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