Fujimi 1/12 Honda Z50 Monkey Bike 50th Anniversary Edition

[Nicko]

Honda produced this model of their iconic Monkey Bike in 2017 as a tribute to the original 1967 Z50M. I don't think it was officially imported into the UK, although the original was. The kit was given to me as a Birthday present from my daughter. Back in the early 2000's I was given an original 1967 UK bike by a relative and restored it for it's fortieth birthday. My daughter would have been about twelve at the time and it fitted her nicely. I have had to promise to leave it to her in my will.

Back to the model, and it proved a bit of a painting challenge with the frame, swinging arm and main engine moulded in just two halves. The small size made this a bit of a masking nightmare. Paints used were a mixture of Zero, Tamiya and A.Stand and I'm grateful to the many pictures of this bike available on the web to assist with references etc.

Anyway, here are the pics......

















And as always, the 'for scale' shot....




And if anyone is curious about the full size original, here is a pic of it 'as received' in 2005 and one of it once restored in 2007.






Thanks as always for looking in.

Nick

[Jim R]

Wel Nick that's a great result. Beautiful paint job especially that seat. Quite a strange little machine.

[Stefee]

Love it and as Jim R said the seat is amazing.

[flyjoe180]

Awesome! Love that seat detail

[PaulTRose]

Outstanding

Ive done a few monkey bikes and they are always fun

[HAWKERHUNTER]

Fantastic work Nicko

[Geoffers]

Blimey Nick, that’s brilliant 🤩

I’m sure if you photographed the model with the same background as the real one you’d be hard pressed to say which one was real.

Geoff.

[Richard48]

Wow thats a fantastic model Nick.My brother is keen kn bikes and he said its excellent model.
Rich

[Nicko]

Thanks for all your kind words Gents. I was really pleased with how this one turned out. I think the decal for the seat was really well printed and was spot-on size-wise. All I did other than paint it and take a bit of care with the decal solutions was to replace the rather poorly defined moulded rivets with some punched out ones and then carefully paint them in chrome. The supplied vinyl tubing was replaced with something a little more in scale.

The only other area that caused a bit of head-scratching was the silver stripes bordering the red down the centre of the fuel tank. Having painted the white and then the red centre line, I failed to get a decently narrow and parallel stripe each side. In the end I gave up trying to paint the stripes and painted some 1mm Tamiya tape instead and carefully stuck that on. After a dousing with clear-coat I was happy with that too, but I'd had about three goes at it by then.

I have a couple of other Monkey bikes in the stash, a 1/12 Tamiya of the new 125 Monkey and a 1/6 Tamiya which I think is of a Y2K model.

Nick.