larchiefeng

It's truly unfortunate that, all of your build photos are no longer on your thread as in addition to adding to the journey of your building experience it really deprives the reader of a great resource for building their own RR. What happened to the saying that, nothing is ever gone from the Internet? Even though I have all of my pictures from my builds stored on my computer and could have used those to rebuild my threads, I spent a few hours yesterday downloading over 2000 pictures off of PB. The only reason that I spent the time to do it is because they are already sized for the the forum and can be uploaded to another hosting site if I had the energy to do it. As my Mercedes has passed it's shelf life here, it's unlikely that I will do it. But, somewhere down the road if someone is interested in the build or pictures, I will be able to help out. I sincerely hope that you have enough of your pictures saved for yourself. Epic build and a great loss and shame to lose three plus years of work!!

Rich, work faster! Major, the old melt method for the bolts and screws are mainly used for stripped out plastic on old Pocher plastic. Melting the screw in rethreads the hole. It's not really a good idea for doing what I'm doing for a lot of reasons, among those are as Ron points out. I did have an update to post here but, I forgot to put the pictures into Postimage. I've been working on setting up a blog for hosting my pictures and using it for doing third party hosting. I've loaded the pictures there as well but, I am still working on it. I will post some pictures of the painted engine and transaxle tomorrow with what I have finished. I'm also starting the first pieces of the PE that mount on this section. I'm on steps 10-14 of the transkit right now.

Yeah, they're kind of pain but, it's not really too bad. I have all of the holes drilled and the old molded on nuts removed. There's not anything too exciting with the drilled holes that, isn't already shown here. I have to sit down with the instruction book tomorrow and carefully go through what attaches the where on the engine and transmission before I permanently attach any of the bolts. I see various plates and brackets that attach and support things that hang on areas that a bolt will go through. As much as I would like to paint most of the engine and trans as a unit, I don't think that's going to be possible. There's too many additional details to be added to do it that way so, I'm going to just have to paint all the parts separately and take my time going through all the reference photos, DVD and printed instructions and try and figure out a sequence. Or, maybe I can just go back to the frame and wait for you to get back on the engine and copy you! Lol Oh, I managed to remove the annoying PB ransom demand from my signature

Major, that, was my thought as well but, like you said, I like the idea of being able to see the detail. Mr. C and Ron, I'm sure we will have more than one conversation about weathering down the road. KP and Roy, yeah the PB thing will have an impact on the first part of thread if I don't go back and edit all of the pictures and replace them with images from Postimage. I still have a while left on my subscription so, no immediate danger of losing the photos. The Mercedes just has too many to go back and edit and since it's over I doubt anyone really cares any longer. The TR is fairly short and is still an active build but, just barely so, I might edit those just so when I get back to it they're still there. Anyway, here's the engine disassembly and some preliminary work on the drilling the holes for the new hardware. As I have stated before, this was a built model when I bought to use as the donor car for the upgrade. So, everything has to be taken apart and cleaned. This is what I have to start with and some of the parts were actually glued on so, disassembly was tricky on a few parts. Here you see a section of the plenum circled in red. This is a part that I wound up breaking and the only reason that I took it off is because there is a PE part that goes between the the two sections. In retrospect, I should have probably left it alone, oh well. Everything spread out and ready to be drilled and cleaned up for paint and reassembly. The intake tubes circled in green are being replaced with resin parts so, I didn't worry too much about breaking them when taking the engine apart. The beginning of drilling the holes for the replacement hardware. I decided to drill through the top of the molded on bolt heads and if they got started wrong I could always cut them off and start over. Just my way of giving myself two chances of drilling a fairly straight hole in case of a major screw up. Almost all of the molded on bolt heads still need to be cut off here in these pictures. Here's an example of some of the glue I had to get through to take this section apart After going back and forth on whether or not to use steel/nickel plated bolts or brass, I've decided that I like the brass better. This is my own personal preference but, I do believe that the original transkits actually had brass hardware in them. I know that the transkit for the Testarossa engine has all brass hardware and I rather liked it so that's the reason. Here are a couple of bags of 1 mm bolts from MMC that, I'm using. I need a total of five bags to do the engine and transmission. Just placing some bolts in the holes to test and see if the holes are big enough for the bolts. Well it's time to run up to the post office. I just got a message telling me that the rest of my bolts order has arrive so, now I can continue on.

To be honest with you, I haven't given weathering much thought yet. Right now, it's about all that I can do to carve out enough time and energy to just work on it. I will say this though, weathering is my absolute weakest part of my modeling skill set. So, before I even attempt any form of weathering, I would have to do quite a bit of practice. And, even then I'm not sure; just being honest here. I suppose that this subject is a conversation we will probably be having in the future! Lol

Yeah, I get that but, I'm no where near close to these kinds of details yet. I still haven't done most of the mods needed to the inner wheels yet. I still need to remove the lug nuts, drill out the center hole, trim the width of the inner wheel to clear the calipers, etc. What you are seeing is just a mock up, to see if I like the direction I'm going in. The tires are the MMC replacements so they are much softer and easier to work with. In addition to the Autograph transkit, I have also purchased a set of MMC tires, a Tremonia PE interior upgrade set, the RC wheels shown, a quart of automotive single stage acrylic urethane with reducer, additional brass bolts from MMC and of course the used assembled Pocher F-40. So, this is more than just an Autograph transkit upgrade addition on my F-40 build. Rich's is a build of a new in the box Pocher plus the transkit so, they will be different animals when both get going full time. We need to encourage him to finish his big Pocher Volvo truck so, he can join me here and make it more interesting.

So, in keeping with catching you guys up on some of my idle toying around with different ideas regarding the wheels on the F-40, here is the direction that I'm leaning towards. This idea started back when I was working on the Testarossa and I bought a bumch of aluminum bar stock with the intention of turning the outer wheels and installing new wheel centers. I've looked at just about every RC wheel and bought a few with the thought of just using the center in a turned outer. When I got the transkit for the F-40 I realized that, I now have the perfect template for the wheels that I want to turn. So, I really wanted the OZ wheels for the car that, I'm building rather than the stock Ferrari wheels. After a lot of time searching, I found a set of wheels that seem to match my criteria. These wheels are adjustable and are two piece wheels with separate inner wheel sections. Other than the scale being 1/10 they are almost perfect. Here's the wheels. The center inside the transkit outer The two pieces Comparison between the two styles of wheels. Obviously, there will have to be some modification done to the center of the wheel to remove the lug nuts and go to just the single center hole but, doable The only down side is the slightly small spokes but, I could live with that because the difference it makes in showing off all the detail of the brake rotor and caliper compared to the stock wheel. Keeping in mind that this car is not going to be a stock F-40 but, a weekend racer with an interior more like an LM car but, without all of the body work modifications. Anyway, I'm open to comments good, bad or indifferent. Next up, I start taking the engine apart and start the process of drilling out all the molded in bolts which, at last count was somewhere around 75.

Thanks Mr. C, it's more like a mini return for now. Due to the ongoing construction project on the house. I will try and get more done and post as I go along. In a way, I'm almost glad that I wasn't posting for a while given this whole PB ransom issue. I want to thank you for the heads up on postimage.net. The interface is much easier to use than PB and it's fairly painless to use. I keep all my pictures on my computer and have at least three sets of backups for all my data files and pictures. I'm a little anal with that but, it's saved me more than once. Just recently the forced Win 10 update rendered my pc into a brick with zero help from Microsoft. Fortunately, when I built the computer I had purchased Win 7 and had the DVD to reinstall Win 7 and not go back to Win 10. I'm hoping to come up with a more permanent solution for the third party picture hosting because, as others have pointed out, free sites will probably continue to change their terms of use and then we'll right back in the same boat again. I'm probably going to create a blog and then use that to link the pictures. I don't really have to write about anything but, I probably will do something, even if it's just a copy of what I post here. It's a way to insure the build log is preserved.

I would really hate to see this thread die because of PB. I'm still looking at alternative ways to add pictures to my threads and last night I used postimage.net that Codger recommended and it was much easier to use than PB. It's a free site and a bit of a risk because of this but, I figured that some pictures are better than nothing right now. I'm thinking of creating my own blog and then linking pictures from it to Britmodeller. It probably won't be free but, at least I can control what happens.

OK, here are a few random pictures of some small progress as time has allowed between days when I'm not working on the big house project. The last couple of days has been devoted to looking for a new replacement for Photo bucket. These pictures are from postimage.net and so far it seems to be working fine. I still have a paid subscription to PB but, my PC crashed about a month ago when doing the forced Win 10 update and I had to start all over again Fortunately, all of my photos are backed up on a separate HD in the PC and on two different external HD's; can't have enough back up. However, I did lose the subscription start date and given the impending issues with PB and the ransom being demanded to keep any pics up I'm not going to use them any longer. If I have time, I may go back and edit what's already up here and get it all off of PB. Anyway, here's some various pics of where I'm at. This was the new screen I added to the radiator after I did it originally and it was set too far back. Rather than tear it all apart, I added this mesh and it doesn't look so out of balance Front end mostly done for now Testing that everything is lining up correctly I will post some more pictures of the wheels that I'm toying with the idea of using when I get them loaded into the host site probably tomorrow.

Test post of new wheel center idea

Hey guys, I know that I haven't posted in a while but, I've been doing some major work on my house and that's been taking a lot of my modeling time. However, I have been doing a few small things here and there and I have finished the front end. I moved to the rear frame and have built most of the PE stuff back there as well. I've also been looking for an alternative wheel center to replace the stock wheel centers and I think that, I've found something that I like and have begun the process of making the modifications to make them work. In order to get away from the frame work for a while, I've completely taken apart the assembled engine and begun drilling out the molded on bolt heads. I'm going to go with the brass bolts like I used on the Testarossa engine. So, that's about where I'm at, at the moment. I will post some pictures at a later date due to the whole Photo Bucket issue. I have taken progress pictures of everything that, I've done so when I do come back with pictures all of this has been documented. I do have a PB subscription but, I will not be paying the $400 ransom they are demanding for third party hosting of the pictures. So, rather than post pictures that I know will disappear i will hold off until I decide which service to use going forward. I know that Rich is also doing the same thing so, when we do come back on this build more full time it will be with pictures that, hopefully will stay around for the foreseeable future.

Just a couple of random thoughts here; is it a possibility that the temperature and or humidity is having an affect on the paint? Second, and I know that, this might not appeal to you right away but, have you considered using brass instead of plastic for the siding? I know that you have to have the windows cut out as well but a metal shop might be able to cut them out for you using a water jet or some other precise method. Anyway, I know the brass sheet a completely different direction but it would address the wavy side problem. Keep up the great work!

Welcome back Vidal your Fiat is looking very nice! Early on I discovered that there were a number of parts that had to go on and off to check for fit and alignment or just because I had gotten ahead of myself. So, I adapted Codger's use of 2mm threaded rod and a nut to replace a 2mm bolt or screw where it taps into the old brittle plastic. It may not be applicable for you but, if you have any parts that fall into this category then you should consider doing that instead of constantly removing screws. It seemed to work much better to be able to remove a nut from the rod rather than fiddling with a screwdriver and having the plastic ruined by the screws being taken in and out repeatedly. I was able to use this method for the body and a couple of areas on the frame but it sure made things easier for me. I just cut the rod to a length that I could get the parts over easily enough and epoxied or glued it in place and then slipped the part over the rod and secured it with the nut. Like I said, there may not be an area where this will work for you but, when you mentioned the on and off of the screws, it reminded me of the rod and nut method and I thought that I would pass it along.

I painted and sanded and painted my Mercedes so many times before I got it perfect that, during the whole process, I realized that, in the end, it's just paint and it can be sanded off and repainted as many times as it takes to get it right. It's just paint and it can be fixed; don't worry about it.