I did some refurbishing on the BMW R75 scene. I removed all the figures, redid the road and repainted the two soldiers. Then I also added two different figures, and some other small details.
Finally, I added a British roadsign taken from a reference picture taken in June 1942.
After finishing the motorcycle, I added two nice Fallschirmjaeger figures from Alpine, that were used almost unaltered. Only the MP 40 of one figure was exchanged against one from Dragon, taken from the spares box. I also added a pair of goggles to the guy with the MP, carefully removed from another resin head.
Painting went quite well and was a lot of fun. Then I fixed the two figures to the base:
After finishing the build of the bike, I also built the sidecar, and painted the completed motorcycle. I also fixed it onto a desert style base, leaving space for the figures and possibly a roadsign.
During the last two weeks, I almost finished the build of the motorcycle, with the sidecar being left to be built. As in the last build, I used a lot of scratch parts, together with some of the kit’s PE and plastic parts. Now the bike is ready to be primed:
For the brake and clutch cables, I used the old school thinned plastic wires made from heated sprue parts. They just have the right tension and look better than brass or copper wires.
I started to build the cycle, and this was surprisingly sobering. Before this kit, I had a look at three others, when I first built the BMW R75. There is the very old and outdated kit from Tamiya, which features a very good reproduction of the fork of the front wheel, and there is a kit from Italeri, that has nicely detailed parts like the engine cylinders, but also gross mistakes. The one I used as basis for my first build is the kit from Masterbox, which has many correct features and follows the composition of the original bike quite closely.
Talking about the Lion Roar kit now, it is very detailed, but also has some failures and missing details, that contrast strangely with the level of detail present in other parts of the motorcycle. Fortunately, there is an abundance of reference material on the web, including an original instructions manual and spare parts list from BMW, so that all errors can be corrected.
The fuel tank is molded to the frame, which is not the case for the Masterbox kit, looks ugly, and restrains adding details to the engine. Also the brass part visible above (and added by me) connecting the lower and the upper part of the frame is molded to the engine in the kit, which looks really ugly. Having corrected this, I now arrived at the basic frame and the engine being put together.
Of course the kit also has its positives. The tires are made from five different parts, and together with the pre-bent PE spokes and the ingenious two part wheel hubs, this builds quite easily into stunningly good looking wheels.
Many parts, like the foot brake, the kick starter and the foot rests are available either as plastic or PE parts. Here, the plastic parts often are out of scale, i.e. too thick, whereas the PE parts suffer from being flat… So these parts have to be scratch build, using the PE parts as far as possible.
While building my, first BMW R75, I really fell in love with this motorcycle. Back then, I realized that there is also a very good kit from Lion Roar available, which I then finally bought. Now I will start building it, and put it together with two FJ figures from Alpine.
Given the nice temperatures currently well above 30 degrees Celsius, this will be indeed a very appropriate build for the summer.
After again several months, I finished the small diorama.
I added a machine gun to the side car, made from resin and featuring a nice brass barrel from Aber. On the floor of the side car two further magazines are visible.
After adding some more dirt and mud splashes, I fixed the bike to the base and added the second soldier:
I fixed the side car to the bike and started to add dirt. The dirt is made from pigments and some enamel colors:
The brass pins in the tires will be used to fix the bike to the base.
And that is how the whole thing looks from below:
The dirt still needs some more refinement, with some splashes added. And of course the MG on the side car ist still missing.
After the side car was built, I started to paint the bike. An initial primer layer of Mr Resin Primer was followed by Tamiya German grey, which was in turn oversprayed with a slightly brighter color mixed from German grey and light grey. I then tried to chip the upper color layer very cautiously using thinner and a brush, but this went not as intended. At least the color looked a bit faded, but I still have to add some chipping later with a brush.
Then I started to paint the details (engine etc.) with acrylics:
The sidecar decals are from the Masterbox kit, the registration plates are self made decals, as the kit decals do not fit onto the PE parts… The jerry can and its mount can be seen on a lot of war time photographs, and I really liked to also add this detail.
Then I continued painting the details, and also applied a pin wash made from dark oils. I also used my oil colors for a lot of little fadings and stains:
I will now continue with applying some highlights on the grey color, which will be followed by a filter to add some warmth to the grey. And then… the dirt…
fieldgrau - military scenes in scale 