Aoshima Honda Gorilla Mini-bike 1/12

[Mike]

New member here. I haven't built a model of any sort in a long while, and recently have had the urge to build a mini bike of some sort. I am a Honda guy by heart (to a certain extent) and had to build a bike of their kind so the Gorilla immediately caught my attention. So, even though it wasn't in my stash I decided to order one online.



First Impressions:
This is a child's model By the look of how the parts piece together and the overall quality of the plastic this model is definitely not intended for someone looking to do a detailed build of this bike. It's going to take some work to get this kit built to hide it's and my own flaws. I've never built an Aoshima kit and probably won't after this one. Anyone looking for a more detailed and realistic model should probably consider the 1/6 Tamiya kit.

However, it does look very easy to put together and it shouldn't take me too long to finish this; which is exactly what I'm looking for right now. I'm no expert, but anything can be fixed and made to look better. So let's get started.



The kit comes with the sprues shown in the picture above. The black sprues are mostly frame work parts, orange is body parts, and silver of course are the wheels, motor, and other chrome bits. The tires that were included were nice, but they have an AWFUL seam down the middle of the tire. Obviously, this is a very bad thing for knobby tires. Should be an interesting fix.



The Build:
First thing I wanted to do was attempt to get rid of the tire seam. Without research on the issue I grabbed a fresh blade and began cutting. DON'T DO THIS! It proved to be one of the worst ways to solve this issue and it's now evident on part of one of the tires. All it ended up doing was poking through the rubber and tore away at the tread. Quick Google searching brought up some results and I saw someone recommend nail clippers. The difference in the results is incredibly significant. You can see the best results in the side shot with the knobby tires really showing up.





That's some of the bad tread from the razor blade. Nothing a little post-weathering won't be able to cover. I've never worked with mud weathering so it should be a very interesting project in itself.

Another thing I did, which I don't have pictures of, was dissolve the chrome off of the entire chrome sprue. The headlight cover itself was a chrome piece, but I plan on replacing it with a plastic lense somehow to replicate the glass light. I'll keep y'all updated along the way.



I'm going to stop it there for this post. I haven't gotten too much further other than some test fitting. I've never wrote about any model I've been building and I wouldn't consider myself a wordsmith, so let me know if I've bored you to death yet and could do better

 

[7165jay07]

Hi Mike, looks like it could be a fun build. Those treads look horrible, glad i haven't come across anything that bad before. I will be following the build wit interest. Good luck and enjoy. Jay

 

[Mike]

Time for another update. Things are a bit slow this week as I'm juggling around 4 birthdays and a 4 year anniversary with my girlfriend all within the same week so I don't have a lot of time on my hands. But I have managed to do some work on the Gorilla, so let me share what little progress I've done so far.



That's how I left the build the last time I posted. Not much done there except some parts cut, sanded, and fitted. I spent most of the time between my last post making sure everything was sanded smooth, cut down, and ready to be primed. One thing I wanted to do was add some rivets to my Gorilla seat. Holes needed to be drilled and I chose the quick route, again, and came out with good results which could be better...again...



After getting the holes drilled out I needed to fill them up with some rivets. I didn't really have a plan on how I would do this, but had an idea. I stretched some sprue to about the size of the holes and clipped off about 1cm segments. I then took a lighter and went back and forth closer and closer to one tip of the stretched sprue until the heat would start to make it collapse backwards on itself. The result was some mushroom shaped sprues that actually look quite pleasant.





Here you can see the rivet on the far right is way out of line. I was going to keep it like that, but it started to bother me so I clipped it out, filled it with putty, and replaced it. You can see it replaced in this next photo. Also did this with about 3 or 4 more holes.



Not too shabby, eh? The rivet on the far right still looks like crap due to the plastic melting from the glue a bit :-[ At this point, I kept looking at the underside of the gas tank; there was no underside.. This was a problem for me. I didn't need it to be perfect, but I couldn't leave the model with just an empty shell for a gas tank. I'm still an amateur modeler so I don't have all the supplies I should, in this case styrene, so I make do with what I have. Some thick cardboard nearby should do the trick. I cut out a rough shape and got it fitted in the tank. A few layers of glue and I finally got it to stick in place. Once I get it primed and painted it should look a lot better. Way better than it did before at least.





So now the bike sits like this. EVERY piece is sanded down and ready to be primed for paint with the exception of the exhaust shield. The plastic is a lot thicker than I though it'd be on this piece, and I'm not priming this one until i get those holes drilled out on them! At first I used a razor, but that got me nowhere fast. Anyone have any recommendations on how to carefully drill these holes out? I'm thinking my Craftsman dremel will take care of it, but that's also a sketchy way to attack it IMO. Any advice is greatly appreciated.



Until next time! -Mike 8)

 

[Mike]

Forgot to include this picture of the exhaust shield.

 

[modelsinc1967]

I was always curious about this kit, great to see someone build it and share it with us thank you, I will be watching this one really close.................................great job so far!

 

[Mike]

Hey guys! Been a while since I updated, but I'm still alive, and I haven't given up on this little Gorilla quite yet. Things have moved pretty slow so I don't really have much to say in this post. The bike just finished getting all of its colors applied to it. The end is in sight! ;D

You can see how the chassis is sitting right now. Very basic setup and not the best work I could have done, but at this point my only motivation is to finish this model.



And in this last pic you can see all my other parts lined up after their paint sesh. Going to apply some small touch ups and slap the Future on them soon. Assembly is right around the corner now.



These motorcycle kits have really been growing on me. So much in fact that I bit the bullet and bought a Honda NSR250 "Cup Noodle" kit from Thailand and am really looking forward to working on a quality kit that will provide plenty of fun.

I'll update when the ball gets rolling again this week. Thanks for stopping by!

 

[pitstop25]

I like it bud. For what you had to work with its coming along really nice. Cant wait to see the next update.