Hi Eric! Thanks for your kind words, as SeaBee sais it's actually just a lot of small and pretty easy tricks combined to give a better appearance of the whole. First off all I must say your technique when it comes to painting looks great, every part of your bikes have smooth paint texture and I really like the weathering of the exhaust systems and the CF on the mufflers. Just put some more effort into the details and you'll be passing me like a blizzard in no time! I'll tell you what I've done on these builds.
First of all work with what's already on the kit, Tamiya is after all the best brand when it comes to in mold details. Second, try to find reference pictures of the bike you're building. This way you'll see what Tamiya missed when it comes to paints and other details.
Brake calipers; SeaBee talked about these and you seem to have done it in the passed? Thin the red paint properly, I thin it like 30% paint and 70% thinner. Now take a very fine brush, I use a 0,5 brush and if you don't have one go ahead and buy it, you'll need it for other stuff as well ;-)
Dip the brush tip in the paint and just point it into the recessed lettering, 'cause it is very thin now it will flow through the whole letter. Do the same to the rest of the letters. You will get over flow, let the red set and then use a very fine abrasive paper to remove the worst, just a few very fine touches with the paper is enough, no rubbing! Then go ahead with SeaBees dry brushing, dip a brush in the gold color you used on the calipers, do a few strokes with the brush on a piece of paper to remove the very most of the paint. Then paint the caliper over the Brembo lettering, as you simply have no (allmost) paint in the brush it will not go down into the lettering! Try it, and definately skip the decals, they always look terrible...
Brake discs; Follow the instructions and use the different paints pointed out. On your pictures it looks as the whole disc is the same color. Painting the washers and rivets make them stand out and look more real.
Paint the small rivets molded in to the engine parts. Use contrasting paints and your small brush to point them out. Do the same on brake calipers and such. Contrasting paint will make the part come to life. Take a look at the clutch part on the right side of your engine. Give the bolts and rivets some aluminum color or on some bikes even blue color!
Hoses and wire; I've totally moved away from the tubing Tamiya supplies with their kits. It's an easy way to get it into place of coarse, but I find it quite a bit out of scale and a bit dull in color. I've started using nylon fishing line instead. It's easier to shape and you can paint it in any color you want. I use .4 mm line for the throttle and .6 mm for clutch and brake lines. On my NSR:s I used .2 mm as electronic wiring on the right side. To get the fishing line in place you have to cut the fittings off the parts and drill holes with appropriate drills. Dip the fishing line end in super glue and put it into the hole!
The brake fluid hose is Model Factory Hiro on these ones but I can't recommend it. I'd go with Modelers' or some other brand, I'll have to look some up for you.
On these builds I've also used Modelers' mesh hose for the radiator.
Air box: This was a test I made on these two builds, to see if I could make it. The airboxes is allmost not visible in the finished build so I think I will not do it again. But here is how I did. I painted the airboxes black, if you miss some spots with the CF it will not be that visible. I know there are templates from Scale Motor Sport to use on some kits but I used masking tape. I wasn't too exact though, I taped up one part of the airbox (work with smaller areas if there are curves, flat areas can be covered with larger pieces. I used a pen to mark the bounderies. I then cut the tape at the line and transfered it to the Scale motor sport carbon fibre decal (I used 2 different ones, one on each air box.). Then cut the CF with some extra material around the tape, so that you'll have a bit larger area than you drawed with the pen. Just a few thenths of a mm is enough. Put some Micro Set on the CF and transfer it to the air box. Now soak it in Micro Sol and get it into place with a soft brush. Use your hair dryer to "heat" it on to the air box. Most CF-decals works as shrink wrap. When heated they sort of wrap around the part to be covered. Just add more Micro Sol and heat it again to get rid of the material over flow. It works wonders.
The air box job was a bit out of my league, it has a lot of minor flaws that is not visible in the pictures. But the good part is that the technique is usable on every part that needs CF-treatment! On this kit I used it on the rear sprocket cover and the muffler bracket (wich is not yet photographed) but on newer kits like the RC211V or the M1 there is A LOT of parts that can use CF and raise the standards of the build. SMS sells templates for the inside of the cowlings to a few bikes, could be worth trying...
One more thing, don't go by the scale when buying CF-decal! I use 1/20 or 1/24 scale CF for my bikes, the 1/12 scale ones are way out of scale
The "mesh"-technique works like this and can be used on smaller parts and as SeaBee mentioned I've used it on the rear mud guard. Paint the part black. Get yourself a piece of acrylic mesh, the type that comes with a lot of model kits to recreate the air intake mesh on bikes or the grill mesh on cars. Wrap the mesh around the part and hold it tight on the back. It takes some work to get that firm grip so that the mesh covers the whole part. Use some grey paint, I use Tamiya XF-56 metallic grey, and spray it through an airbrush at low air preassure. Just mist it over the mesh, and just pass the part a few times. Put the airbrush aside and gently remove the mesh. The paint has dried a bit but be careful not to move the mesh around as it will destroy the pattern. When the gray has set, use Smoke paint to cover the part and give it some shine.
These are a few tricks I've picked up along the way, and that's the great thing, you never stop learning. I have learned all I know about scale modelling from forums like this and it's so fun to see how others have done and try it out myself. Best thing about putting effort into detailing a kit is it takes the viewers eyes off my crappy paint jobs ;-)
The tips section on my website is supposed to show all of these things but I lost the english files in a computer crash and I'm trying to re-install them now. You can also find a few reference pics there of different bikes, look at http://www.onetwelvth.com/tips/allmant/index.htm and choose reference pics to the left.
It became a long post and there are certainly a LOT more out there, rest of the guys sit on loads of great ideas as well. So start up with anything you could pick up from this post and be back with new pictures. I'd be glad to try to answer the questions you pick up along the way.
best regards
Joel