Yamaha YZF-R1

[Els]

I have been building a lot of aircraft lately and the last two have seemed more of a chore than a hobby that is supposed to be fun. I think I am a little burned out on aircraft so I decided to build a motorcycle to change it up a little.

This is build will be OOB.

This is the kit I have decided to build. It is the Tamiya 1:12 kit:

These are decal options included in the kit:

About 6 or 8 years ago I built the red and white version on the left and this time I wanted to try something else. I have been wanting to build a bike that is painted like a WWII plane for a while, so that is what I am going to try.

I didn't do anything fancy to the engine because you can't see much of it once the fairings have been installed.

I decided to chop the lisence plate holder off of the rear section for a sleeker look.

Since I am planning on painting the fairings silver I wanted the frame to be black. The kit pieces are chromed and paint does not stick to them very well.

To get the chrome off I soaked them in this product that I bought at Walmart. It is the best stripping fluid I have ever used.

After a 15 minute soak, this is what I had:

This is as far as I got tonight:

I thought that this had taken me about an hour but when I looked at the clock, 5 hours had past and I was having fun.

I recommend changing things up once in a while.

I gotta go and try to cobble some decals together for this.

Thanks for looking

Els

[2qwik4u]

Looking great Els. I've built a couple of the Tamiya bikes in the past, and I absolutely love them. It certainly is nice to change it up now and then.

-Dave

[GreyGhost]

Looking really good, Els ...

Sweet idea for the scheme ...

All this time, I've been using Easy-Off to remove chrome, I'll give that Purple Power a try the next time I have a project that calls for that ... Thanks for the tip ...

Gregg

[cr7driver]

I have the same kit....nice work so far!

Edited November 5, 2010 by cr7driver

[Els]

2qwik4u, GreyGhost, and cr7driver

Thanks for the positive comments.

I haven't built one of these Tamiya motorcycle kits for a few years and I forgot how well they went together. I have never built a Tamiya aircraft kit but I have also heard good things about them.

I got a little done today.

I painted all the body parts black so that the silver would be a little darker.

I went to the LHS and they were out of silver so I went to the local arts and crafts store and bought a can of this:

Its a small can, same size as the Tamiya spray cans, but it only cost $1.99. I think it is great. I will use this from now on. It went on very smoothly and dried to the touch in about 3 minutes. It looks like silver to me.

I worked on the exhaust and used the Tamiya carbon fiber decals. They did not get along well with Micro Sol. I don't even know why I put it on, the decals were laying down fine without it. I guess it is just one of those conditioned responses, I put Micro set so I followed up with Micro Sol.

A while back I bought this carbon fiber decal sheet that is made for Cub Scout pine wood derby cars. I was going to use it for figure kit but it wasn't flexible enough for that. I decided to try it on the exhaust.

The pattern is a little to large but I can live with it.

That is all for today.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

[2qwik4u]

Nice grab on the silver paint. I really like the heat staining on the exhaust too. Clear blue or Tamiya powder?

[Wege]

Nice...

Any chance of that blue on the 'zorst being a fraction darker? ;)

Tasty idea on the black frame - gives it a 2005+ look to it rather than the original 1999? look.

[cr7driver]

The exhaust looks bad a $ $.

Edited November 6, 2010 by cr7driver

[Els]

2qwik4u, thanks, I used Tamiya clear orange and blue.

Wege, Thanks, I had to look Zorst up on Google. I guess that is another sign that I am getting old.

cr7driver, thanks, I am pretty happy with the way the deal worked out. Hopefully it will stay on and not peel off.

I got a little done today.

I decided to fill in the upper vents in the fairing. I wanted it to look a little more 80's style. I glued some plastic from inside and then filled the rest with Bondo.

I got it up on two wheels. I didn't follow the instructions for the front forks and that was a mistake. It made it a real pain to fit the front fender. I ended up scratching half the paint off.

I am having problems coming up with some WWII decals for this thing. Other than bombers I don't really build WWII stuff. I have been looking on line for some P-51 decals. I was thinking that since it is a Japanese motorcycle maybe I should put Japanese markings on it. This is all the stuff I found that I can use to mark it. I am not sure yet.

Thats all for today, thanks for looking

Els

[2qwik4u]

That double yellow stripe looks like it was made to wrap from one side of the bodywork, down across the bottom and back up the other. Or you can just do the double yellow stripe by painting it, and run it from the lower front of the cowling up to the dogleg on the back of the cowling, where the red and white meet on the boxtop, and continue back onto the rear bodywork under the seat. Being that you've already scraped off some of the paint on the fender, you could go whole hog on the rest of the bodywork and make it look like a late war airplane with most of the green peeling and chipping off. You've already go the silver on there! Might be good practice for salt weathering techiniques if you've never done that before. You could put the large Hinomaru's (sp?) on the upper part of the side cowls just in front of where you are filling in the vents, with the forward part of them getting cut off. I wish I was good with photoshop and I could show you what I was talking about.

[Els]

Its done.

2qwick4u, I tried your suggestion with the yellow stripes but because of the thickness of the lower fairing it made the stripes come out at an odd angle. I thought about masking and painting but suddenly the the laziness factor kicked in. I tried painting a squiggly green camo pattern over the top of the silver. I ended up getting rid of that though because on the motorcycle it looked like someone who didnt know how to paint had painted it. I just decided to keep it simple. Yellow stripes on back, Hinamarus on sides and green on the front cowling. These decals were from the 21st Century 1:32 kit. The kit instructions say it was a A6 Zero from Rabul. I don't know how accurate that is.

Here it is:

I am not sure what I will build next. I am not really over my aircraft burn out. Maybe a figure kit, I haven't built one in a while. I also have a Tron lightcycle that I bought a long time ago. Since the new movie is coming out, maybe that would be timely.

Thanks for looking, let me know what you think.

Els

[Wege]

That looks a plausible and tasteful 'street mod' of the R1 to me.

Very nice...

[2qwik4u]

Els,

Wow, that looks awesome. I love the stripes on rear body work, and the "anti-glare panel" on the front looks fantastic.

TRON cycle sounds cool, I vote for that one.

-Dave

[GreyGhost]

Very cool, Els !

I love the choice of doing it in the Japanese motif ... Fitting ...

Gregg

[HOLMES]

Els

SIMPLY....

[galileo1]

Great bike, Els!! I have the same bike kit but it's the Taira Racing version. Haven't built it yet but I am looking forward to it (more so now after seeing this beauty).

A quick question, did you paint the frame and motor at all? Also, what colors did you use for the fork? It looks super nice!

Rob

Edited January 28, 2011 by TOPGUN

[Els]

Thanks everybody.

Topgun,

After stripping the chrome off the frame I painted it with Tamiya black. The engine was cast in the basic colors. There are some small parts that need to be painted (I painted the carbs) but I pretty much left it alone since you cant see much of it after the fairings are installed. I painted the forks silver and then painted a couple of coats tamiya clear yellow over that.

There has been a little bit of a setback after I showed the completed kit. About two weeks after finishing the kit I took it to my local model club meeting. I noticed that the places on the fairing that I had used the bondo had continued to shrink after painting and decaling. I did not notice this while it was on the shelf. I guess the lesson is that if you use thickly applied filler, make sure that is properly cured before painting and decaling. I only let it set for a day and even though it was hard enough to sand, it obviously wasn't properly cured.

Els

Edited January 29, 2011 by Els

[McCoy]

Lookin' great n' the kit looks fun to build. I'm not at all interested in two-wheelers but it could be fun to build a bike some day despite that. As you said, change of orientation is good from time to time when you end up in a rut with your prefered line of models...