Ford RS 200 - Rally Ypres 24 Hrs 1986 - Reference pics

Ok, time for some pics. I found this picture on the Reji website showing all the resin parts, but I assure you that this is NOT how they look when opening the box! Lots of flash and air bubbles turn the cleanup job in a nightmare... 

The other parts are a photoetched fret, some clear parts and some seat belt material. And the decals plus the instructions of course. 

After a week or so I managed to clean up the main body parts and the wheels. I had to replace the left door frame, and I also had to widen the rear hood: it is about 2mm too narrow. I used superglue and flour to do the job. 

Same procedure at the other side of course. 

Right rear view of the RS200. 

Left rear view of the car. 

I installed small metal pins to hold the rear hood in place. 

Unfortunately, the left rear wheel arch seems to be a little narrow: I drew a pencil line to accentuate this. 

Here you see the metal tubes I installed to fit the metal pins in once the rear hood ins in place. 

Meanwhile I sanded away the excess wheel arch material. Looks better now. 

After the preparation works I thought one coat of white primer would do the trick... 

Unfortunately that was a big mistake. The resin shows a million tiny air holes which are very hard to fill up. 

So I tried to fill them up with superglue. Once dry i then sanded the surface smooth again. 

Each time there were less air holes, but it took 5 coats of primer and 5 sanding runs to get rid of all the holes. 

Now the body looks ready to get sprayed with Tamiya TS-26 pure white; the bad news is that all the other kit parts show the same amount of tiny holes. 

So I will try to find another way to fill up the holes with some kind of filling primer... 

Meanwhile I also primed the chassis and the wheels with grey primer. 

Once the primer is dry, I applied 2 coats of Tamiya TS-26 pure white. 

These coats were given about 5 days to dry. 

Next it was time to mask the body parts to be able to apply the red paint. 

So this is what I did: first I made a copy of the decal sheet and I cut the red striping which represents the border area between the white and red paint. Next I copied the shape of this striping on BMF and I fixed it on the body.  

Now all what was left to do was to mask the area which will remain white. I followed the same procedure to the rear of the car. 

So now the body is ready to be painted. Here is how it will look, but the white area will be red and the yellow area will be white 😉 

Not long after the body has been spraypainted, the masking tape is removed to avoid the dry paint to 'break' off. 

Et voilà, the result of the two tone Belga livery 😉 

After the red paint has dried enough, I polished the borderlines between red and white. 

Next I applied the red striping to the front of the car. 

Next I fixed the striping at the rear, which was done in 7 pieces. 

This will be allowed to dry a night, after which I wil be setting the sponsor decals. 

As you might notice here (compare this picture with photo 25), I altered the rear red area a little to assure a straith borderline seen from this angle. 

Aside of the erronous decal placement indications, some decals are simply too small. 

I decided to use my reference pics as a guide, because the instructions show a different placement sometimes. 

The Belga logos on the bonnet and the roof were really out of scale, so I replaced them by spareparts box decals. 

The 'Belga' sponsor left and right could be a little larger as well, but overall the other decals are ok. 

 

Once the main engine parts have been painted, I start with a dryfit. 

Here the main engine parts have been given a coat of grey primer. 

I discovered that the RS200 of Droogmans didn't have a white interior, but a dark grey one. So this was corrected. 

In the back, I started to assemble the engine block and the rear suspension. 

The engine compartment was white, the interior of the driver's compartment was dark grey. Now I can start to detail. 

I did a dryfit to check if the rear suspension is standing straith. 

Dryfit with the wheels on. I think the front of the car needs to be raised a little. 

Dryfit with the full body. 

I lifted the front of the car by 3mm. I think the ride height is ok now. 

A quick update of a day's work. Tomorrow I'll post better pictures 😉 

The turbo exhaust was given some weathering. 

The rear suspension is halfway finished. Still missing are the shock absorbers and the brake discs. 

This is the turbo inlet, coming from the large intercooler on top of the car. Some tubing still has to be connected. 

Top view of the engine and suspension. About 50% ready here. 

I noticed a luggage cover at the reference pics, so I installed it right away. 

Rear view from the luggage cover, through the rear window. The large intercooler is pretty dominant. 

I cannot connect the intercooler with the chassis on a permanent base yet, because there is still a lot of work to do (like the interior of the car) before I can close it up and make all connections. 

The engine room starts to look a little more 'busy'... 

Some wiring and tubing has been applied, but there is still a lot more to come. 

Comparison of the model (top) with the real car (bottom). As you can see, the shape of the model is not perfect. The nose is too short, the roof is too high, and the wheels are too large. But it is the only model available on the market, so it'll have to 

Today I added the home-built shock absorbers (the kit parts were very poor), the spare tire storage bucket and the brake discs. 

This is about as far as I can go without joining the chassis and body together. So now I will have to concentrate at the interior of the car. 

View from the left hand side without the rear bonnet. 

And same view with the rear bonnet in place. It still fits, even with the suspension completed. 

Let's concentrate now at an important part of the interior: the bucket seats. I sprayed them with Tenco Proto's Scale Fabric, and I used wine bottle lead foil for the seat belts. Here all parts are being prepared. 

Next I install the seat belts on the bucket seat, trying to give them a realistic look. 

At the rear they will be attatched to the Ford's chassis, so they receive buckles allowing this.  

The photo etched supports look great, but they don't have any thickness so it would be hard to fix them to the Ford's floor. A little trick was used with some plastic sheet to create a larger surface to apply the glue to. 

Next the seat belts are manually painted in flat red. 

Most of the seat belts are painted at the top side only, because the other side isn't visible, but at the rear for instance they are painted at both sides. 

And then I can fix the first seat to the chassis. I will finish the seats with the last details such as decals and drybrushing while they are fixed to the car. 

At the rear you can see where the seat belts have been fixed to the car with photoetched connections. 

The co-pilot's seat is up next... 😉 

I also prepared some other interior parts like the dashboard/steering wheel, the safety rollcage and the door interiors. Some details still have to be applied. 

Close-up of the dashboard. The resin part's shape is not perfect, but it is acceptable. 

Once the seat belts have been fixed to the seats, they are installed into the car's interior. 

The photo etched pedals and footrest are fixed as well. 

I also added some extra detail to the hand brake. 

The fire extinguisher is fixed in front of the co-pilot's seat. 

I also added some detail to the rollcage, with the reference pics as a guide. This seemed a good idea at the time, but unfortunately I had to remove it completely since there was no way I could fit the rollcage into the car's interior... 🙁 

Not convinced by the kit's wheels, I ordered Renaissance aftermarket Speedlines which look a lot more to scale. I put the kit wheel next to them for comparison. 

With the wheels finally in place, I could at last fix the body to the chassis. 

Although I did like a million dry fits of the engine hood before, I just didn't fit anymore once the body and chassis were fixed together. So I had to mill a lot of resin in order to give the rear wheels enough room to fit (although they are smaller!) 

Now the car looks allright to me, and the wheels have the correct diameter. So now I can continue to work on the engine, and try to finish this model at last. 

First thing to do is finally close the connections between the intercooler and the engine. Now they are fixed and the body will stay on the chassis. 

Next I could attach the tubular structure in the rear of the car, which is in fact a prolongation of the safety rollcage. 

At the left hand side of the engine the oil cooling radiator was fixed as well as the little brown container. 

In the middle I added the belts with which the spare tire is fixed to the chassis, and some extra orange tubing. 

At the right hand side I fixed the black compartment containg the air filter (I suppose). This wraps up the construction of the 'engine room'. 

Now I could fix the model to its acryl base, enabling me to continue the build without touching the model too often. 

First I will be working at the rear engine hood however, before I start to add the last details to the main car.