Blade Runner 2049 1/12 Scale K-Spinner

[Avanaut]

It's been a while since my last post...

I have a Randy Cooper 1/12 scale Blade Runner 2049 K-Spinner kit. This is probably an early casting since it was an early preorder. I just fell in love with that gorgeous Peugeot on the first sight. The obsession grew and as this kit came along there was no way to resist it. I got it in December 2019 and I have not done anything to it yet. It is an intimidating kit, I tell you. Not a bad kit, that is not my message, it is just the amount of preplanning and work needed to get it together. Plus there are no build instructions. I took screencaps from Randy’s informative build log videos and made notes, I think it is enough to figure out which part goes where.

Here are all the parts, uncleaned and raw. Missing are the clear window sheets. There is a lot of cleaning to do, as per usual with resin kits. I will start slowly working on it now after months of procrastinating. I’m not going to build it all at once, my brains won’t be able to take it. This will probably take some time. I might even build something else inbetween to cool off.

This is a kit that is not designed with a leisurely build experience in mind, it’s for the experienced modeler only. More experienced than me, that is, and this is going to push my limits waaaay off my comfort zone.

My first head scratcher is how to join the front mandibles and the floorpan so that the top chassis part fits well after building the interior. That is the four big parts you see below. My fear is that the seam between the mandibles and the floorpan is very shallow and hard to make rigid enough. The resin is very heavy and though I’m going to carve some of it off to save weight, it is still going to be iffy.

There is also a catch: I am planning to make the doors open and close (as if this wasn't difficult enough as it is). This kit isn’t designed to allow that. As I cut the doors off, the A-pillars, all that remains, will be quite thin and won’t give much support when everything is glued shut. Any stress to the model during the build, and even worse, when finished, the floorpan seam might give in and crack. That is my biggest fear. To add to the misery, there will be electric wires criss-crossing the area. This sucker is littered with myriad little lights! If it cracks, it'll take the wiring out too.

I have a solution to this however. It took me a long time to figure it out. I’ll start with that, the first goal is to make a solid base to build on. I hope to show it to you on the next post.

 

[StevenBills]

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!!!!!! Another Avanaut build! Definitely subscribed to this one!

SB

 

[joberg]

Subd for sure!!

 

[stussy]

cool,i'll be following this

 

[Stormy320]

I really like the design as well. You’ll figure it out.

 

[JHY]

These kits are slow builds, in my experience, but worth the investment. I have this Spinner ( early cast, pre ordered like yours) , but I’ve only checked it out and cleaned some parts. I built Randy’s BTTF train and need a break from the challenges of resin!
Careful preparation and repeated test fitting has served me well in building Randy’s kits. I recommend checking the squareness and symmetry of parts; resin never shrinks uniformly and a series of small variances can produce a significant cumulative error. Normally I replace resin rods, tubes, struts etc with plastic rod etc because I struggle to get resin round or straight.
I usually reinforce major joints by drilling and Inserting brass rod. A good selection of clamps is pretty much essential and I’ve used the occasional custom jig .

 

[Avanaut]

These kits are slow builds, in my experience, but worth the investment. I have this Spinner ( early cast, pre ordered like yours) , but I’ve only checked it out and cleaned some parts. I built Randy’s BTTF train and need a break from the challenges of resin!
Careful preparation and repeated test fitting has served me well in building Randy’s kits. I recommend checking the squareness and symmetry of parts; resin never shrinks uniformly and a series of small variances can produce a significant cumulative error. Normally I replace resin rods, tubes, struts etc with plastic rod etc because I struggle to get resin round or straight.
I usually reinforce major joints by drilling and Inserting brass rod. A good selection of clamps is pretty much essential and I’ve used the occasional custom jig .

Thank you for the tips! Having gone through the first stage of parts I noticed the asymmetries. Not bad, but it's there. These are handmade pieces, one would expect something like this, no problems with that. I've built a couple of resin models before (a Salzo V3 X-wing and a Nice-N Red Jammer), plus cast own parts, not my favourite material to work with but what can you do.

I have spent today preparing to joining the front mandibles and the floorpan, I am using steel tubes and rods to secure the joint. But, alas, the electronics, they have to be planned ahead. There is a full lighting kit for this, but as such it has colours that do not work for me (I don't particularly care for those cold bluish whites), I'd have to customize it to make it work. I think I'm going to have to go full custom with the lights. I haven't ordered the led units yet, going to order the first batch this week. Plus I gotta buy more clamps. I have a bunch, they've sufficed so far, but with this I think I might need more.

Any tips for glue? I am using cyanoacrylate (Zap) for the small parts and 2 component fast epoxy for the big joints, but sometimes I think maybe there are some other useful options I don't know of.

 

[JHY]

Any tips for glue? I am using cyanoacrylate (Zap) for the small parts and 2 component fast epoxy for the big joints, but sometimes I think maybe there are some other useful options .

Like you I use cyano for the small stuff and epoxy for the big joints. On the train kit I needed to check alignment and placing of various parts and I used Tacky Craft Glue to provide a quick temporary fix, it holds in place but pulls apart easily and rubs off to allow a clean permanent fix . It also works well to fix clear parts which cyano might fog.
GS Hypo jewellers glue is a good alternative to cyano in some cases and if you’re interested in exploring options, have a look at jewellers or restorers web sites.

I don’t normally light my models and the Spinner looks too tricky for me, so you have my admiration in that undertaking.






I’m in the U.K. so Bondo isn’t widely available as a filler. I use Holts body putty for small fills and two part fine finish car body filler for large gaps. I don’t use cyano/accelera

 

[Avanaut]

JHY, I must look closer into Tacky Craft Glue and GS Hypo jewellers glue. I think I could find use for both. We don't have Bondo either (Finland), but there are substitutes. I just found out some from a local modeling FB-page.

 

[Avanaut]

Well, this got off slower than I thought. I managed to order leds to this only yesterday, my always trusty supplier in the UK was out of office for a moment, then there is the pandemic messing with the chain of supplies. But the leds are on their way due in couple of weeks.

There is supposed to be a custom led flasher circuit driving some of the leds. What is genuinely worrying is that the small company who would make the circuit board for me is somewhere near the west coast of USA, last I heard from them was a couple of weeks ago, they were concerned about the fires. I hope they're alright, don't want to bombard them with mails too much. So, while waiting for a word from them, I guess I'll just clean the resin parts one by one, taking my time. Can't really proceed with the build before I get the leds, and I can't install the leds before I get the flasher circuit...

Back soon. I hope.

 

[Avanaut]

I got most of the small led lights I need for this in mail a few days ago. There will be quite a few lightsources in this model, I think close to eighty individual leds. I didn't order them all at once because quite frankly, I was overwhelmed with the complexity of this. I divided the leds to exterior and interior, I bought the exterior first.

Unfortunately there is still no word on the circuit board for the flashing leds. There seems to be some problems with the manufacturer but I'm still hopeful. In case this falls through, however, does anyone have any suggestions where to find a custom led driver preprogrammed to drive 16 (8+8) leds with 9 volts?

Making room for the leds requires some work. Some lights on the body have open wells behind them, perfect for housing leds, some need to be carved out. The front mandibles, for example, are cast solid. I am carving the excess resin out freehand with a Dremel tool. This generates awful lot of resin dust as you all know. It is unpleasant, but I use a mask and a vacuum positioned near the work area. It works really well, no dust anywhere.

These came out alright. There'll be three leds in each of these wells, sealed in with aluminium tape to kill light leaks.

There is some diminutive flash residue on the seams there, it is easily cleaned once the parts are glued together.

 

[joberg]

Great update

 

[Avanaut]

The lighting of this thing takes a lot of handiwork. Some of the spots where the lights shoud go are solid resin, as mentioned in an earlier post. There is also a thing with the resin itself, it is slightly translucent, light shines through it. I do not want to rely on paint layers only when blocking light, I have bad experiences with that in the past. So, I use thin aluminium tape for the job.

First the opening is carved with a Dremel tool, then lined with aluminium and finally, a light is glued on. It only needs the lens on top ( and some cleaning around the edges, I see).

There are a lot of individual lights on this model, at this stage I try to tuck their wiring in as neat as I can. It looks a little rough on the inside but there are no light leaks anywhere. I use hot glue to fasten things down in most places inside the body of the car, in areas you won't see when this is finished. Hot glue is neutral, it's elastic and won't affect the items glued with it as long as you remember it's hot. You can work fast with it and if there is a mistake, you can remove small dabs of glue by hand.

In the photograph below, on the upside down floorpan, you see the light ramp below the main taillights and the six individual leds. On the main taillight, the individual leds are not seen, the light is diffused. I noticed the red resin used for casting the red light lenses do not have any diffusion. I airbrushed the back side of the main taillight lens with a translucent Vallejo white. It's perfect for the job and turns everything to a nice soft glow without killing the colour. I'll apply it to most lenses around the build (including the ramp not in place in the photograph).

On the floorpanel you also see the tape covered floodlights, quite similar to those superbright LED lightbars you can buy to your car. They are probably the exact same items in the full size K-Spinner, actually. They were also lined with aluminium tape before gluing the leds in. They'll shine a light only through their lenses, not through the casing.

These little things may not even be visible to the naked eye much, but I am building this for photography and believe me, any light leak will show in camera.

Oh, and some great news, the custom programmed flasher circuit for the blinking lights is going to be mailed to me tomorrow. It'll take a few weeks to get here but it's coming. Yay!

 

[joberg]

Good job on the lighting and yes...alu tape will do the trick

 

[Avanaut]

Attaching the front mandibles to the floorpan doesn’t seem to be designed to work without attaching the top body element first. There simply is not very much surfaces to glue it on without that. There would be an inner floorpan piece supporting it (seen in the photograph in the 1st post of the thread) but it was really thin and brittle. So, I made some strengthening modifications because I need to work on it without the top on.

In the below pictures you’ll see a 4 millimeter steel tube running from inside the front mandible module through the joining seam to the floor module. The tubes on both sides go all the way across the floor to the rear compartment, and as they are hollow they will serve as conduits for all the necessary wiring from rear to front. I rebuilt the entire inner floor element from laminated styrene, it was easier than trying to use the original. The structure now conceals not only the steel tube supports but also two millimetre thick steel rods running right next to the floor opening on each side. Together this all has made the floor very rigid and strong, quite comfortable to work with from now on. There is no fear it will budge or break.

The elements have needed a lot of work to fit well together, but as you all know, it is crucial to get the essential base elements sit as well as possible in the beginning of any build. Any errors here will only make the rest harder. There is still some work with the floorpan as the right hand side is warped, it’s two milimetres too wide on the waist seam (doesn't show in the photographs here). Maybe with some heat from a heater gun and a screw to fasten it tightly against the cockpit compartment rear wall element. And glue to finish the job, of course.

Below you’ll also see how I rebuilt the front wheel axles. They felt a little iffy, thinking of the weight of the car would ever rest on them for a longer period of time. If the partially hollow (probably casting issue) resin axles cracked, there would be no way of repairing them without wreaking havoc to the entire front structure. I marked their positions, snapped them off and glued on these steel pegs. Normally these pegs would keep the book shelves in position in our livingroom, I noticed they had the exact same diameter than the axle, and we had spares, so I used them with some washers to keep them straight and to expand the joining seam surface area.

The front wheel mechanism needs more work. It is designed to keep the wheel down or retracted with magnets, but the weight of the car is too much for my magnets. I added some extra magnets behind the one designed to do the job but I doubt it's enough yet. I have to figure this out next.

 

[agliarept]

Had no idea kits existed for this beautiful car!

Looking forward to your build. I have the little neca one and wish a more detailed version existed.

 

[Avanaut]

Had no idea kits existed for this beautiful car!

Looking forward to your build. I have the little neca one and wish a more detailed version existed.

Apart from some toy models this is a rare bird. I'm not sure if this is the only kit available. I recall there was one guy who did a model based on a 3D print but I'm not sure if that was made available for the public. Maybe it was. Regardless, the K-Spinner is an amazing design, and despite the work required to build this kit, it looks really close to the real deal and I'm really happy I got one.

 

[Star Lord]

What an awesome kit. I have Randy's Mars hopper and cant wait to build it. I am glad I discovered this build early. It looks like you are off to a good start and taking your time in the process. Well done

 

[pnag]

I'll echo the previous posts, but especially because I have one of these kits, and while I can't wait to start it, I'm finding it a little daunting.

This thread is fantastic, so I might work along with you?

 

[Analyzer]

Looks like a great kit and the lighting will really be what makes it. Your off to a great start