Post by jhedir6 on May 1, 2019 5:35:33 GMT -8
This is the first of MANY Ford GT's I have built (or am currently working on to be more accurate) and the winner of the GTE Pro class at the 2016 24 Hours of Le Mans, 50 years after Ford won the race out right for the first time.
This is the new Ford GTE/LM kit from Revell. For those that don't have or haven't seen the kit it a very good kit. Much much better than the Revell C7R. It is not Tamiya quality as far as fit and finish go, but is still a well engineered kit that builds up nice. I'd put this kit on par or maybe a bit better than some of the Fujimi GT kits.
The kit itself has a relatively small parts count but looks much higher once assembled. Like the C7R kit it is a full detailed kit as far as the interior and engine go, tho there are missing details ( the Ford runs a twin turbo V6 and they left the turbos off)...but once built, you can't see them anyways. Also the original production or this kit was started by Revell USA then taken over by Germany after the death of Hobbico, so some of the details are a bit goofy. The kit comes with the decals to build the 2017 Le Mans car, that finished 2nd behind the Aston Martin, instead of the 2016 car that won the race. No idea why Revell Germany chose to do the 2017 car...you'd think Ford would have insisted on the 2016 class winner. Now one thing they got right, unlike the C7R that only lets you build the #4 IMSA car, the Ford kit lets you build any one of the 4 Ganassi cars that ran Le Mans in 2017, a big plus. Another goof, because Revell USA started the project it looks like they had intended to do an IMSA car cause the Ford and the big camera pod on the roof like the C7R. This was not removed for the Le Mans car on the model so the decals are not 100% correct because the Ford Performance decal on the roof has a gap for the camera pod. Otherwise they did a really nice job on the decals. There are over 150 decals on the sheet (a lot of "doubles") that allow for the various cars, you don't use all of them on one car, but the number of decals for each car is substantial.
Ok enough rambling, on to the pics....
Some box art
For pics of the contents, I'll post a link to Spot Models site, they have some nice colour pics of the individual sprues and decals.
www.spotmodel.com/product_info.php?products_id=51230&language=en
I started with the wheels and tires. Paint is Gravity Colors OZ Gun Metal and extra decals (Michilen's are in the kit) are from Powerslide. Engine was painted with Vallejo acrylics.
Body is painted with Gravity Colors Ford GT colours for 2016/17. The two piece body makes masking much easier. The roof and rear is one pieces painted red. The body pod is painted white then masked, painted blue and a bit of red on the inside of the outer wheel pods. You can see the roof pod was removed prior to primer and paint. This was the only physical change I made to the stock kit.
On to the decals. I use a combination of the kit decals and a set I got off of Ebay to do the 2016 #68 car. I believe these decals might have been some test shots for Revell before they went defunct in the US. The decals were printed on the same bluish decal paper some Revell kits use ( the C7R and the newly released US version of the Ford GT) and were die cut. They are a bit thin compared to the release decals but still decently printed and you only need a few of them to correct the Germany kit to the 2016 car.
The rolling chassis completed. The engineering is very good on this kit. The only real issue I had was getting the roll cage assembled after paint. The connecting points are bad ( the one real weak point in the engineering) and required some fiddling to get to lock and hold while the glue dried. The roll cage and front and rear suspension mounting points are one piece per side. Add in two more roll cage pieces the rear deck that has the transmission cooler and the lower half of the dash and you have the whole of the upper chassis, minus the interior tub. I found on later build you can take these 6 parts and glue them up prior to primer and paint and install them as a whole unit over the interior tub once it's attached to the chassis plate. This allows you to glue the roll cage parts avoiding a mess later on and it works well.
Here are some pics of it completed. I dirtied it up a bit to give it a more of a post race feel. On final assembly there are some issues getting the body to sit down onto the chassis properly. I think it's mostly a paint issue as I didn't seem to have those problems during test fitting during the build. But still, everything goes together very well.
I still have the antennas to add, but other than that and a bit more weathering I want to do, it's done.
Overall I'd give Revell a solid 8 out of 10 on this kit. A few goofy things mentioned earlier about which year of cars were done and the IMSA roof camera (should have been a piece you could add if wanted.) Ideally I think they should have done the sheet with the 2 US cars and the 2 WEC cars with the decals needed to do the Le Mans car if desired. A small thing but something that would have made more sense in my mind then doing all 4 Le Mans cars for just one year.
For aftermarket there are already many decals sets for the Daytona cars from this year, as well as the 2018 IMSA and WEC cars. There is also a PE set and 2 sets of CF decals available. Decalcas is also working on a resin set with better sized wheels and tires and a rear diffuser that is less thick.
I enjoyed building this kit so much that I've got 5 more to go....and more on the way.
This is the new Ford GTE/LM kit from Revell. For those that don't have or haven't seen the kit it a very good kit. Much much better than the Revell C7R. It is not Tamiya quality as far as fit and finish go, but is still a well engineered kit that builds up nice. I'd put this kit on par or maybe a bit better than some of the Fujimi GT kits.
The kit itself has a relatively small parts count but looks much higher once assembled. Like the C7R kit it is a full detailed kit as far as the interior and engine go, tho there are missing details ( the Ford runs a twin turbo V6 and they left the turbos off)...but once built, you can't see them anyways. Also the original production or this kit was started by Revell USA then taken over by Germany after the death of Hobbico, so some of the details are a bit goofy. The kit comes with the decals to build the 2017 Le Mans car, that finished 2nd behind the Aston Martin, instead of the 2016 car that won the race. No idea why Revell Germany chose to do the 2017 car...you'd think Ford would have insisted on the 2016 class winner. Now one thing they got right, unlike the C7R that only lets you build the #4 IMSA car, the Ford kit lets you build any one of the 4 Ganassi cars that ran Le Mans in 2017, a big plus. Another goof, because Revell USA started the project it looks like they had intended to do an IMSA car cause the Ford and the big camera pod on the roof like the C7R. This was not removed for the Le Mans car on the model so the decals are not 100% correct because the Ford Performance decal on the roof has a gap for the camera pod. Otherwise they did a really nice job on the decals. There are over 150 decals on the sheet (a lot of "doubles") that allow for the various cars, you don't use all of them on one car, but the number of decals for each car is substantial.
Ok enough rambling, on to the pics....
Some box art
For pics of the contents, I'll post a link to Spot Models site, they have some nice colour pics of the individual sprues and decals.
www.spotmodel.com/product_info.php?products_id=51230&language=en
I started with the wheels and tires. Paint is Gravity Colors OZ Gun Metal and extra decals (Michilen's are in the kit) are from Powerslide. Engine was painted with Vallejo acrylics.
Body is painted with Gravity Colors Ford GT colours for 2016/17. The two piece body makes masking much easier. The roof and rear is one pieces painted red. The body pod is painted white then masked, painted blue and a bit of red on the inside of the outer wheel pods. You can see the roof pod was removed prior to primer and paint. This was the only physical change I made to the stock kit.
On to the decals. I use a combination of the kit decals and a set I got off of Ebay to do the 2016 #68 car. I believe these decals might have been some test shots for Revell before they went defunct in the US. The decals were printed on the same bluish decal paper some Revell kits use ( the C7R and the newly released US version of the Ford GT) and were die cut. They are a bit thin compared to the release decals but still decently printed and you only need a few of them to correct the Germany kit to the 2016 car.
The rolling chassis completed. The engineering is very good on this kit. The only real issue I had was getting the roll cage assembled after paint. The connecting points are bad ( the one real weak point in the engineering) and required some fiddling to get to lock and hold while the glue dried. The roll cage and front and rear suspension mounting points are one piece per side. Add in two more roll cage pieces the rear deck that has the transmission cooler and the lower half of the dash and you have the whole of the upper chassis, minus the interior tub. I found on later build you can take these 6 parts and glue them up prior to primer and paint and install them as a whole unit over the interior tub once it's attached to the chassis plate. This allows you to glue the roll cage parts avoiding a mess later on and it works well.
Here are some pics of it completed. I dirtied it up a bit to give it a more of a post race feel. On final assembly there are some issues getting the body to sit down onto the chassis properly. I think it's mostly a paint issue as I didn't seem to have those problems during test fitting during the build. But still, everything goes together very well.
I still have the antennas to add, but other than that and a bit more weathering I want to do, it's done.
Overall I'd give Revell a solid 8 out of 10 on this kit. A few goofy things mentioned earlier about which year of cars were done and the IMSA roof camera (should have been a piece you could add if wanted.) Ideally I think they should have done the sheet with the 2 US cars and the 2 WEC cars with the decals needed to do the Le Mans car if desired. A small thing but something that would have made more sense in my mind then doing all 4 Le Mans cars for just one year.
For aftermarket there are already many decals sets for the Daytona cars from this year, as well as the 2018 IMSA and WEC cars. There is also a PE set and 2 sets of CF decals available. Decalcas is also working on a resin set with better sized wheels and tires and a rear diffuser that is less thick.
I enjoyed building this kit so much that I've got 5 more to go....and more on the way.
