Review: 1/12 MFH McLaren MP4/23 (Brazilian GP)

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Hugeprong
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Re: Review: 1/12 MFH McLaren MP4/23 (Brazilian GP)

Post by Hugeprong »

I cannot find any build reports on this kit with F1M - or indeed anywhere else for that matter. I am getting more experienced with MFH kits these days (having done Tyrrell 007, Lotus 79, M23 Transkit, Lotus 97T - all in 1/12 scale) but I made numerous errors with this kit and I found it a real struggle to get it completed to an acceptable standard. Some of the mistakes were my own and some were the result of the almost laughably sparse instructions (7 stages cover the whole car!) - but on the off-chance that someone else with this kit is looking for comments/hints, I thought I would spell out the key issues I found with it.

Firstly the rear wing was (for MFH) almost impossible to construct without masses of filler and rapid-drying epoxy. It does all get covered by paint/decals! (Do not attach it until the end of the assembly - despite what the instructions say). By contrast the front wing - despite having 5 elements and many additional PE parts - goes together well using the template on the instructions. Again do NOT however attach it to the nose until right at the end of the build.

The real car has lots of varieties of weave which all look different in certain lights/angles but where I used this gold-y colour the end result looks good under a coat of smoked varnish. I concluded that the best undercoat for the Carbon Fibre decals is probably Titanium Gold.

I made a massive error by not getting the colour of the dayglo orange right. I even compounded this by putting on the large Vodafone decal of the rear wing before realising! Many days have been spent correcting this and close-up there are still parts of the lettering that betray my stupidity. However without a magnifying glass, I dont think it is very obvous now but do not make my mistake - check you have got it right against the decals (NOT the colour shown on the instructions) before applying the paint! The orange decals crack and collapse all the time. Using warm/hot water appears to make them a little more resilient but time after time cracks appear. MFH supply a few small strips of spare dayglo which assists with tidying up - but they dont include anything like enough. Thankfully I had some spare bits and pieces from other kits that helped here but if you don't, paint has to do.

I made another error by following the instructions and attaching all the winglets, P/E endfences, flip-ups and so on on the bodywork as I wanted to try and coat them with the same colour as the rest of the body. Another error. The sheer number of these made effective wet/dry sanding after the application of the primer almost impossible. Hence my black undercoat was not very smooth - and hence my silver top-coat was disappointing as well. It would have been much better to have left off the winglets in front of the cockpit and the wings on either side of the rear bodywork, the small horizontal strips ahead of the rear wing and the P/E parts on the side of the rear bodywork so as to have the space to sand properly an dget a nice smooth finish and just deal with these parts later on. The fit was not too bad and would not (I think) have been too affected by a few coats of paint.

The "eyebrows" at the front of the car are very fragile and the LHS one was cracked before I opened the box. I spent the whole build worried I would break it off but didn't somehow. I did however get the rather ugly LHS projections forward from the sidepod caught in my cuff as I was sanding and it broke off in a trice. It at least enabled me to position the part better but the filling and sanding was a nightmare. The resin panels all over the sidepods are not good fits at all - nothing like the accuracy of the L79, and particularly, 97T. I filled where I could but again, the winglets I had already attached made life very much harder for me.

Bend the front suspension parts downwards by 1mm or even 2mm. I had nothing to guide me on this but eventually found that the front of the undertray barely is off the ground. If I had known I could have bent the metal front suspension arms a touch. However when I found out, it was far too late with decals attached etc etc. If you follow the "instructions", the front suspension is built first but attached to the chassis last. This made it easier to paint the body as no masking was needed but meant that when you attach the suspension it is too late to change anything. I would attach the lower front suspension assembply first and then build the upper/hub assembly and attach it all together with a wheel/tyre in place to ensure proper ground-clearance by reference to the front of the floor/undertray.

Beware that the Bridgestone and Potenza decals are handed with the arrow in front or behind the wording going in the direction of rotation of the tyre. This is not mentioned in the instructions (or if it is, it is in Japanese) I only realised after putting two the wrong way round triggering a boring use of spare decals to make good. Another hour of my life I wont get back... Paint the sidewalls with gloss paint first incidentally. The decals go on really easily if you do. Obviously then cover the sidewalls with semi-gloss.

Several times the instructions ask you drill small holes to take small lengths of wire in parts that are no more than 1mm in the first place. The worst area for this is the front of the sidepods where the forward extensions attach back to the sidepod. Do NOT get tempted to ignore this and use quick drying glue. In this area it is essential that a strong bond is formed as you will be working on that area quite extensively as you gradually piece together the large Vodafone roundel on that part of the sidepod. The thin horizontal winglets in front of the rear wing can however just be glued - they fit well.

The sting in the tail were the twin vertical supports that clip onto the front of the rear wing and project down onto the bodywork over the gearbox area. In my case, both were literally a full 8mm short. I made inserts using an old 1/24 wing in my spares box and its location means that it is only obvious if you look for this, however just when the build was nearing completion it was intensely irritating! I wonder if for the first time ever with MFH, they included these parts from a Monaco version rear wing. As MFH like to do several versions of every subject, I am amazed this doesn't happen more often!

This was I think one of the first MFH issues and I much prefer the full detail kits as sub-assembles build up properly rather than having a small number of quite large pieces where any problems are hard to correct. Still it is a very satisfying build and it certainly reminded me why F1 aero rules needed to be simplified post 2008. There is barely a square inch of this car that has not been optimised for aerodynamics!!

The end result - even for me - still looks pretty good I think and I will put some pictures into my gallery at some stage. If anyone has any more questions, do get in touch.

87bmwm6
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Re: Review: 1/12 MFH McLaren MP4/23 (Brazilian GP)

Post by 87bmwm6 »

one picture is worth a thousand words
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Re: Review: 1/12 MFH McLaren MP4/23 (Brazilian GP)

Post by daveyman »

I'd love to have a go at this car. Love the look of it. It's like a sculpture. Good luck with painting. Please keep us updated...
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Hugeprong
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Re: Review: 1/12 MFH McLaren MP4/23 (Brazilian GP)

Post by Hugeprong »

OK - Have uploaded a few photos on my Gallery. Where I live I have less than 2Mb/S so every photo takes ages to upload. Hope they look OK and you can follow this link;

http://www.f1m.com/my-galleries/5414
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