BaseGTR - R34 GT-R S-Tune

StratosWRC said:

This is gonna be awesome.

Giovanni

Click to expand...

Cheers lads, fingers crossed it comes out looking good, hopefully I can start working on it soon.

pcars said:

another special customization that is always spectacular

Click to expand...

Thanks mate.

So I've disassembled the car and mocked up some of the parts; Top secret bonnet, Autoselect splitter and Voltex type 4 wing.
The splitter is for an R33 and will need a lot of work to follow the lines of the R34, might be better off building my own on a stock R34 splitter. The wing has unfortunately gotten a slight curve from being in storage so I'll need to try and fix this (I'm thinking some heat and clamping it against a flat surface?) or buy another one.

StratosWRC said:

That front spoiler looks surprisingly really good on it. The curve on the the rear spoiler doesnt look to bad on the pictures.

Giovanni

Click to expand...

Cheers guys, hopefully I can start the real work soon. Now I'm thinking the Nismo livery on the side might actually work with the overall style of the car. With the engine rocker/valve cover, I'm thinking a nicer pearly red, or maybe carbon fibre. The front plate is just on for these pictures to cover some marks from the old plate.

No real progress here yet, I did however get my custom 3d printed wheel inlets from MIY minimodels, I had some input in the design as well which was pretty cool. They're TE37's in an 18" Nowak Alu ring. I painted them in Tamiya gunmetal and put them under the car on Hobby design RE11S tyres. They still need centre detailing and a spoke decal (maybe the TE37SL look), but I'm liking how they look.

A bit more of an update this time.

Brakes: Endless style from TK. Discs given a dark wash and centres painted a dirty gold.


The wheels also got decals. I have 2 sets of these and gave both different decals. The red SL style are most likely the ones I'll use on this car. Also tested out different brake caliper colours and decided i liked silver with red writing the best, so I will make some Endless ones in the same style as these Brembo ones. Tyres shown here are TK's new Toyo R888's which are insanely detailed. Not sure yet if I'll use these or the Hobby design ones shown in my last post, all depends on which ones give a fatter look as it's needed when running 18's on an R34.


Wheel mock up on the car


Seats are TK type 22 which I painted and decalled in a Bride Zeta III style.


Prepping the wing and bonnet. These were primed and painted gloss black after.


Spoiler legs painted matt black and rivets added (Top Studio 1mm IIRC)


Then the wing got it's carbon treatment


And then the most difficult part, chopping off the stock spoiler legs. First I removed it from the car and then removed the brake light and badging. Then I got out the mini saw and went to town. The cheap Chinese blade snapped after I cut the first one lol but I managed to cut off the second carefully with a proper hack saw.


The spoiler-less look


Mock up with the big wing, haven't clearcoated it yet.


Sanded down the paint on the bootlid and added some Tamiya putty to fill the badge holes and smooth over where I cut it.


More to come, thanks for looking.

Small update, been block sanding the bootlid, here's a random pic of it during sanding, looks awful here because you can see the metal, primer, basecoat and filler:

And I hit it with a coat of primer yesterday. Looks decent, a couple of tiny expected pinholes to fill. Need to leave this a couple more days to ensure nothing sinks back before I will continue working on it.


And this is the bonnet after gloss black paint and a mist coat of clear. Will be done in Carbon as soon as I have the time. Slight orange peel in the paint but I don't know if I should polish this out, it will be covered with a decal and clearcoated and then polished anyway, I think polishing it now would interfere with the decal and clear to come?


And the spoiler has been clearcoated and lightly polished.

Alex SZ1996 said:

the carbon on that spoiler looks great.

Click to expand...

Cheers Alex, I love the look of this carbon and it takes clearcoat nicely too.

So got a bit more done the other day:

Bootlid has been painted black in preparation for the carbon decal


Made a start on the engine. I cut off the badly replicated stock turbos and manifold to start with. Decided I wanted to go with a top mount big single turbo so started working on the manifold for it using 0.5mm styrene and 3mm rods.


Here's a mockup of roughly where I want the turbo sitting.


Still tons to do, just need to put the hours in.

Had some time to apply the carbon fibre decal to the Top Secret bonnet yesterday. Here's some work in progress pictures of creating the mask, one big piece for most of it.


Then that piece took just under an hour of poking and prodding to get it sitting right. Then 3 more pieces for the other areas, ensuring I kept the direction of the weave the same.


Some pictures of it on the car, still needs to be clearcoated, but I am loving this.

ROBSMC said:

Looking forward for that engine, it's always my favourite part. But Rob's right, the detail on those tyres is just mental!!

Click to expand...

Cheers mate! Will try and go further on this engine than I have before. Yeah the tyres are supercool, I'm hoping Lars will at some point make some higher profile ones that are just as detailed for all the old school cars (like those IG tyres).

Continuing with the engine:

I cut off the stock belts and pulleys that are crudely moulded onto the cam cover, filled and sanded it flat. Then added RB26 lettering to it. Also, that's a photoetch piece glued onto the coil pack cover to get a flat surface, as there was a weird hole under the original decal. The covers were then painted black again in preparation for carbon decal.

Then I finished the exhaust manifold piping and did some work on the other side of the engine. I added a small rod to the front of the intake manifold to act as an intake air temp sensor as this is completely missing, drilled out the throttle bracket, squared off the fuel rail to resemble a HKS one and added a little rod onto the 3rd intake 'port' to resemble the base of an injector as Autoart weirdly missed this but added the other 5. This was then primered to see how it's looking, a few clean ups needed. Also don't worry, that pipe coming off the manifold will be chopped off and a more accurate one will be installed.


Can't wait to get some colour on all that pipework.


Then I clearcoated the bonnet in 2k clear. Very happy with this and glad I chose 2k, a few dust spots but nothing that won't polish out.


And then it was time to apply the carbon decal to the bootlid and clearcoat it. Did it in one piece and figured it would be very straightforward, but due to the curvature of the bootlid, I had to overlap the decal below the brake light, slightly skewing the pattern. It could have been avoided by doing it in 2 pieces for the upper and lower sections, but then I would have had to cut across the weave and one thing I've learnt with carbon decals is that if you cut and join them along the weave, you will get a near invisible join but if you cut across the weave, the join will be very visible. Oh well, the overlap here isn't visible from a few feet away so I guess it's still okay. But if I ever do this on another R34, I'll try out some different techniques to try and maintain a consistent pattern.

Need to let this dry fully then I can replace the brake light, bootlock decal, GT-R decal and give it a light polish and wax.

Upgrades said:

Wow, I have to put on my sunglasses.... Great outcome. Looker forward on the progress off the engine, looks very promising so far!

Giovanni

Click to expand...

Thanks Giovanni.

Here's a random shot of the car with the bonnet on and wheels under it. This black splitter is from an older Autoart R34 and might be what I use as a base to build the Autoselect one from, as these sit lower.


And I've made a start on the interior. The dark series 2 R34 interior is nice, but this is a track car . So I gutted it, removed the flocking and built up a realistic floor pan using styrene. 0.5 mm thick styrene for the rear seat bench and 0.25 × 2 mm for all the strips

Still got to finish it off and attack the rear door cards.

Sebastian said:

great attention to detail there. If you need specific photos from an 1:1 R34 GTR let me know

Click to expand...

Thanks Emil, will let you know if I ever need anything.

Continuing with the interior, I drilled a load of holes and some squares into the parcel shelf area for the stripped out look. Also drilled lots of holes into the rear seat bench area, some of these will get bolts fitted. Then hit it with a coat of primer to check progress, a few areas to smooth out.


Did the rear door cards by sanding them flat, gluing on 0.3mm styrene sheet, drawing the stripped out look onto them and then drilling and filing the holes to shape.


Then started the rollcage, hardest part first making the main hoop, then the front x bars and the bars going to the rear, then the rear x bars and bars connecting the rear and sides. I can run it like this as a half cage, or I can continue on and build a full cage, which I want to do as long as it won't be too awkward trying to fit it all into the body.


I also did a video showing the current progress on my instagram: http://instagr.am/p/B4rUvfyJR99/
Edit - I continued on and built a full cage going through the dash.

Bit more work done, bootlid lock and GT-R badge added, roll cage painted silver.