GB WIP. 1977 Lotus 78 Tamiya 1/20

[Starr]

Wow! that's what is called the real plastic surgery

Nice work Doc!

Starr

[Orso]

There are people that say that I can't build a kit without use the saw on it. I don't understand what they mean

[vekkuli]

I've never seen a Photo of this Car with such Sidepods, interesting...

[rtedore]

Very interesting and very talented!!!

[Orso]

I have only seen these side pods on the presentation car and at the Argentine GP. At the second race they had changed to the the normal ones.


This must be a pic from practise at Argentina. Mario crashed and used Gunnar Nilsson's car in the race.
The high roll bar and the number 6 altered to a 5 can be seen on pictures from the race.

[vekkuli]

Thanks for Explanation .

[Eagle50]

Nice air box surgery.

[Madish]

Wow, I can learn so much from you!

So far your work on 78 was great - I haven't noticed that they had different airbox on 1977 Argentine GP too.

Good luck with further progress

PS: Does Tamiya have different sides than South Africa 78? My question is if we need to make new sides from plastic card like you did on Argentine 77

[Orso]

As I have started on a 1978 South Africa car as well I am following your build closely. I think that the sides on the side pods in the kit is usable but the side skirts at the bottom look a bit shorter in some pictures.

[Orso]

Time for a long boring story as I can't do much on the kit right now..
This is an old kit . I guess it is one of the first with the scale engine replaced the horrible thing with an electric motor in it.
There is no etch in it and the decals are for a 1977 season car. Beside the fact that the decals was printed in yellow instead of the biscuit colour they should have I wanted to build a car of Ronnie Peterson from 1978, so I bought a set of decals from Indycals. At this time Tamiya re-released their 1/12 scale lotus 78 with the etch parts. I noticed that it had different rear wing end plates and started looking at pictures. Of course my kit was wrong. I could make new end plates without problem but the decals would not fit. This put the build on hold. Later Tamiya re-released the 1/20 scale kit with etch parts for the correct end plates. Studio 27 released decals for an 1978 car so i bought them but never started on the kit. As I had built the red Lotus from the 1977 Japan GP and that turned out to be the last start in F1 for Gunnar Nilsson I was starting to think that I should build this as the Monza 1978 car as that was Ronnie's last start. Both Swedes ended their career in the Lotus 78 so i bought a set of Italian GP decals but never started on the kit. Even later I found a conversion set for an early 1978 car so i decided on building Ronnie's winning car from 1978 South African GP instead. But why not build a 1977 car with the old wing plates as well. That ended with me buying a second kit. This time the later version with the etch parts. The old kit would be built as a 1977 car for Mario Andretti. Good enough but Now I didn't have decals for it as the ones that would fit was the ones I primary bought but they were for Peterson. OK should I buy new decals or can I modify the ones I have? I started looking at pictures again an found that the version Tamiya kitted never raced in the GP series. With new rear wing end plates I could probably use the 1978 decals, but I also noticed that the car looked very different in the first race and that was something that really appealed to me. But there was just one problem with this. The decals. None of the sets I had was usable.
I was confident that I was able to draw supplement decals to use with decals I bought at the first place but could I match the colour? Lot of experimenting with colour and printing made me appreciate the work Michael put in his decals even more.

Finally I have something that isn't an perfect match but hopefully close enough to be usable. Michaels decals below and my supplement above.