Moto GP / GP bike enthusiasts

Joel, took a quick pic when I got home. Excuse the quality and the focus got messed up completely! Dark and macro mode with flash... Took of the tank and seat area, best place to get shot of the most webbing all in one go, I think. Looking at the pic, the most representative of how it appears to the eye is the area surrounding the seat. Having not seen what it looked like IRL, this looked good to me...

Another small update.

Laid some paint and clear coat and started the decals.  I know this was supposed to be the Konica Minolta bike but since the paints were late I decided to paint the 05 Movistar of Marco "the tool" Melandri (I don't know why, I really don't like him).  I'm getting better at the painting.  I think I can smooth the clear coats out a little better, I'm just afraid of sanding through the clear coat onto the paint.  I'll be sweating bullets when I shoot a clear coat over the decals.

Comments, bad and good? 

Joel,

Love the color on the Kawi.  I cannot wait to see it completed. 

SeeBea: I went ahead and ordered the SMS Spiderman sheet yesterday. I already have to other sheets but that SMS sheet looks the most promising. Not sure I ever saw pictures of your Spidy bike but this looks really great! I think it looks totally ok with no clear blue over those honey combs. I have one of the side fairings laying in brake fluid as it got dropped on my dusty (to say the least) floor. Flourescent red looks promising enough, lets hope I can do a decent masking job for the blue.

So it takes three weeks for a shipment from the U.K to reach you in S.A? Both U.K and Sweden are in the EC and I think I have always got my shipments in 3-4 days... I got a post at AF from Steve Hemming (Hiroboy) and he offered me a bottle of Solid Green free of charge to take care of the candy problem. How about that??

Wolfpac: That RCV looks to be comming along so great. It's only on the top fairing that I think you can polish it out a bit more. Put the decals on and get going with the clear and give it another go with polish and you have a stunner bike. You'll have plenty of time to do the K/M bike later. The Melandri scheme is a bit more unusual. Frame and swing arm looks spot on!

/Joel

Usually not... Most likely some freaking customs officer put it somewhere and will only see it in a week's time! Last time it took 2 weeks over the christmas season! Need I say I am slightly frustrated, esp having just phoned the PO and nothing's arrived. Will give it till next week and then ask Steve to try and trace it from his side, if possible. *sigh*

Onto better stuff - SMS decals comes highly recommended. I started off on the LCR Honda, just step 1's basics. Will hope to do some painting on engin parts and prepare the bodywork for the white. There will be a huge white-painting prepping and painting session, since ALL 3 (LCR Honda, McLaren MP4/2 and Williams FW24 - the latter 2 being F1 cars) my models I'm working on requires white as a base. So I'll try and syncronise it.  On the McLaren I still have some small building todo on the body, as well as thinking about how I want to tackle the proposision of that rear wing... Might end up painting it seperately and glueing afterwards, which is not the way I usually go.

Great to see we have this GB rolling again!

I had a look at Museum Collection site the other day and saw a few may releases among wich was a 2004 Ukawa bike in some light red color with number 72...? What bike is this? A wild card race bike or what. Never seen it...

/Joel

Well back online after a little r & r had surgry last friday and been in a little bit of pain

have made some progress on all of my builds that are on going .

Wolfpac - looks good are you using the 06 Honda for Marco's bike or is that the Renaissance t/k

have been doing the Ren t/k for quite a while now hoping to have that fin this weekend.

Seabee-  I would check on the address that Steve sent it to , I ordered the Km paint from him and received order within 10 days UK - NZ , not bad seeing how long HLJ take.

Joel I didn't think the green you used was far off going by the pic's I have mind you haven't any close up , Great to hear Steve cares about his customers

Regarding RCV on the musuem collection site it is the RCV prototype from 2001 they have wrong year on site as Ukawa was riding for Camel Honda in 2004

posting pic's real soon

Shayne 

Wolfie your frame and swing arm look great. Did you use Alclad for the chrome? If so I must have done something wrong with mine (followed the tips everyone gave but as I said previously have a serious problem with it rubbing off.)

Just when I thought I had the art of the final clear coat mastered I overdid it a bit on one of my fairings, ended up with a thick blob hanging off of it! managed to let it dry and after some sanding and a recoat looks fine. Just shows when you think you're getting on top of this hobby it reminds you who is really boss! Gotta love it though.

SeaBee -you are right I knew he rode for camel honda just couldn't remeber what year of the top of my head

Should of rembered that Honda sends test riders to Motegi race

Musuem collection are right as

Ukawa #72 had a wild card ride at Motegi in 2004where he fin 16 laps down after pulling into pits after lap 5 or 6 here is a pic of bike

will now go and hide in hobby room till I finnish at least 1 bike

Shayne 

Finishing a bike, that's good! Hiding in your hobby room, that not good! Not worth it... Stunning livery!

Speaking of liveries - I see S27 is going to bring out what they call a side cowl decal for the LCR bike. Know they ran the sides different in different races. I cannot find any pics as to which of the liveries they are planning to do. Anybody have an inside line on this? I obviously don't want to continue with the Tamiya-supplied livery if a better one may be under way shortly... Well, I guess I can still safely paint the thing white!  

apart from the TS, there was Givi, australia, Eurobet, blank, Denso.

Hopefully it will be the livery from the Australian GP wich in my mind was the best looking one.

Off to spray some blue on a couple of Spidy cowls.

/Joel

Well, screw up the top cowl of the spidey M1 as I didn't look properly at the reference pictures. Added the Fortuna masks and didn't notice that the blue shall not go over the air intake hole on the spidey. Into the brake fluid. First that goes blind are the eyes...

On the good side is that I got the solid green Kawasaki color from Hiroboy today. I'll try and spray it on top of the clear to avoid a massive paint build up.

/Joel

Joel, you DON'T realise what that last post of yours meant to me! Sorry, I should not be smiling, but I'm laughing with you, not at you! At least it shows me I'm not the only one making such mistakes. My one (on the spidey bike) I unfortunately only realised after I applied the decals. And a quick heads-up there... unless you'ce got pics showing it differently, which I'll be extremely gratefull for! It seems there are some blue that needs to be applied on the frame itself, the area to be web-decalled between the tank cover and the top (blue) part of the cowl. I'm presuming you figured out the covering of the "indenting" (at the lack of a better English word) part on the original Fortuna livery yourself...

 Ah, and some good news on my side is that (I think) my Hiroboy paints have arrived. Slip arrived for me, package from UK... *phew* Some nice paint for a shortly coming F1 effort as well.

Excuse any typo's in the post - despite my best effort!- as I am typing with my 16 month olddaughter on my lap! Lovely experience, but very testing. She's thinking (looking at her efforts to reach the keyboard!) of following dad into IT... over my dead body! Unless she's getting confused and actually wants to become a pianist!

Hi group,

            whilst on subject of Zero paint, I just did the bodywork for the '05 Camel livery using the Zero Camel Yellow paint Steve made.

Here's how easy it is, prep panels, spray Tamiya white primer (no sanding after), shake up bottle of yellow, use a glass jar and set air at 25 apx PSI, spray with #3 needle x 4 coats.

I wanted to see how it was if a novice did this with minimal skill, result beautiful !!!!1   No trouble with spray gun using the HS Paasche and it cleaned up great with GP thinners, time taken 10 minutes.  

Well done Steve, I doubt I could do better if more time taken and I have 15 years exp' with an airbrush.  :-)

Rod. 

SeaBee wrote:

Joel, you DON'T realise what that last post of yours meant to me!

You are very welcome I got my SMS sheet today and you are right, it looks promising. I had a thought though, did you clear coat the decals? Lot of chrome on those....

/Joel

Painted the SOLID Kawasaki Green and the clear is to go on in a few minutes. This looks promising although a few dust particles that I thought I was able to sand away after the first layers now built to quite a ridge. I'll try and sand them off and go for another layer of green before applying the clear.

/Joel

And it didn't affect the decals?

I put the webbing on the top of the seat cowl on. Looking so great. I see what you ment with the handling of those webs SeaBee... It curls up like I don't know what. I tried to have the part totally wet while placing the decal and it went fine but this is also one of the smaller portions.

/Joel

Red portions of the seat cowl are decalled and it was a pretty fun job. Underside of the cowl has one decal for the webbing but I cut that one in two to be able to work more easily. This ment that the webbing turned out a bit different on the front portions when comparing both sides. Don't think it matter though and I'm really happy with the result. Have to see if I get any silvering when clear coating. Will go over the cowl with some setting solution tomorrow before applying the Fortuna markings and the nr 33.

/Joel

Joel, good to hear you're up to speed on the decalling! I could not bear to do more than a few section at a time, was too strenuous!

The only issue I had when I clearcoated was with  one decal - the "r" going over the bump on the main cowl part, just behind the opening. Maybe still some decal softer on it, it seemed to lift just a bit. But there's plenty of "spare" decals, just make sure on one of those spare part before the clear does something you maybe don't like. Maybe it dulls the chrome too much to your liking or something and then you blame me! 

I had more issues with my TS36 than anything else, it remained very "soft". Fortunately I was correct and it was my package from Steve - including fluo red - no more TS36.

And the beauty of these decals are, since there are no carrier film inbetween, there's no chance for silvering! By now you'd have found that out. I'm off to the hobby shop shortly (day off!) to get some primer and the dreaded TS13...  

No carrier film but you have a slight shading on the outer sides of the webbing that I fear can cause some silvering if I don't get them down on the surface the way I like.

TS-36 is crap, I agree with that.

/Joel

I'll be writing a 20 page short story on the heads up regarding this Spidey sheet. It probably will turn out well in the end if not dissaster strucks.

Three mistakes today:

1. Didn't realize that the web goes over both the side cowling and lower part of the top cowl. 2. Didn't apply webbing on the engine covers inside the air intake scopes before applying the parts of the fortuna logo. Lucky me SMS gives you a bunch of extra web to work with.
3. Didn't follow SeaBees heads up to the full as I didn't paint the blue section on the frame far enough towards the swing arm...

Well, atleast I'm having fun and I'm happy that I even dared to start this build...

/Joel

 Ok Question for you Moto guys?????

    Whats the tricks or how do you guys paint the front rotor on these bikes.. Its really the only thing giving me fits right now..  well Im sure there is going to be more down the road

Hi!

I use to spray the color of the inner section first, then mask that off with Maskol or similar and then spray the outer section. This is easily done with the newer kits where the inner spider is a separate piece. With older kits it's just some more masking to do and a third color.

Regarding the Kawasaki kits I think you'll have to wait a few more months to have it on the shelves.

/Joel

Have a look at this tool on Mediamix website, it is one of the most useful things I have bought. I use it to cut out the masks for most of the painting needed for the front and rear brake disks. Especially useful to get the mounting bracket which sits over the carbon brake disk done

http://www.mediamixhobby.com.sg/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=3_47&products_id=3

  Your right that does look like a very handy tool... I think Ill put that on the list of things I need

   Thanks Joel...

   I guess Ill have to work on my masking skills.  I was planing to paint outside to inside but will give inside to outside a try.