Thanks Mark. Comments are always appreciated.

I've moved ahead a bit now and completed most of the interior.
Rear brake vent pipes in, rear part of the roll bar in place, Fire extinguisher system scratched, seat trimmed and fitted and the rear body is now fitted to the lower pan. Under the car is now matt black.

Hopefully you can now see the logic of painting the upper part of the body beforehand.
The lower joins have been filled and sanded back so next up will be a lot of fiddly masking so the light blue can be attended to.

I've also removed the front bonnet trim strips and filled the lamp bezel locating holes as the bezels won't be used.
On we go...

Many thanks for the comments you guys.

Over the past 2 days I've masked, primed, rubbed down and top-coated the light blue.
Yes, the masking was VERY time consuming but here we are now.
The door skins aren't fixed. They are just fitted loosely for painting purposes.

Thanks for peeping in Mark.

OK - next is the the bonnet (hood).
After making a shape template in paper, the front pattern was masked in using Tamiya thin-line masking and then ordinary masking tape.

Once sprayed in primer and then flatted down, it was given 3-4 coats of blue.

I'm pretty happy with the result so far.

Incredible work roy and great progress

Once again, my thanks to all those who peep in on my waffle, and for the kind comments.

One of the biggest headaches with this kit is fitting the doors and the inner door panels.
They literally never fit or line up. I've built about 10 of these over the years in different guises and they were all the same in this regard.

This time I decided to attend to the outer body door skin first and get it to line up.
That part isn't big problem though.
The way Revell have engineered this kit means that the door inner panel and window have to be glued in place on the open door skin once it's fixed to the body.
Almost impossible.

Fortunately, this car being a racer, it has a plain flat inner panel covered with dark blue rexine and a simple handle to open/close the door.

I decided to cut the door panel apart and glue it to the skin which wasn't yet glued to the hinge. That way, I could remove the door, adjust the inner panel and re-fit it.
Once it all lined up nicely, the door was then glued to the hinge.
The cut-off section could then be glued back and eventually I'll cover the inside with blue matt vinyl.

Radiator in place, assorted pipes etc added in the engine bay.
Moving along...

A fair bit more done on this one now.
Rear screen surround has been masked, blacked and rivet detail added.
Both doors are on, lots more added at the front end and the bonnet/hood has the air intake pipe and brake air deflectors added.
Inner door panels covered in satin blue vinyl to replicate the rexine on the real car. Handle still to add.
Home stretch on this now so the Datsun and resin Porsche will be pulled next - along with the other McLaren.

Many thanks Kev.
Bear in mind I'm now retired so I often spend anywhere between 2 - 10 hours a day building my models.
I do have many other interests - hence the '2' hours bit...

Great following this build. Excellent work as always. Andy.