BMW (E46) 320i (Job Log)

Water washed.

The bonnet hook, side winker must be removed.
For metal decal emblems, I need to flatten them.
The shrinkage of the front bumper needs to be corrected.

Since we're going to paint it silver, we're going to have to put a lot of effort into finishing and cleaning the surface.

When I tried assembling the rear bumper temporarily, the fender part did not come in close contact.
You can fix it with glue later, but pre-bending it before that will make the job easier.

I hate minus camber because it feels like the car has been crushed from above.
It seems that the marked part expresses the minus of camber.

As expected, the negative camber was very severe.
Without complicated modification, it seems to be easily modified if the contact surface of the relevant part with the wheel is cut at a right angle.

I cut it too much, so it turned into a plus camber angle.
So I attached a small piece of plastic to make it right angle again.
I don't know yet if this will work well.

This is a sharkfin antenna.
It seems a little small after making it, but I decided to just use it.

Since I'm going to paint it silver, I don't need any light shielding, but I painted the surfacer because the metallic paint has a weak adhesion to the plastic surface.

You can reduce the painting process by one step by masking the areas to be painted matte black later and painting the body color.

Tamiya Gloss Aluminium

When I applied the clear coat over the silver, dark stain were visible, so I repainted the silver and re-coated the clear.
Then again, a dark stain appeared...
I think I repeated this process 4 times.

The situation did not improve, so I wiped it with gauze soaked in thinner.
I don't need to completely erase it because I'm going to be sanding it anyway.

Sanded.

Paint again gloss alumin.
Smoothly and cleanly.

Tamiya Gloss Aluminum Paint seemed to be unable to withstand GSI Lacquer Clear, so I 1st. applied Tamiya Acrylic Clear.
No stain.

2nd. And on top of that, I coated GSI Clear.
No stain too. 🙂

Sanded.

Over sanded. I will need to fix it later with a brush.

Pre-compounded. Roof is clean.

But I missed the bonnet stain because I was concentrating on the roof.
Maybe I'm the only one seeing this, but I can feel the stain crossing the arrows.

At this angle, the stains are more visible.
But now I don't want to rework, so I just ignore it...

It's a pity that you can see a single dot on the roof, but the overall clean result without stains is satisfactory.

After all polishing is done, wash with water and removed the masking tape.

Painted panel-line.

The carrier holder on the roof was painted paint brush with Vallejo.

Masked. (with ZoomOn ZD121)

1st painted base color.

2nd painted base color.

Painted chrome. (with MOMOCHROME)

I painted it like pouring Musou Black(like Vanta Black) into the muffler hole.

Painted with hand brush.

Ready to assemble.

The wide width of the USCP wheels caused interference with the suspension. (both front and back)
So I had to cut the marked part so that the wheel sits properly in the wheel house.
And I glued the wheels to the disc 🙂

The remaining decals were also applied.
The license plate used the remain decals that of the Revell BMW i8.

Start assembling the interior.
It was difficult to assemble the roll cage.

The room mirror used the remain stickers from the Bandai Pokemon kit.

Interior done.

I firmly attached the front and rear lamps.

I cut a transparent pla-plate and made a side winker and attached it.

The windshield was also firmly fixed to prevent it from falling off while assembling.

Front and rear bumpers are attached.
It's a good idea to attach the front bumper firmly, especially for later.

Attached rear windows and windshield.
It is designed to fit from the outside, so assembly is easy.

I attached a metal decal and a metal sticker. (not included)

There is no mention in the manual, but you have to cut the area like the picture in the balloon.
Otherwise, the front bumper will be pushed and the lower plate cannot be fitted on the upper plate, and the front bumper will eventually fall off.