Motorcycle Tips
Axles
Brakes
Cables
Carbon Fibre
Chains
Exhaust
Fairings
Forks
Frame
Hoses
Instruments
Lights
Mirrors
Radiators
Seats
Shocks
Swingarms
Wheels
Windscreens
Wiring

General Tips
Assembly
Decals
Painting
Photography
Preparation

Recycling


Fairings

Assembly
February 28, 2001
Some fairings are in two halves that have to be glued together. I use Tamiya's Extra Thin Cement to gluing the halves together. This cement melts the plastic and actually fuses the two pieces together. To ensure the halves are aligned, I push the seam along a piece of glass. This will give you a perfect seam. Once the cement has dried, I use a Flex-I- File with a loose strip of sandpaper to clean up the seam. In most cases the seam in perfect with no need to use filler.


Decals
Only cut decals from the sheet as you need them, otherwise you can easily misplace them. Cut as close to the decal as possible to remove the excess carrier. After decaling is complete, a clear coat (gloss, semi-gloss, or matt) should be applied to protect and 'seal' the decals onto the model. More decal tips


Painting
If the inner surface of the fairings need to be painted a different colour, paint the inner surface first. It can be very difficult to avoid getting over spray on the exterior when paint the inner surface last.


Polishing Plastic
On some models it best to leave the plastic piece unpainted. To replicate plastic fenders on motocross motorcycles, etc. But, in most cases you must not leave the piece untouched. I use TurtleWax Polishing Compound or Tamiya Polishing and Rubbing Compound to polish the plastic to give it a uniform appearance and really shine up the piece. Polishing is also necessary before using metalizer paints Like SnJ and Testors to achieve a blemish free polished 'metal' surface.

Be sure to wash the polished pieces with soapy water to remove any remaining polishing compound.


Airducts with wire coilRibbed Ducting
Some ducting is 'ribbed' and has a mould line down either side. This doesn't look very nice even after cleaning up the part. So, I file off the ribbing and then slide a loose coil of 28gauge wire over the ducting. The coil is made by wrapping the wire around a 5/32" drill bit. The wire is then fixed  into place with some CA glue. For the 'webbing' in between the wire, I coat the wire with CA glue so it fills in between the wire spiral. This results in a very convincing hose and looks 100% better than the kit part.

Contact Coaster
http://home.interlog.com/~khartlen
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Last revised on: March 2, 2004
Copyright © 1998-2003, Kenneth W. Hartlen. All rights reserved.

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