Tamiya 14082 Honda NSR 500 converted with Studio27 DC-484C decals

This project started September 19 2001, completed October 5 2001.
Poor Chris walker! He struggled on this bike for the first half of the 2001 season on this bike being thrown off it more times than he cares to remember, struggling with HRC to let his team set the bike up to suit him better and to supply upgraded parts, always racing in the back of the field before finally being sacked after the round at donington by his team.
I think he didn't get a real chance and that he could have done better if given the time he was promised and the bike and backup he deserved.

This build will be based upon a 14082 Nastro azurro kit, but I will modify the rear cowling by adding recessed rounded areas below the seat area as shown on the boxart of the Nastro kit, and I will also make a new dashboard and modify the exhausts according to Chris' NSR's specs.

Preparing and painting the bodywork
This is where I like to start, the bodywork is my favourite piece of the building process and besides, letting the bodywork dry while finishing the rest of the kit makes the final assembly easier.
I started with the rear cowling halves, and cut out the area that needed recessing completely, sanded that smooth and glued in pieces of plastic on the back side of this, not 100% correct result but it looks the part.
I then glued all bodywork together and sanded the join lines smooth, before I primed eveything with white primer. All the white parts of the finish comes as decals, so You just need to paint the tank and belly cowling yellow, and the front and rear fairing and front fender red. Studio27 suggests TS-16 yellow but that doesn't match the yellow parts of the decals, so I mixed some TS-34 Camel yellow into the TS-16 and got a closer match. The red parts was painted with TS-8 italian red according to Studio 27's recommendations and my own research as well.

Decaling
The decals look good, but some of them are obviously hard to apply, mainly the large one for the rear consisting of a white and a yellow part that must conform to a difficult area and at the same time they must line up against each other along the rear seat hump. This took a lot of time and some Micro set and sol as well. The white fairing decals went on well, but when they'd dried I discovered that the colors of the bodywork showed thru slightly, and since parts of the white decals was applied to yellow bodywork and other parts was applied to red bodywork they didn't quite match in color, so I decided to shade in some white paint with the airbrush to hide this mismatch, and lucky me, it went very well.
Otherwise the decals went down fine and I had no problems.

Detailing
I wanted to add a few new things this time, so I made the recessed area that the 2000 spec NSR's have on the rear cowling, this was done by grinding away the plastic according to reference pics and glueing in a piece of plastic (pieces of sprue labeling tabs) behind the carved-out area, to make it look like a recessed area in the plastic. Later I discovered that the recess can be carved into the excisting plastic whitout adding something, makes it easier and allows better space for the exhausts inside.
I also added a new instrument panel, the decal sheet has a decal for this with a template so it was pretty staright forward. I also added some new controls and control cables like I've done in previous NSR build-ups. Carbon pattern was created by spraying XF-56 thru a mesh and onto a black surface, this was done on the rear fender and the air intakes. I also added a few hose clamps made from thin metal wire in visible places. The exhaust has it's fastening bracket very far forward so I made the exhausts from an old type NSR (1998-99) exhaust that still comes with the kit. A nice touch in terms of accuracy but takes a little work.

Summary
A nice looking bike that has proved highly incompetitive also with new pilot Leon Haslam, it has a nice color scheme and looks striking.
I enjoyed building the kit, but it has limited appeal and will probably not appear on many modeling benches.