Ika Musume Ferrari - Part 2

Lots of progress!

1. Brakes

I built the brakes using the photo-etched (PE) parts from Hobby Design. It was not as hard as I thought it would be, but still hard enough.

First, I cut off the back piece of the original brake part:

Then start making the PE parts, by using tweezers to shape up the inner part of the brake discs:

Finished brake disk. You can see the detail of the discs that you can't see in normal plastic parts

With the brake caliper. As in the real car, it is gold. In real car, the caliper has a red "brembo" logo, but I don't have a 1/24 decal. It's not a very big detail (although I would've liked to have it), so I'm going to leave it. 

Another minor but noticeable difference from the pattern on the discs. The real car has a pattern depicted in the picture below. Once again, the kit does not have this pattern. It would be nearly impossible to recreate this in a satisfactory way, and it's not a part of car that everyone notices right away, so I'm leaving it the way it is.

So the finished brake inside a wheel:

2. Body modification

Last time, I modified the hood. This time, I'm going to start on modification that turns a Ferrari Challenge F430 into a 430 GTC race car: wide body. The GTC car is apparently wider by 70mm, so in 1/24 scale, that would be about 3mm (i.e. 1.5mm each side). This is achieved by placing cutting at fenders, and widening the body, then filling with putty. 

Today, I will just be making the frame, not using the putty. First cut the fender just enough to insert a chip:

Then along the tire opening, add more frame:

Next is the enlargement of the front air intake. As you can see in the picture below, GTC has different air intake shape than the challenge (as well as the height of the front fender). 

So in order to do so, I cut the existing air intake and widen it by placing a small piece of plastic. Again, I will be finishing by shaping with a putty, but that's for another day.

3. The end of day

This is the final picture of the day. It's coming along, but still needs a lot of work for one to see the GTC. Hopefully I can get to work with putty and then it should start looking more like a Ika Musume Ferrari :-) 

Stay tuned...