Brabham BT46

Stefan Suessemilch
Nice start Mike 🙂

Mike Thomas
Thank you, sir! Being a 35 year old kit, I'm a little concerned about the decals...

Steve Wilson
...
Nicely achieved Mike, great bit of building and painting🙂

Mathijs Beenhakker
did the decal on the oil filter give you any trouble? if not you should be fine! however....you can try to spray them with a layer of liquid decal film of microscale!

Are you sure the kit is the original 35 year old kit or is it an re-issued one
Original Decals are on white decal paper...Later ones (re-issue's) have got blue decal paper and they should be fine

Original boxart...no text underneath the engine
Re-issue's got text that its No.7 in the Grand Prix Series and some Japanese text under the engine art

Mathijs Beenhakker
if decals are to far gone...you can try indycals indycals.net/decals/f1/78brabhambt46.html

Mike Thomas
Well now, Mathijs.....I'm totally confused. The decal sheet is white, the oil filter decal went on with no problems but....the boxart has text under the engine...but it says:

Tamiya Modelos
Plasticos Ltda
CGC 59.533.430/0001-11
Av. Albert Einstein 473
Taboao da Serra SP
Industria Brasileira

Under the kit name at the top it says "colecao grand prix 1/20 no.03"
It also says "Made in Brasil" on the box end. The instructions are in Spanish?...Portugese? Sorry...not much of a linguist!

Obviously the above is the address of Tamiya in Brasil. I assume "colecao grand prix 1/20 no.03" means "Number 3 in the 1/20 Grand Prix collection". I don't see a copyright date anywhere, either.

Sooooo....I don't know if it is a Brazilian copy of the original issue or a Brazilian copy of the re-issue! Or does it have anything to do with either issue??......See?...Confused!!!

Steve Wilson
Hi Mike...
Some time ago now... there was someone producing Tamiya kits in Brazil, who Tamiya wanted to take to court. He had to stop producing kits, I don't know (obviously, can't see your kit) but it could be, I emphasize, COULD, be one of those!!!

Could meaning... also might not be!!!😉

Mathijs Beenhakker
Sorry Forgot about the Brazil kits...And its the third kit produced for the Latin-American market i guess...yeah the Decals are Bad if they have the white backing paper....if i were you i would not go with them because they are very transparent.....no problem on the white oil filter...However on a red background the letters will not be white and the light blue striping will also be affected by the background color...Japanese catalogus from the Early '80's Shows no number 2003 and the Brabham alfa was listed as 2007 ...001 Tyrrell p34 ('76) 002 Mclaren m23 ('76 ) 004 Lotus JPS('77 ) ..006 Wolf WR1('77 ) 007 Brabham (78 ) 010 Ferrari 312T3 ('78 ) 005-008-009 waren porsche 935-kremer porsche-Toyota celica they added another 0 in their kit numbers after that and it all becomes a mess because some kits were put on Hold like the Lotus '79 But that got nothing to do with your question about the quality of the Decals

Mike Thomas
Thanks guys....I guess the safest bet would be aftermarket decals...or, if I can drum up the patience, maybe scanning and printing the original sheet on white and clear decal paper and lay down some layers....nah, nevermind....aftermarket it is... 🙂

Scott Hastings
Gonna follow along here, have a few of these ancient kits in my stash. This was my first Tamiya kit way back as an early teen