This model was released in December 2014 as part of a huge diorama representing motorcycle rallying, in particular the Dakar (formerly Paris-Dakar) Rally. The diorama contains two motorcycles, the 1995 XTZ850R and 2014 YZ450F and their riders, in a setting representing sand dunes in one half and a rocky wilderness in the other. The motorcycles are roughly the same scale as the "Ultra-Realistic" series (1:5.5) but more comparable to the "Realistic" series in complexity. The YZ450F has 456 parts, roughly half the latest "Ultra-Realistics", and of those nearly 170 are taken up by the very knobbly spoked wheels.
The complete diorama comes in five PDF parts files for two motorcycles, two rider figures and the background setting. There are five corresponding PDF files of assembly instructions.
I built the model at 39% of the original size, so that it comes out the same scale as all my other Yamaha motorcycle models, i.e. 1:14.
This model was very much easier to construct than the sibling XTZ850R, having only quite minor fit problems and few inconsistencies in the assembly instructions. The style of the texturing of the parts seems to me to be slightly different from that of the other model, so I suspect that the design is by a different person who may have been under less time pressure.
A minor oddity is that the model shows the race number 1 on its side panels, but the number panel at the front is blank. I added a "1" for consistency.
The main change I made to the model was the wheels and tyres. In the original design, the wheel spokes are made from paper, and substantially oversize. The tyres have a deep tread pattern represented by fabricated shaped boxes glued to the outside of the wheel rim and then partially covered by curved tyre pieces. The tread is also very oversize, almost a caricature of the real thing. I constructed spoked wheels in my usual way with thread, added an undersized tyre and built it up to size by gluing squares and rectangles of cardboard to the outside in something approximating to the original tread pattern. The front wheel has a finer tread than the rear, and required 270 small squares, each 1.5x1.5x0.8mm in size.
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