Started summer 2001.
This conversion features a studio 27 decal sheet with year 2000's Gauloises co-sponsorship, but apart form the decals it is identical to last years model. Garry Mc Coy had a great season winning several races and ending up 5th in the championships on his no. 24 bike.

Bodywork painting and decalling
A lot of modelers was dissatisfied with Tamiya's TS-PB paint wich was their special red bull paint, including me. The paint was too dark and also very hard to apply, so I've been looking for a better finish for my future red bull bikes, and when alclad II announced their prismatic laquer range, I decided to try the sapphire blue finish. The laquer was pre-thinned for airbrush use and meant to be applied over a gloss black finish and overcoated with clear paint, so that's what I did and the result turned out well, better than the TS-PB finish I feel. I had a small accident when I applied the final heavy clear coat using Modeler's super clear, the finish got bubbles all over because I applied too much, so I had to sand back that and re-apply clear, it left a few marks but that was the best I could hope for, happily I didn't ruin it entirely. The sapphire blue has the right ability to reflect light and change it's color depending on the lightning contition, it's hard to do the finish justice with the camera but it's very lively.
I found my outdoor pics to give the best result, so I've used them here. I forgot the tire decals before the photo session, but never mind...

The Studio27 decals I used (ST-DC 329) was excellent and went down whitout problems.

Adding some details...
Hollowed out the right stand support bracket, added guitar string pieces to the gas handle's wiring to simulate metal tube, inserted metal wire in the right chain tensioner, added a few hose clamps made from wire strands, drilled holes in bolt heads on the frame to simulate allen key bolts and replaced the kits piping with thinner Modeler's wire. I also drilled holes in the top of the front forks.

Painting.
The frame and rear swing was painted with Badger engine black, the exhausts with alclad highly polished alu overcoated with clear orange, the brake calipers with Alclad pale gold, the radiator with alclad alu and the wheels with TS-49 black, the front forks was covered with Black chrome Bare metal foil, the sliding parts as always with gold bare metal foil of course. a little carbon decal here and there along with some simulated carbon, along with lots of other small detail painting.



Here's the bike with the '99 Red Bull YZR painted with TS-PB (hi res pic)

This page was last updated on 3 September 2001.