1/24 Revell Enzo Ferrari

Gallery Article by The Palos Verdes Run-arounds on Sept 13 2012

 

-Very fair price for the amount of parts and treats (decals, rubber tires, chromed parts, mesh).
-Good decals
-Good quality clear parts
-Instructions generally good, but with some obscure areas (see below)
-Location of some items imprecise and vague (examples: parts 73-74 on 40; 45 on 44; apex of part 41 should have the flanges pointing towards part 38; pedals on tub misleading drawing location)
-Parts 95/96 (side scoops) are reversed in the instructions. I got a headache before figuring that out. Also 95/96 and 97/98 can be glued to the body before you paint it. Pity I did not know that until I painted everything separately.
-Wrong color calls (the back of seats is black, not red; the auxiliary reservoirs are not
aluminum color, but seem to be yellow-anodized aluminum)
-All window sills should be painted black, as well as the braces in the engine hood. I could not find a mention of this in the instructions.
-Indifferent fit with some play at the contact surfaces (exhaust manifolds, engine parts and details; muffler halves should have their locating flanges/tabs removed to achieve the correct fit)
-Questionable design calls: the seat belts should have been not molded on the seats and do not make much sense as they are positioned, they look stiff and unrealistic. Since it is a pain in the neck to remove them and supplant them with more credible items, I left them as they were.

 

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-Underpanel (large body base piece) badly warped in my sample, engine hood also a bit splayed out. Perhaps they were removed from the molding machine too soon or packed with excessive pressure.
-There is neither parts’ map nor sprue coding (as in sprue A, B and the like), in spite of the high number of both, which makes looking for small parts sometimes fastidious.
-The rear exhausts (the ones ending in chromed caps) attach to the end of the manifolds and to the bottom of the top muffler. That comes out as a compromised kit design call, since the fit is vague (as in everywhere else) and the position is vague –to say the least- in the instructions. They don’t fit well under the central muffler as designed. Dry-fitting the body helps determine where the ends more or less should be.
-Be very careful with the rear shafts, they are of unequal lengths (and correctly marked A and B). The parts that will hold the wheel assemblies (67 and 69) are keyed. There is a small tab on top of it, NOT shown on the instructions, that is either parallel or perpendicular to the shaft. The upper suspension forks have a hole keyed likewise to accept them; again, the hole is absent from the drawings. Details like that with slow you down until you figure it out, or could mislead you to “correct” the part thinking is a molding flash, ruining it.
-The front wheel assembly is made to be able to steer. For that to happen, though, you will need to enlarge the holes of the suspension forks; otherwise the fit is too tight.
-The wheels’ chromed parts need a bit of sanding where they press against the brake disk in order to allow rotation.
-You will need to remove some -not so prominent- ejector pin marks on the ceiling and the engine’s hood underside before painting.
-I replaced the lenses of the lights with MV products items.
-Turning lights were colored using a mix of orange acrylic and varnish
-You have to cut the mesh following the provided patterns. You do not have to cut BOTH patterns when they are mirrored, though, since cutting two with the same pattern will do the trick (just reverse one for the other side, since the mesh does not have “sides”).
The plastic mesh provided is not bad, but tends to fray and deform as you cut it. May be a metallic mesh of equal size could be used for a more comfortable and precise cutting.
Take the patterns you are given in the instructions for cutting the mesh with a pinch of salt, you will have to adjust those shapes against the actual placement, some more than others.
-If you plan to close the engine hood (although it is generally shown open for the benefit of the engine detail) you will have to use your sanding stick, before you paint the body parts, since the fit again is not precise.
-Do not glue –as wrongly indicated in step 3- the chromed exhaust tips until the end of construction, otherwise to put the body on the chassis will be very difficult, if not impossible. In any case, and speaking of difficulties...


-Once you have finished almost everything, you will now try to match the body to the chassis. YOU ARE THERE FOR A SURPRISE, they WON’T match. After several attempts with different approaches -and several parts of the chassis broken attempting to carefully and artfully “put on” the body-, I had to stop for repairs. Imagine how happy I was. Once more, I wonder if the designers/engineers/pattern makers ever build a kit themselves from a critical perspective. I sincerely doubt it. One thing is a computer screen, AutoCAD and NCM, and other, very different, are real objects in space. Finally i got to glue the body to the chassis. The fit isn't good. I had tried it before assembling the interior, and although the fit was not by any means clean, with the interior it was almost impossible. If you glued one side, the other will open, and vice-versa. Not, at this stage, the model is very fragile, and boo-boos are difficult to correct. So what was supposed to be the nice culmination of a long effort, was a struggle to the end. Come on, Revell! Sloppy, to say the least. I have read in reviews of this kit of similar issues; frustrating, to say the least. In a way, reminded me of the lead that foreign cars (and kit makers) have over American ones.

-The transparencies are in general a good fit, but the back window -over the engine bay- leaves a narrow gap on both sides. Those sides of the transparency, by the way, are a tad opaque, since a mesh is supposed to be on them. Now, the quality of the mesh, good enough if you put it behind a feature -as in the rest of car- is not really good in this case, and to leave its ragged edges exposed -as it would be here- wouldn’t be good, so I left those sides alone.

The model once finished looks good, and other builders may tackle the kit issues in a different way. In the general balance, given the initial cost of the kit (and not stressing too much all the hassle) you get a very decent model for your buck.
Now, where was that road to Malibu?

The Palos Verdes Run-arounds

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