Lotus 25 Coventry Climax

I see a trend of having trouble with the paint job on my formula 1 cars.  Even though I got to a rough start with the exact color green for the Lotus I eventually got it sorted out and I am very happy with the result.  This is actually the first time I cared this much about the exact tone of the body color.

On the whole this is a wonderful kit, the suspension is well detailed and strong enough to hold the cars body weight (and this is a great place to extol the virtues of scraping chrome plating off of parts before cementing them).  The body fits together well and seems to be scaled properly (not that I measured).  The engine has a few fitment problems, some of the parts don't line up right and there are large gaps in places.  Also the complex dual 4-to-1 junctions in the exhaust pipes don't fit well either, there was some cutting to ensure they all matched up.  The decals are sublime, some of the best I have worked with; that sounds familiar, oh yes, the Ferrari F2001, Tamiya must be doing something right.  If you want to detail the engine be warned, there is a scaling issue with the engine and exhaust pipes.  On the real car there is a gap and heat shield between them and according to reference photos the spark plug leads run into that gap.  In the model the pipes and engine abut one another, not much room for wires, I made do but it doesn't technically work.  Detailing is a great thing too, with all of the removable body panels it's not all wasted.

That brings me to point 3, I used to struggle to get good reference photos but I made a discovery.  Visit http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/ there you will find photos and info on tons of cars.  I went back and looked up the most obscure cars I have built and they had info on them, I was surprised, it is now book marked on my laptop.