitting the engine, exhaust and engine bay detail.
A brief run down of this project. The kit is an Aoshima Skyline R32 GT-R from the "Street Tuning Drift Machine"range. Now, these kits are kerbside only, but Aoshima did produce an engine detail set for their R32's. But this was not good enough for me so I cast myself some RB26 engines from the Tamiya engine out of their R32 GT-R, solely for use in the Tamiya R33 and R34 GT-R's. So I decided to fit one into this model to but.
Work had started by cutting away the bonnet from the bodyshell and the lower engine detail away from the chassis. I had also made a bulkhead wall and front brace in the engine bay and painted it. But that was as far as I got with the project. Now, eight years down the line, I decided it was time to finally finish the GT-R off.
The first thing to sort out was the hinges for the bonnet to open and close. This was done over a few evenings, then after several attempts, I managed to get the to hinges work how I wanted them. There is still a little adjustment to be made to allow the bonnet to sit in the closed position properly.
Next I needed to redo the front strut housing tops as the filler that covered them had cracked up. So I cleared the filler away and scratch-built some new parts out of plasticard to replace the missing detail.
Now I could finally get the engine mounted in its position and then start adding the front pulleys and fan to find the location for mounting the radiator. This needed some modifications done to allow it to sit low enough to clear the bonnet and let the engine sit correctly. Work continued with adding the front differential unit after some chopping around of it.
The turbos were next in the order. Once they had been cleaned up, the two halves were glued together and the mounting holes in the engine block were drilled out for the pins to go in. Unfortunately, I did not have any of the inlet manifolds cast up, so I used the one from the Aoshima engine set instead. I am also planning to use other items from this set to finish off the engine bay to save me having to scratch-build the parts. So this is as far as I have got now. I just need to sort out a few more things in the engine bay before it gets re-painted. I think I will paint it white this time, just to show the engine better.
The following photos show how the GT-R looks with the bonnet open and engine in place. There is a bit more work to do yet, but I hope to have this finished in the next few weeks. The bonnet needs respraying as there was a mark in the paint right in the middle of it. But I am toying with the idea of using some carbon fibre decal on it instead.
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