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Pocher Mercedes 540K True Roadster Build


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Thanks guys,

Codger you make a good point about where 3D printing should be at this stage in it's devolopment. Back when I first went on disability I knew 3D printing was going to revolutionize a lot of things and I bought a printer to make my own parts as needed but, it has been a steep learning curve to translate what I want to a 3D print. Learning 3D CAD just to get your ideas into something the printer can work with was a huge stumbling block right out of the gate. Getting my printer to lay down consistent good passes was another problem, extremely long print times on items with lots of detail and hope you don't have a power surge. These were just some of the problems I ran into with my PLA/PVC printer that made me give it a rest. Then I decided to get an SLA resin printer that could render amazing detail but, after considering the cost of the resin at $100 a liter and having to replace the trays frequently at $75 a pop, along with the cost of $3500 for the printer made me cancel the order. I almost think a woodworking CNC machine to make masters out of wood to use for resin casting might be better for some larger pieces anyway, getting off topic here. I read something that Roy posted a while back in another thread that applies here and I'm paraphrasing "next year, twice as many and half the price" will probably be where the 3D printing is going as well. Well, back to the workbench and trying to make something out of this pile of sand cast. I discovered late last night that one of the side axle hikers on the differential housing was put on rotated one bolt hole off so the brake caliper holder is in the wrong position. Now I'm going to have to build another holder to fit how the housing is installed because there is no way to remove it now without destroying it. This has turned in to quite the mess. For something that was supposed to provide a brief respite from the Mercedes it has made me want to get back to the Mercedes for a rest. I'll try and finish this today and get back to the business at hand.

Wayne

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That's some pretty shoddy conning going on. I hope you got your money back. Thanks for the 'company to avoid' heads up.

Fantastic build BTW, keeping my eyes on this.

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I'm sure it's just that particular company. Here's a link to a similar thread where someone had mixed results....with a couple of links to worthy companies too......

http://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=4722.msg95662#msg95662

I hope this helps!

Keep it up, it WILL work out.....

Ian

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Again, thanks guys. Ian, I clicked on your link but it appears that I will have to register to see it. I will take a look tomorrow, thanks. I was on a bit of a roll today and figured out how to fix my mistake and get the caliper mount pointed in the right direction. I had to pretty much destroy the original one and put the pieces back together on top of .020" plastic card.

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First thing was to get a backing for new one to fit on. I had to rotate the caliper holder half way between the bolt holes for the caliper to sit vertical instead of on a 45 degree down angle. This is all to fix my mistake.

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Breaking apart the holder so I can re-position it

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Sort of pieced back together but, it's point in the right direction

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A little putty to fill in and cover up; most of this won't be seen when the caliper is mounted

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Filled in and sanded down

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Now you can see how much I had to move it. The top of the picture shows the top 4 holes oriented the same but the bracket is moved

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OK, here we are both calipers are straight and mounted to the brackets with (4) 1mm nuts and (4) 1mm hex bolts. There are 44 more 1mm brass hex bolts mounted on the this part of the rear differential. It has been a struggle but, it's actually starting to look like something. I've got everything else painted and ready to be assembled so, we'll see what it looks like tomorrow.

I promise, once I get this rear end done, I will get back to the Mercs.

Wayne

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hello all,

Here is an update. As I was alluding to in Codger's post earlier I am contemplating making some changes on one of the Mercs here. I have taken a break from all modeling over the last three weeks in order to get some things addressed here at the house and while that was all going on I really wasn't motivated to sit down and do much in the way of modeling. All the issues here have been resolved and much money was spent during the process and I am now about ready to sit back down and continue on. While I was on my break I was still reading and thinking about the way things were going and what if anything I could do differently. There is always the back and forth in my head as to whether or not I want to tear apart a perfectly good model and start over and do something different. It seems that my track record indicates that if I do that it never quite ends up as good as it was in my head and therefore it winds up as spare parts. Since, the Pochers are much more expensive I think my changes will be limited to anything that is not already completed. If it is some sub-assembly that I have not built or started then I will give it further consideration. I think I will just finish the roadster as is with perhaps the wood dash and wood upper trim pieces on the doors if they look right. The Cabriolet I am considering just selling in the current condition so I can get o the Mercedes I really want to build which, is the K85 Roadster 500k/540K red version. The K85 has the great roadster look with the level upper door panels, no rear seats and a better hood than the K91 and no fiddly Cabriolet top to deal with like the K74.

The 32 Ford is still in the works and when I get the next batch of parts I will start a separate thread for it by itself. I have the entire rear end finished and mocked up in the frame but the half shaft u-joints all broke during assembly due to the lousy sand cast material. I glued them together but the wheels don't sit straight and both will have to be rebuilt. I have pictures of all that but they need to be re-sized and probably should be posted on the new thread when that happens.

So, I am shooting for tomorrow or Wednesday to get started again. Until then

Wayne

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  • 3 weeks later...

OK, I guess it's time to post some progress on the Mercedes again. At the moment I've decided to set the 32 Ford roadster build aside and get back to the Mercedes' builds. I am concentrating on the K74 Cabriolet in order to catch it up with the K91 Roadster so they will be at the same approximate points in each of their builds. So, what I have here are pictures and progress of only the Cabriolet. I have actually been doing some building on it just not posting because I am a little lazy when it comes to uploading the pictures to Photobucket and going through all the steps to re-size the photos; re-sizing the photos are the main reason I don't post as often as others. Anyway, I left off on this build with the frame still pretty bare and the engine mostly built.

I had removed the rear end and stripped it down and painted the housing a gloss aluminum along with the gas tank going the same color. I cleaned up the tank straps and painted them flat black. The following pictures are of the newly painted rear end and the frame with the gas tank installed. I also painted the firewall along the outside edge a gunmetal to match the frame and I will shoot the inset portion of it aluminum and pick out some detail on the various molded parts like bolt heads steering column surround etc. but, more on that later.

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Here is the frame with the gas tank installed and the rear end next to it along with the partially painted firewall

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As you can see I have also made minimal progress on the Roadster on body panel fitting but, for the moment as I said it's on hold so I can catch the Cab up with it.

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Here is a mocked up shot with just the outside edge of the firewall painted gunmetal and the inside still in primer

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Next up, I have disassembled the transmission and painted it gloss aluminum and picked out the bolt heads in steel. The color variation is subtle and almost looks as though there isn't any difference but, rather than going with a darker color I thought the steel was more realistic.

Here are 4 shots of the transmission before I did anything. As you can see there is some glue residue on a few spots as well as a bit of rust on the threaded rods.

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Here are the removed parts and the trans in the spray booth

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Here is the trans re-assembled and the with bolt heads painted. In the first two shots you can see the difference in color but in the next couple it is a little harder to see. I still need to do a little more clean up on the threaded rods and there are some plugs on the trans that should be a brass or bronze color and I might do a slight color change to the breather cover on the top of the bell housing.

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Ok, that's it for now. I still have more to post but, again I need to upload to Photobucket and re-size all the pictures; I will get that done tomorrow. In the mean time I have finished the e-brake cables, installed the trans x-member, painted and assembled the mufflers, finished the firewall paint, assembled most of the engine, repaired a broken front spindle thread on the brass stud that attaches the front wheel knock off. All of that I have pictures that need to be uploaded. I need to finish the detail work on the firewall so I can install it and some small detail on the engine so it can be installed, install the front brakes, even though they will probably never be seen, and install the drive shaft. Normally that would give me a rolling chassis however, I don't have any wire wheels assembled yet. So, I guess that's the next big assembly after the rest is done.

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Looks great!

I'm not sure I understand about the resizing pics - I use photobucket and simply download from my camera, upload to photobucket, and post the pic here - I use my phone, but never had a problem when I used my camera either....

Ian

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Ian,

According to the FAQ section here on Britmodeller it asks or says that the posted pictures should only be a maximum of 800 x 600 and almost all of my photos are 1060 x 700 or so. So, in order to get to that size I need to size the pictures down but, if it doesn't matter then that would sure speed things up on my end. Can anybody confirm or verify the picture sizes?

Thanks, Wayne

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Beautiful work Wayne. That could be a chassis model in its own right.

Yes I use PB and make all my WIP shots 800 x 600 before uploading to PB. I do it because they upload faster and storage is less than the 1200 x 900. But you're right; it's a bit of a PIA...

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Really nice to see some more progress on this Wayne.

Can I ask what brand of gloss Alunimium silver you have used, was it Alclad? If so what number.

I am now in the very early stages of construction of my Mercedes, just working on the cylinder block and crankshaft parts, removing the seam lines and moulding imperfections.

I am trying to decide which way to go with the metallic shades for the engine components. I am a long time advocate of Alclad so will be using their products to reproduce the metallic surfaces.

Once I have some thing to show I will start a discussion here.

I'm looking forward to seeing the next update soon.

Best Regards

Keith.

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I have another question Wayne.

When assembling the cylinder block did you secure the cylinder liner using cement? as I see the instructions call for it to be clipped in to place.

Best Regards

Keith

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Thanks guys! Keith, in answer to your questions I used the Tamiya spray gloss aluminum and their spray gunmetal on the large areas as the finish is nice and its quick and easy. Later on in this post I will show the exhaust system in which I used 3 different Alclad colors. I agree on the Alclads and I like their color and ease of use as I talked about earlier by using the siphon top that allows me to switch colors all in the same spray painting session without having to clean the air brush and spraying directly out of the bottles. I had to think about your second question but, I do believe I did glue the cylinder sleeves in place because it is a little fiddly dropping all the pistons in anything that was also not stable. I built the basic engine about 12 years ago on the Roadster and I didn't dis-assemble the Cabriolet engine down that far on the rehab since all that was glued in place and it would been more of a mess had I tried to take t apart than just leaving it as is. Since both engines will have their top ends fixed in place due to the manifolds, plug wiring etc I didn't feel the need to worry about it. However, both of the oil pans will be left unglued since they are accessible and can be displayed with them on or off.

OK, here we go. This first bit is just some mock up progress pictures. It seems as though every time I try to re-size these pictures I keep getting an error so these next couple are not re-sized and I guess I will have to wait until later to finish today's post. This is what my frustration with Photobucket has been like and hence time lag in between posts.

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OK, the exhaust system will have to wait until Photobucket starts working correctly.

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Photobucket still isn't working so, I will press on with not as many pictures as I had originally intended to use. Here is the exhaust system after being taken apart. I sanded the molding seam lines cleaned them up. After sanding I primed them with Tamiya light gray surface primer. I decided to use varying shades of aluminum on the pieces to create a subtle visual difference from section to section. On the down pipe from the flex pipes and the intermediate pipes between the front and rear mufflers I used Alclad flat aluminum. On the front muffler I used Alclad dark aluminum and on the rear mufflers I used Tamiya gloss aluminum spray. On the round collars I painted them Alclad airframe aluminum.

First up are the prep photos

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Primed pieces

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Painted pieces

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Painted pieces installed; you can see the subtle color changes between the three sections from dark aluminum front muffler to semi matte aluminum center pipes to the gloss aluminum rear mufflers and the air frame aluminum collars on the very rear of the rear mufflers next to the rear end.

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Here you can get a glimpse of the front pipe attached to the front muffler

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A view from the other side and back a little further although not as clear a shot

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Here we have the exhaust system installed and the engine and trans mocked up and sitting in place before more detail is added

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Here you can see the firewall after the inset was painted the gloss aluminum over the gunmetal and before I add the detail pieces and picking out more detail with paint.

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More later

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I'm finished for the night and I am a lot further along than the pictures show so, I will leave you with a teaser shot of where I'm at right now and tomorrow when Photobucket starts acting right I will go back and show you how I got here. Looks like now I'm going to have to do a few things to the Roadster frame in order to catch up with the Cab frame. However, the roadster has wheels and tires where the Cab doesn't; maybe I'll just sell the Cab as it is now and let someone else finish it up. I have a lot of other projects I would rather work on at the moment. I have that 32 Ford kit bash build and a Pocher Alfa that I want to get to besides I still have the Roadster to finish up and an unopened K85, so it's not like I'm lacking for Mercedes builds. Anyway, here are the pair together

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More tomorrow and back in sequence

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Thanks for the answers to my questions Wayne,

More very nice progress,varying the shades of metal colours on these large builds definitely adds a lot more interest to the whole visual experience.

The extra work you are putting in is worth the effort. Both builds look stunning so far.

Thanks again, Best Regards

Keith.

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Well, back again and Photobucket is still not allowing me to re-size any pictures so, I will try and keep to a minimum the pictures and continue the narrative. The first three shots are an illustration of how handy the Panavise is when needing a third hand to hold something while allowing you to use both hands. What I'm doing here is attaching the generator strap to the side of the engine and it is not the easiest to get the strap in place while trying to get the small screw started in the hole behind the coil etc.

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These next few shots are of the finishing touches being applied to the engine and making sure everything is as complete as I can make them before buttoning it up and installing the engine and transmission.

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Everything is ready except the rear engine/front trans cross member support so, after it has been sanded down and the pedal and rod are masked off it hits the paint booth for a coat of Tamiya spray gunmetal to match the frame.

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Back a while ago I mentioned that I had a broken brass thread on the front wheel spindle. This broke when I was dis-assembling the car and unscrewing the nuts that hold the brake drums on the backing plate. It was unavoidable since they needed to come in order to clean up and paint all the parts. A word of caution here when taking apart an older model of any type; things will break no matter how careful you are. These Pocher kits have fairly brittle metal on the smaller pieces such as the screws and in this case the threaded brass that had been in place for a long while. This was something that I knew I would have to fix but, I kept putting it off and thinking about it off and on for a few weeks. As time went on I acquired a number of things that I didn't have when it broke. I picked up some 2 mm threaded rod, a 2 mm tap & die, the Panavise and more small drill bits. So, I finally decided that easiest way to fix it was to cut off the remaining broken section of threaded brass and file the hub section flat. Then I centered a small drill bit on the hub and started a hole. When I was sure it was centered and started well enough I got a larger bit that was 1/16" and finished the drilling out the hole. Then I used my 2 mm tap and threaded the hole. I put the 2 mm threaded rod in the vise and cleaned up the threads on the 2 mm rod so it would thread easily into the new hole in the hub. I screwed the entire 10" length of rod into the hub. I used the entire rod so I could hold onto it easier and when it was all the way in I used a pair of tin snips to cut the rod to the same length as the other side.

Here is the rod in the vise cleaning up the threads

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Here is the tap I bought from Model Motor Cars. These tools and spare 2 mm rod are essential items if you plan on building Pocher models. 2 mm is pretty much the size of all the threaded rod parts and all of the nuts.

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The next two shots are of the unbroken original brass threaded hub and the other is of the other side that was repaired with steel threaded rod.

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Next is the connection of the emergency brake cables from the rear wheels to each side of the center pivot rod that then connects to the brake handle linkage mounted on the transmission.

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Here is the firewall with both colors applied; gunmetal around the outside and gloss aluminum in the center

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Here is the firewall with some of the detail applied and painted but, not completely done yet

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Here we have the engine cross member installed ready for the engine, transmission and firewall to go in

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More later

Wayne

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Thanks guys I appreciate the comments. It looks like its time to start assembling the parts to create the whole. Starting with the engine into the frame and making a few connections here and there. I still need to get the steering column in and the rest of the copper lines from the firewall to the engine and brake master cylinder.

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KInd of looks like the Roadster now with just a little bit of difference here and there

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A longer shot from each side. Again, Photobucket keeps giving me an error every time I try and re-size the pictures so they are full size until I can get this worked out. I've tried loading them one at a time and in groups sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. At this point I'm tired of trying to figure it out; if it works then they get re-sized if it doesn't then they don't. This is not supposed to be this much hassle to just upload some pictures.

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Here we now have the exhaust system in place along with the transmission

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All that's left here is to add the cable between the hand brake pulley you see next to the front of the drive shaft and the two levers hanging down from the threaded rod going down the middle of the cross member.

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Here you can see that I did change the color on the bell housing breather just for visual interest. Of course, all this will be covered up and nobody will ever see it. It's just the sort of thing you do no matter what, if you know it's there that's all that matters. I think if I was building this as a museum quality reproduction would I skimp on the details, no I wouldn't. Besides the next guy that gets this kit will know its there as well. All the threaded rod on the trans is cleaned up and done but, the e-brake cable rod has not been done yet. I will take care of that when I finish the cable.

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Here is a view to the rear end

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One last shot for tonight. I will post more of the underside of the chassis tomorrow but, here is a peek for now.

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Tomorrow's pictures will be a little closer and show more detail.

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More superb progress Wayne.

All of the metal colours and tones work really well together building a very convincing look to the whole model.

I see on the cabriolet you have used the pocher steering linkage and on the roadster you used the MMC version. Do you think the MMC one is worth the money ands brings more to the model? I'm interested in your comments on this as I have been looking at some of their parts to add to my model along the way.

Best Regards

Keith.

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Thanks Keith, I really prefer the MMC linkage versus the kit linkage. After having first used the MMC linkage then using the Pocher linkage the kit supplied ones are very toy like. If MMC didn't have this available you probably wouldn't give it a second thought but after using each I can tell you that there isn't any comparison. I guess it really boils down to how much you want to spend to get realism and how much are you willing to spend on an already expensive kit to realize it. As good as these kits are they still have lots of short comings and MMC addresses a lot of it. Where they really help is with the interior pieces. If you look at some of the door and dash pieces in the kit and then look at the MMC stuff you can really see the difference. The Pocher parts are kind of flat and the MMC parts are more three dimensional and are like little pieces of jewelry. Sorry for being so long winded here but, the main reason I didn't upgrade the Cabriolet is my stated goal on this build is to rebuild it and sell it so someone else can finish it and do it the way they want with a good start. We all see these kits for sale on eBay in pretty rough shape and we've all seen kits that say "Pro built" and are anything but. I'm not saying that this is a Pro build but I consider it well done and I guess I'll see if anyone else thinks so as well when I list it on eBay.

I have more pictures to post today but it will be later on. I will flip both of chassis' over so you can see the steering linkage side by side to get a better idea of how they look next to each other.

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Keith, I agree with Wayne about the MMC pieces. I bought many of the chassis pieces; the steering arms, clevises, brake rods and links, PE springs, and the bronze front axle-a near necessity on these Rollers to stop the sag. The Pocher stuff is just stamped, flat steel.

True you see little of this when model is upright so make your spending decisions based on that. For instance, I passed on the $75 but beautiful transmission control linkage - impossible to see.

As Wayne said, I just received the interior switches, handles and winders - just beautiful and very visible. A bit more parts to come when I get paint on it.

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I'm going to have to post the pictures tomorrow. I had a long day today with two doctors appointments and a meeting with my attorney so I'm all in for today and a little tired.

Piggy backing on Codgers comment, if you're going to spend the money to upgrade things and have limited funds you might want to get things that will make a difference when you first see the model. Let's face it you're not going to be picking it up and turning it upside down much. These are big and heavy but if you display it on a mirror you might see the details. As I recall the main reason I got the linkage was because the wheels don't sit right on the Pocher linkage and the MMC does help correct the stance and wheel position problem.

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