OK a little more slow and painful progress...
Firstly I assembled the roll cage (but not gluing it into the car yet), this was far from easy - the parts have very small contact points / very shallow indents so won't hold together on their own, thus I had to solve the only 2 hands problem via lots of masking tape to check the fit, then untaping one at a time and applying some poly cement - allowing each joint to set slightly before gluing the next. Once all together the rear mount points don't match up exactly to the rear-parcel shelf points but I feel they should be gluable into position for final fitting. The reason I decided to glue before painting was to get a better joints with the solvent cement.
I decided to start the priming - for the smaller parts (engine / etc.) I attached them to a sheet of paper using masking tape so I wouldn't loose any, then used 2 dust coats of Tamiya grey primer
I figured that since I'd be hand painting most of these and didn't really need a smooth finish on the parts the dust coat would hopefully be enough, the remaining small parts on the sprues also got a couple of quick dust coats. Hopefully the primer will be enough to help the paint stick - and maybe will give some texture/paint depth with the 'dust'. There's some nice detail parts - like a car battery and what I think is an oil pot, though these fit in the boot and won't be visible on the final model?
The door cards and lower body tub will need to be body coloured, so I started with two dust coats of Tamiya white primer, these will need full coverage prior to painting but since they're black and need to match the body I thought I'd make a start with some initial primer dust coats. I also dust coated the roll cage in white.
Next job was to fit the front lower bumper / body - this was quite a bad fit..
After a bit of sanding though I managed to get a fairly decent fit, in order to get a good alignment I used some tape prior to applying glue to get as accurate a fit as possible (there are no locator 'pins') and glued it upside down to let gravity help the joint set.
Once it had set I wasn't happy with the corner edges - they didn't seem to look very smooth curves as they do in photos, so I broke out the filler, since the lower front bumper is very thin plastic I also built up the rear of the joint and bumper with a little filler for strength.
I sanded that back a bit, though I think the corners still need some work - I'm not sure if this water based putty actually reactivates or not when I'm rubbing it down with wet paper (wet and dry sand paper)?
I'm going to add some photo-etched bits (first time trying this stuff) and there's a double layer front grille for the car but I thought that would look terrible with just the plastic behind it - so I hatched a plan to cut out the front grille area. I initially put some masking tape on, then used a pencil to mark out the areas I wanted to remove - I was planning to leave a central vertical strut (there's one on the real car from videos I found on YouTube). However my rotary tool skills leave something to be desired and I ended up making quite a pigs ear of it with the tiny drill bit and rotary cutter...
So I then got out the craft knife, sand paper, etc. and ended up having to cut the central strut out. I think I managed to clean it up fairly well although the opening is somewhat 'lop-sided' being slightly higher at once side than another, though I'm hopefully with the front grilles in front you won't notice - I might go back and clean it up though, I just got a bit annoyed with it for now. There's a slight chip on one side but I should be able to filler that out. I had to remove the central pillar point due to my terrible grinding but I built a replacement part from a bit of white sprue that I just sanded down and glued in at the rear, that actually helps by adding a little 3D 'depth' into the model but testing showed it's going to have very tight clearance with the radiator part so I'll need to take care.
I cut out the first bit of photo-etch grill and test fitted it, I'm not sure what the techniques are to use this stuff - it's very fragile, well bendy I should say (what's the best way to clean up / sand it down - wedge it between 2 blocks of wood with just the offending parts showing or just use a sharp blade?) I had to clip the corners off the photo-etch corners (that fit under the wing arches) which I did rather badly with some wire-cutters (sprue cutters) though it seems OK once in place.
In other news my paint arrived, I didn't have any disposable plastic spoons to hand so I improvised with some disposable cups - giving them a quick dust coat of white first. I quite like the Tamiya rubber colour, I always find that doing window surrounds in matt black always seems to be a bit too high contrast when I try it (and I usually muck it up).
I still haven't decided on the Candy Lime Green or Metallic Orange yet..
