Home » The Rest » 1/20 Fujimi Williams FW14B

Share This Post

Cars & Bikes | The Rest

1/20 Fujimi Williams FW14B

The Williams FW14B is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful Formula One cars of all time. A classic livery, driver lineup, and incredible results on its 1992 debut season make it one to remember. Fujimi have released this in their 1/20 scale lineup, and if you are a F1 fan then you will want to make sure to get your hands on this kitset!

The kitset

Fujimi has chosen to cast this one in white, black, and chrome. The suspension and undertray are all black, while the bodywork is all white to make painting a breeze. The FW14B has a livery that has no doubt freaked out a few, so to make things nice and easy you get a full masking sheet to remove all the guess work.

Decals are also included for Nigel Mansell’s #5 and Ricardo Patrese’s #6 cars. The kit also comes standard with the Goodyear tire decals that really finish off the kitset nicely. The only thing missing for purists is the Camel tobacco markings due to licensing restrictions.

Engine and tray

The Williams FW14B’s beating heart was a Renault-powered V10 that produced up to 750 horsepower. Fujimi has done a great job of recreating this in great yet simple detail. Straight out of the box it looks superb all painted up and assembled. If you love working with photo etch and detail then this has plenty of room for plumbing to be added. Once the rear cowling goes on, it will be hidden away so make a decision how you would like to display the kitset once completed before going all out.

The undertray and rear suspension is predominantly semi-gloss black. It has a nice accent of colour throughout the suspension giving some real depth to the setup.

Cockpit and monocoque

This kit doesn’t have a great deal of detail or pieces that make up an important area of any race car. This is mostly due to a lot of the detail being tucked away and hidden underneath bodywork. There are two pieces for the monocoque, a seat, dashboard, and steering wheel. Things are pretty bland, and everything gets a dose of semi-gloss black.

I started by sandwiching the two halves together and filling the join lines at the top of the roll hoop, and right in front of the steering wheel. These areas will be exposed upon completion and the 1:1 car doesn’t have any visible lines. Once that was smoothed off, I then painted the inside black and began work on the seat.

As there were no decals included for seatbelts I felt the need to add some. I chose the Tamiya 1/20 Belt A set as this set is superb to work with, and looks incredible once installed. The kit calls for the seat to be added before the two halves of the monocoque are joined, but I chose to add the seat after. To do this I merely shaved the edges to slip it into place nicely after painting and adding the belts.

Wheels and tires

This is without a doubt one of my favorite steps of any kit. The wheels are what set a car off, they are like the ribbon on a present and really finish a car off nicely. The Williams comes from an era of wide rears and narrower fronts which are timeless. The front and rear rims are both painted in gloss black and contrast beautifully against the matte rubber. Before installing the tires I scuffed the contact edge across coarse concrete to remove the mold lines as much as possible and to give a ‘worn in’ look to them. Tire and rim decals were then installed and they look superb, perfectly finishing the wheels off.

Adding some color

As mentioned before, the livery is a multi-color layered one for this kit. I chose Tamiya TS rattlecans for the job as they are just so easy to use. The white was TS26, yellow TS34, and TS93 for the blue.

I began by spraying the whole body in white to give the further coats something to adhere to, and also stop paint edges appearing where possible. With the white for the side pods laid down and cured for 3 days, the next step was to add the Camel yellow. Before laying down the yellow I used the kit masks to cover the top of the side pods to ensure the white would remain afterwards.

The final masking now took place to cover the yellow that needed to remain, and the blue would then finish the paint job off. Logically the lightest colour needed to get laid down first, and the darkest last to ensure no color bleed. The blue perfectly covered the yellow, and there was zero bleed. Each coat of paint was done as a ‘mist coat’ to seal the masking tape off, this would stop any paint sneaking underneath the edges when the heavier top coat went on later. The result was crisp clean lines which are essential to this livery.

Now that the final top coat had been added all that remained was to pull all the masks off and see whether it had all worked as I hoped.

Success! If you wish to see a more detailed blog of this process please check out the step by step tutorial coming soon!

Front suspension

As per the rear suspension, the front setup is all predominantly semi-gloss black and is a simple yet robust design. It holds the weight of the model with only a few pieces. The front brake and air duct are a 2 piece construction which is worth painting nicely as they are quite visible through the 4-spoke wheels.

Front & rear wings

The front wing on the FW14B is slightly complex and the six pieces will confirm that. The and bottom halves are threaded together with the rest being held on by very fine edges.

I promise this isn’t just a white square, there are some model parts in there!

There is a leading edge on the front of the wing that remains white, while everything else gets a good dose of semi-gloss black. The rear wing is unlike many of kits, it comes 80% built so no fiddly sandwiching multiple parts and ending up with a wonky, slanting rear wing. It consists of three colours, black, blue and white. The trick is to paint the outer edges in blue, then mask them before spraying everything else in black. The white horizontal wings then can be painted separately in white and slipped in to complete the setup. Nice and clean, and super easy.

A quick test fit to ensure everything fits up nice and snug (and straight) before fixing the rear wing in place and the assembly is done and dusted. The rear cowling and nose cone are removable and don’t need to be glued on should you wish to display the car disassembled.

Decals

The decals for this are relatively straight forward, however the pin-striping does need a little patience. It isn’t difficult, just due to the narrow and thin nature have some decal tweezers, and plenty of water to maneuver them and you will be fine. The Fujimi decals are very good for conforming to curves, and needed no decal solution to lay down nicely.

As mentioned before the tobacco markings are not included so I sourced some aftermarket 1/20 scale ones to properly recreate the 1992 championship winning car.

The finished product

This kit truly comes to life once the decals are applied. I was pleasantly surprised by how good the fitment was throughout the entire build. As with any 90s era F1 machine the fitting between the bodywork and chassis is extremely important and this one fitted together superbly. I didn’t need to sand or shave anything down pre or post painting the parts.

The finished result has exceeded my expectations, and after wanting to build this car for many years I wish I had tackled it earlier. This one is a true must for the lineup and looks great among its other rivals from the glory era of Formula One.

Share This Post

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.