Mclaren M23 Ford - GP Austria 1974 - WIP

First thing to do: level out all the different parts, because they had all different widths! I also polished the white metal cowling. 

Next up: the cowling rear part, which was not very leveled either. I added the missing part with plasticard. 

The air scoop, 1 of the most prominent parts of this car, didn't stand straith either. I had to fit a piece of plasticard to the right side to get it leveled. In fact, all these corrections shouldn't be nessecairy knowing that this transkit costs € 175! 

Once the shape of the nose cone was adapted to the main body, I fixed the white metal front wings and the PE endplates + Gurney flaps. I relocated the attachment points as well.  

At the bottom, the white metal bottom plate was a little short, so I added some plastic strip to fit the part perfectly. 

The extra plastic strip at the rear end of the cowling will probably need some more filler; looks like I used not enough putty there... Also note the metal fixing pins I used to replace the standard pins. 

To the right hand side I added some plastic strip as well, and I replaced the resin fixing pins with metal wire pins. 

I added a little plastic sheet part which was not present in the kit (red arrow). I also fixed the PE endplates and the Gurney flap, which needs to stay in metal color. That's why I masked it with BMF. 

The rear wing support was fixed to the rear wing from the start to make it easier to handle the part while spraying. I removed the resin fixing pins once more and replaced them by real working metal bolts. 

I relocated the attachment points of the cowling since I replaced the fixing pins by much smaller ones (red arrows). I also had to adjust some of the body extremities to make them fit to the lower body part (green arrows). 

I reflected on fixing the two body halves together before spraying them, to avoid seeing the joining line (red dotted line) afterwards, because the real car didn't have this. But it turned out to be too complicated to change the construction... 

I sprayed the body with white primer and a coat of Tamiya TS-26 pure white. 

The nose cone is starting to look like it should. 

The huge air scoop... 

And the rear wing are sprayed as well. 

Dry fit of the body parts. 

And then finally I can begin to do some serious decalling 😉 

And 24 hours and 17 (!) decals later, I have a first McLaren bodypart ready for clearcoating 😉