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George Williams
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Honda's upside down racer

October 12, 2013 · in Automotive · · 12 · 1.9K

Hi folks, this is the kit that imodeller kindly supplied as my prize from July. It's a model of 's 1984 World Championship challenger

, as ridden by American Freddie Spencer. For 1984 Honda decided to investigate the improved handling qualities of lowering the centre of gravity by swapping the positions of the fuel tank and exhaust expansion boxes . This innovative approach brought immediate results with Freddie setting pole position at the first race, and going on to win three pole-to-finish wins that season.

I built the kit pretty much out of the box, the main modification I made was to drill out the holes in the front brake disc. The kit went together very well except for the decals which gave me quite a lot of trouble. Most of the kits in this series have decals supplied by Carfograf, this one is an exception, having decals made in house, which kept splitting and disintegrating, despite the generous application of softener. This picture

shows the turn metal exhaust ends quite well, these are part of the detail up kit.

Thanks again to imodeler for the kit.

Reader reactions:
3  Awesome

5 additional images. Click to enlarge.


12 responses

  1. Nice build & good follow through on getting a prize built.
    I don't know much about bikes in general but if I was riding one of these not sure how excited I would be about laying down on those exhaust.

  2. Yet another excellent build there George, it shows perseverance with the decals as you said. A fast turn round as well.

  3. Up to your usual, George. Another great looking bike. Are they that easy, or are you just that good? They always look REAL ! Beautiful !

  4. George,
    An outstanding and remarkably quick build. You did an excellent job on this. Aside from the heat of the exhausts, I can also picture the rider being able to sing soprano in a boys choir.

  5. I wish I could build these that fast and to that consistent standard. It would be cool to see the whole collection in the same photo sometime! Cracking model there George.

  6. wow...your a metal master

  7. Great build, George. Wasn't Freddie's nickname "Louisiana Lightning" or something along that line?

  8. Lovely model George, the decals look fine to me, well done, will post mine eventually, now to check out more of yours, how long was the build?

    • Hi Allan, thanks for looking. These bikes usually take me about a month to build, depending on spare time, weather, etc. I think this one was a little quicker as it was my prize from the previous month! Looking forward to seeing yours posted here soon. I've just received the new Tamiya Honda Moto GP racer from 2014!

  9. Great build George, those exhausts are really nicely done.

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