Here are some pictures of our latest project..and no...its not the Scaleauto Z4, although I hope to pick mine up 2night @ the slotshop.
This one is for the Nurburgring endurance race on the Spa track in Swisstal, Germany...next weekend!
The initial plan was to make our own master and have Nick de Wachter do the lamination.
Bought the Fujimi Z4 kit from Japan, actually bought it twice as Fujimi released the 2012 version in december which was a closer match the car that we
needed to race.( different wheelarches and rearwing, check the differences with the 2011 body below....can't find them? well take my word for
it..they're there)
Nick started work on the 2012 body by adding some width to the wheelarches, and I was supposed to take it from there.....But as time progressed, with
lost of other projects on the shelf....I ran out of time.
Luckily my teammate Gabriel had sourced 2 Z4 bodies from Fola, so that's where the story starts now. Gabe had already done the priming and the first
coat of Tamiya Coral Blue, which is a close if not perfect match for the Vitaphone livery. So it should have been an easy job, just needed to mask the
blue and spray the black..slap on some decals...and presto..
Well..it was not.
It had been a while since I did a GFK body and the first thing I noticed was how incredibly thin the body was. Ok that is to make them as light as
possible and light it is (bare shell weights in a mere 11gr) The way that's done these days is to use a minimum amount of resin and GFK for the
lamination and a very, very, thin gellcoat (the first layer of resin that forms the outer skinn of the body)
But as I sanded the body to remove the excess overspray I noticed exactly how thin the gell coat was.
The structure of the GFK was showing, and I don't mean because the gelcoat was transparent, no the actual structure...so it required a lot more work
to get a smooth and shiny surface.
Also noticed two holes in the roof which were easilly filled.
