Tamiya Kawasaki Ninja H2 (TOP GUN Maverick) 1:12 – build review

Full Review with Dave Coward

Background

Having already made the Motorbike from the original movie TOP GUN I said that at the end of that build that I would make the bike from the second movie, TOP GUN Maverick, so here is that build.

Both bikes are Kawasaki Ninja but given the near 35-year gap between the movies not only have the planes in them evolved but also have the bikes.

The first thing I needed to do was to work out if I could even make the bike in the movie and a little bit of internet research showed that some people with a far better knowledge of motorbikes had already figured out and answer to the question and the answer was YES.

So, what is the plan?

Well it turns out you need to ‘kit-bash’ two Ninja kits to replicate the bike from the movie. Fortunately, Tamiya make both versions of the bike that I needed so the merging of the parts should not be an issue.

The two kits required are:
Tamiya 1:12th Kawasaki Ninja H2 Carbon (14136)
Tamiya 1:12th Kawasaki Ninja H2R (14131)

The main reason for needing these two kits was the exhausts. The H2 carbon kit is good for the base bike but it has the wrong exhaust for the movie bike. The correct exhaust is in the H2R kit so I needed this kit to make the movie bike.

I also got hold of DEF Models JEIGHT DESIGN TOP GUN bike Licence set from Field of Glory Models. This set had PE licence plates for both the old and new bikes in the Maverick movie and it also has some good info about the bikes on its instruction sheet.

To get an idea of what I was going to do I also did an internet search for the bike to get some good reference photos, some of which are below.

So, with the plan in place it was time to start the build and here is a little taster of the finished bike along with its predecessor.

On with the build…