#1
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Two more Yamahas (and some more besides)
The saga begins...
In late 2014, Yamaha issued the second of their "Motor Sports World" dioramas featuring two motorcycles associated with the Dakar Rally: the 1995 XTZ850R and the 2014 YZ450F. Although I had had a great deal of trouble putting together the previous year's offering, the "Racing" YZR-M1 (see here), I decided to give these a try. I started with the XTZ850R way back in March 2015. As usual I wanted my model to match all my others built at approximately 1:14, so I printed off some sheets reduced to 40% and got started. First came the front and side fairings. These are laminated double-thickness so that inside and outside are coloured - I find it a bit difficult to do this neatly, but came up with something acceptable. |
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#2
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Next in order are the front forks and handlebars. These are mostly OK, with a few niggles:
The parts for the two sides of the handlebars appear to be reversed - the left side parts 4-7 are labelled 15-18, and vice versa. The alignment marks for the fittings 8, 9, 19 and 20 are wrongly positioned. The brake and clutch levers are too tall to fit inside the narrow ends of the hand protectors, and had to be trimmed. The left axle bearing (part 52) is incorrectly drawn - one segment of the wrapper is too short to fit the corresponding bit of the sides. Otherwise, no problem! Now the map display, all absolutely fine (which indeed it should be, having only 7 parts). |
#3
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Alan,
I am following this with interest, i started with the base of the right side diorama, now i can follow along on the bikes Rick
__________________
"Rock is Dead, Long Live Paper and Scissors" International Paper Model Convention Blog http://paperdakar.blogspot.com/ "The weak point of the modern car is the squidgy organic bit behind the wheel." Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear's Race to Oslo |
#4
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Quote:
Moving rearward, we come to the side fuel tanks. These were tricky to assemble, having a rather complex shape, but they fitted together well. The only oddity was that the paint job features a diagonal line which on the model changes from orange to blue at a join between two parts (taken from the assembly instructions) whereas in photographs of the real thing it is entirely blue. I made this minor adjustment before putting these together. Alan |
#5
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Onwards with the radiator and under cowl, neither of which gave much trouble, though the side of the undercowl is a pretty weird shape, not at all obvious from the assembly photographs.
The air filter and carburettors were very straightforward - not much detail is needed as they will be almost entirely hidden in the finished model except for the top of the air filter. The rear tanks are basically thin blocks which are quite hard to assemble without warping but not a major challenge. The right-hand side one, however, has additional lumps attached to its inboard face. These were a bit of a pain, as they came out quite badly twisted and wouldn't mate with the designated parts of the inner surface. I had to redraw them substantially to get an adequate (though still not really satisfactory) fit. |
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#6
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Next was the engine. This is a fairly simple representation, as a good deal of it will be hidden behind the side covers and tanks. There were one or two misfits, but nothing disastrous. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of it at that stage - you will have to read on a little further.
We come to the frame - this really was a disaster. The main part is a tubular structure, but problems arose even with the first section. This shows the right-hand front tube assembled according to the alignment marks. The top two sections are in the plane of the rest of the tube, and angle towards the rear of the bike. In fact they should angle inwards toward the centreline of the bike, to fit into the single top member. The gluing land bearing the number 52 is facing straight outwards, instead of generally towards the rear, to receive the intermediate side tube. I redrew the mating ends to rotate the top section by about a right angle, to something which looked plausible. Then it was possible to put together the rest of the frame, though in several places the gluing positions marked had to be ignored to get things to fit together. Then came the big problem - there was no way the engine would fit without significant distortion of the frame. The left photo doesn't look too bad, though the casings on the left side of the engine project well beyond the footrest attached to the frame. The right-hand photo shows the distortion of the frame needed to get the engine in, and even then it wouldn't stand upright. |
#7
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I decided to put that problem aside for the time being, and went on with the rear arm and suspension. Apart from some errors in the assembly instructions, these went together OK.
The tail light cluster, saddle and "tank 4" were similar - no great trouble. |
#8
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We have reached the exhaust system, and immediately hit another problem. One of the joints in the exhaust pipe for the left-hand cylinder is hugely misaligned. It is roughly a right angle bend, and lining up the printed alignment marks sets the elliptical ends across each other.
My first thought was that the marks were wrongly printed, so I refixed the joint with the ellipses coinciding. This resulted in the lower part of the pipe going in entirely the wrong direction. So, the alignment marks were OK, but the phase of the sine-wave ends was out. I adjusted that, and after a bit of trial and error lit on something which looked reasonable. Then I could get on with the rest of the exhaust. BUT, when I tried the rear section against the frame, it just didn't fit. At that point (May 2015) I had had enough, and put everything on one side to think about (much) later. |
#9
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For a few months I made one or two non-motorcycle models, but come September I thought I might have another look. First I made a new engine with smaller side casings, and with a lump taken out of the timing cover where it fouled the front tubes of the frame.
(Original on the left.) This was a bit more promising, but by now the frame was rather the worse for wear, so I started on a new one. I thought "If I do it really carefully, placing the joints exactly on the markings, it should come out much better." Wrong. It was all so twisted it wasn't worth even taking a picture. Once again the bits went back on the shelf. I had the second of two Modelik kits to build, the WSK "Gil", so I consoled myself with that. Not at all easy, but very rewarding. Here with the other Modelik kit, the SHL M04. Lovely models. |
#10
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The next thing to catch my eye was one of several models from ABC magazine which I have pending - a Jawa 125 police bike. These ABC models are rather cartoonish, but quite diverting in their particular style.
This took me up to the middle of last year. While it was going on we had the decorators in, so three rooms including my workroom had to be cleared and lots of stuff discarded or put into store. By then I was tired of seeing the bits of the XTZ850R lying around, and I was sure I wouldn't ever get back to it, so I threw them away... Once the Jawa was done, I fancied something more complex, so hauled out the 2015 offering from Yamaha, the YZF-R1M, which I described here. |
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