Tamiya 14068 Ducati 916, Carl Fogarty version made with MRM transkit.

This project started December 15 2000.
The Englishmen love motorsports, and they love bikes. Therefore it was not surprising that an English firm, MRM came up with a transkit that lets You make a 1999 Ducati 996 superbike racer from a Tamiya 14068 kit. The transkit contains a decal sheet and several resin cast parts: five spoke wheels with tires, a bellypan, a clutch housing, cam belts and cam covers. There's also a sheet with a few instructions and painting suggestions. I've decided to make Carl Fogarty's bike, but You can also make the Troy Corser version.

DAY 1
The first thing I did was to fill the fairings cat eyes, as this bike don't have lights. I also filled the rear light recesses and the side stand opening.
With that done I started to clean up the resin parts, and soon decided not to use the cam belts and covers, but stick with the original closed belt housing because the resin cast had too many faults and the finished bike will have it's fairing on, it was not a difficult decision. The other resin parts takes a lot of work both with sanding and filling, but I'll give it a try. As soon as I started to clean up the resin I discovered that a Dremel multitool is essential for this kind of work, as well as regular files and sanding paper.
Next I assembled the bodywork and cleaned up the joints.

DAY 2
I had today totally off (december 16) and decided to do a lot of painting. I prepared all the kit parts and decided wich color to paint them in, as well as to assemble the engine halves and frame halves.
The painting started with the bodywork wich was painted with Tamiya TS-8 thru the airbrush, next up was the engine parts wich required a metallic green, I mixed XF-56 and X-5 according to Tamiya's recommendations, it turned out well. Then I started with Alclad II metalizers, Alu on the engine and carbs, highly polished alu on the steering clamps, steel on the brakediscs, pale gold on the brake calipers and the chain and finally copper on the shocks and magnesium on the rear swing.
I proceeded with Tamiya X-31 enamel for the frame and light housing and Humbrol gunmetal for the exhausts before I prepared the airbrush for acrylic colors. First I painted the shock spring with X-8 yellow, then the oil filter and fairings side covers with X-18, the seat, chainguard and wheels with XF-1 and finally all parts to be chromed with alclad II chrome tomorrow was coated with X-1 acrylic paint.

DAY 3
Not so much done today, but I had the time to spray yesterdays black parts with Alclad II chrome, wich gives a very realistic chrome finish far superior to the kit's own chrome.

DAY 4
Checked the bodywork, and the TS-8 was nice and dry so I decided to try some of the decals. I polished the tank/seat unit and the front cowling with Tamiya compound and applied the three biggest decals, the ones with a number 1 on them. The fit and general quality of these decals is not that high and they were very hard to apply. There's no instructions or drawings telling You wich decal goes where and it's difficult to determine from my reference material because all the Ducati's I've found has a different layout. I discovered too late that the racing version don't have the diagonally split panels on the sides of the fairing, but mine's already painted so I'm not going to worry about that now.
The supplied carbon decals look really bad so I've decided to replace them with scale motorsports carbon decals, but otherwise I'll just apply decals to the best of my knowledge and see how it turns out.

DAY 5
The decals was really impossible for me to place. I had to paint over the rear number 1 decals with white paint. I've added the decals to the side fairings today, and uploaded a picture of the kit at this stage.

DAY 6 (after Christmas break)
I tried to paint the wheels and finish them as best I could, but they're just too badly cast to look good. I decided to fit the supplied three spoke wheels and tyres since I care more about the way the model looks than how exact a replica it is. I painted the wheels with tamiya MS-5 (metallic grey)

DAY 7
Fitted the wheels today and assembled the bike, the only thing remaining is the tank/ seat unit which still is'nt finished and the belly pan wich has a lot of work left.

This page was last updated on January 8 2001.