larchiefeng

Actually, you were pretty smart to buy the upgrades now because you can plan ahead to install them during the build. I bought a lot as I went on and wound up having to redo a lot of things to incorporate the MMC upgrades after the fact.

Well it looks like you guys are off to a rousing start here and Brian you couldn’t find a more knowledgeable person on the forum for building your Rolls. I “met” Mr. C somewhere around the beginning of this build and it’s good to see it coming back. I also met and became friends with Paul Koo around then too. Paul’s DVD’s are important when first building various sections of the car. Pay close attention to all of his recommendations on modifying parts and pieces especially with regard to fitting the body. There’s a lot of things that need to be done before you go too far. As you have already experienced with having to take something apart that you have already put together; there’s a lot of that unfortunately. The other thing about Paul is that he only builds strictly from the box other than the MMC stuff. He also has done almost all of the MMC instructions for them. For everything else, Mr.C is your guy. I see that you are talking about lighting up “everything”. I have a little bit of experience there; I added SMD LEDs to my Mercedes including the dash gauges.

Sorry for the long interval between posts again but, you could say that Christmas was a rinse and repeat of Thanksgiving around here. Pretty much everything that happened then also happened the day after Christmas except it was only 24" of snow. Anyway, after my last post, I did continue down the road of trying to correct the Pocher kit turbo pipes that, I was trying to modify. I was lamenting the lack of one more muffler to give me enough of the same size pipe to make them the way I wanted them. I also mentioned that I was going to start looking into the use of other types of materials that were the same diameter as what I was working with. I started with the white pipes shown earlier but, they were a little larger in diameter than the Pocher pipes. I tried to turn down some aluminum rod and looked at brass tubing and even the plastic engine intake pipes etc. etc. Here are some pictures of the various materials. I turned down the white plastic tubing to the diameter of the Pocher pipes but, I could only get so far. I would also need the various pieces with 90 degree and 45 degree bends for this to work and I was only working on the straight pieces here. So, here are some pictures of me trying to get those pipes to look more like the picture that Pascal sent of how those pipes look in real life off of the turbos. Changing the length that the pipes come out of the turbo to go more to the middle of the transaxle with the intention of putting another bend back in Got the right side more to the center. The reference point for the mid point on these pipes are the two brass rod bracket on the transaxle. So far so good and here's a little mock up going to the rear Looks good but, still no "S" bend between the turbos and brass rod bracket Working on the rearward pipes and making lots of cuts to try and get the right shape. Also back to other materials. Looks good but, too straight Trying it to see how it looks with the waste gate pipe. Working on the mid pipe section Once again, it looks good but, just too straight This is what I'm talking about in case you forgot. Notice the pretty dramatic S bend out of the turbos. The other thing that, is very noticeable is the larger size of the pipes So, after trying to obtain and make more pipe the same size as what I've been working with here and failing, I have decided to try a different tack. I am going a different route and I have realized that, I won't be able to make as sharp of an S bend as I want. Every attempt has only resulted in broken plastic or kinked tubing and frankly this has gone on far too long! So, with that in mind my next post will show what I have settled on as an acceptable solution. It's definitely not perfect but, I think that it looks better than the straight pipes. The next post will be representing approximately two weeks worth of work and tonight I'll be painting them so I can post more of a finished product (the pipes).

As usual, I got a little sidetracked, only this time it was a pretty big snow storm. We got 4 feet of snow starting the night before Thanksgiving for 48 hours straight. That, put a real crimp in my style and it really wore me out. The weather has been pretty dark, wet and gloomy every weekend since so, not conducive to doing too much. Anyway, I have been working on and off on the pipes from the turbos and exhaust. Since I made the decision to eliminate the muffler and go with the straight LM exhaust it's been a bit of a challenge to get them right. So, what follows is a lot of cutting and reassembly to try and get something that resembles the picture that Pascal supplied above. First things first. I had to cut the turbo pipes to get the pipes to go straight back as opposed to angling outward towards each side of the muffler. So, the first thing was a cut to get the new angle. Things are going in the right direction Added a weld seam to cover the cuts in the pipes Both sides looking generally correct. Playing around with some tubing pieces to see if I can get the shape of the pipe bends but, the tubing is too big The turbo pipes are too far to the right Painted the pipes with the weld seams I was pretty happy with the way the seams look Here is where things started getting weird. Notice the direction the pipes are going. Time for more surgery to try and correct the angle Sorta OK but, not quite right, especially the right one Really not happy with this and this was done before the storm so, I had time to sit on it and think about it I dug out the rear frame and body panel so that, I could put the engine in there and see how it all looked in relationship to the exhaust opening in the rear panel Kinda going in the right direction I thought that I could make these pipes work so, I started filling the seams The left one is iffy but, the right one is too far to the right but, like I said this was all before the storm and Pascal's pictures and I was going to probably settle It didn't look tooo bad but.... I could almost settle for it, almost but... It even started to look OK from a distance , LOL Needless to say, after thinking about this and looking at the crooked misaligned pipes for a few weeks, I knew that, I had to fix this. My next post will be the fix and a lot more surgery on the turbo muffler pipes. Good thing that I had two mufflers and two sets of pipes to make most of the exhaust system. I really could have used one more muffler to make it all out of the same size plastic but, the part from the back of the transaxle out the rear will have to be made from aluminum rod and brass tubing.

The first picture shows what I suspected about the brackets attached to the pipes that attach to the rear muffler bracket. The pipes out of the turbos are going to be problematic for me now. I’m going to have to remake them because I came out of the turbos and went straight back instead of making the big bend to the center and back outside and straight back like the bottom picture. Good thing that I have an extra set of pipes. At least I know how they are supposed to be routed, thanks Pascal. You really are a fountain of F40 knowledge!

Naked baby! And even with weld seams! I just wish that I had good pictures from the turbos all the way back without the air box , waste gate and plates in the way. I’m trying to use the plastic Pocher pipes and cut them and reposition them to go straight back. In that first picture it almost looks like that there’s an equalizer pipe between the two turbo pipes. It’s hard to tell and, it appears that even the waste gate pipe is connected in the whole group of pipes. That can’t be correct, is it? Do you have or do you know where there’s any pictures that show all that better? Thanks 😊

Thanks guys! Unfortunately, no, there’s no room to spare inside the collars. The OD of the braided hose is almost too big to fit inside the ID of the collar. What makes it look like room to spare is the OD of the eye bolt shaft inside the collar. I am going to add a little something inside that end to fill the gap between the collar and eye bolt shaft. There’s a lot of stuff stuffed inside the collar! There’s the eye bolt with brass wire soldered on, another piece of tubing, and the braided hose all inside the collar. This is what took me so long to figure out; how to get the eye bolt with a mechanical connection and glue all packed into the collar without it looking like a mess. It’s all figured out and ready for assembly but, I have to finish up the LM straight exhaust pipes first. I mentioned a while back that I’m eliminating the muffler and building the pipes right out the rear. So, once again, I just can’t leave well enough alone and build it from the kit; even if it’s a transkit! 😎

Thanks again Pascal, I did order some 6063 aluminum rod to use on my exhaust pipes. I did a bunch of work on the turbo pipes getting them ready for the aluminum rod which, won't be here until Monday, I think. I also ordered some brass hex rod to experiment with on the lathe to try and make some Aeroquip fittings and they broke my order into 3 different shipments so, I don't know for sure what is coming tomorrow. Anyway, I still have some pictures of the hose/eye bolt fabrications. As usual, I made a few mistakes and tried some different approaches to fabricating them using the eye bolts as the end fittings. The way and materials the Autograph transkit give you are just some wire and brass collars. Basically, you strip the plastic/rubber off the wire and expose the stainless sheath like on coax cable which is what passes for the stainless steel hose. You get 2-3 different sizes to use for various hoses on the car and they also supply some brass collars that have a ridge in the middle and you are supposed to cut them in half. That's it and, you are supposed to slip some solder inside the mesh sleeve and the brass collars on each end and then slip the collar over the end of various white metal fittings. I kinda wanted something a little better on six of the turbo fittings and what follows are my attempts to get more detail and also get the hoses assembled to hold it altogether without looking like a mess. First idea and not so good OK, but it wasn't going to work Better but, I had too much eye bolt inside the collar and no way to really hold the braided hose with solder inside to the collar. Too much stress on the connection and glue wasn't going to hold it. Back to the drawing board I realized that, I needed a mechanical connection between the eye bolt and the hose. So I cut off some thread from the eye bolt and drilled holes in the bottom I figured that I could solder some brass rod on the bottom and put it inside the hose. So far so good Not the cleanest soldering work but it can be bent straight and it's inside the hose Moving right along Now, I needed the bolt and washers. I bought some 2mm washers from MMC but, the OD was way bigger than the OD of the eye bolt. So, here's the solution. Kind of hard to see but, if you look closely you can see a stack of washers chucked into the drill press. Better view Here's how they came and what they looked like when I got done filing them down Eye bolt with washers and bolt inside the sleeve That replaces this which is supposed to represent the eye bolt with the bolt through it. It's OK as far as it goes but, the connection end at the bottom is what the braided hose is supposed to connect to. That connection point is about 2mm long and isn't strong enough to hold the braided line on for too long. I guess that it remains to be seen if my option will look any better. Here's a few pictures with one unfinished hose just mocked up on the turbo while I'm working on the exhaust pipe mod Each turbo has three of these type of connections and I still have to dial in the eye bolt lengths etc. I put this part aside while I worked on changing the exhaust. I needed the turbos on the headers so, I can work on the exhaust pipe positions etc. I didn't want any of the hoses on the the turbos to get in my way or possibly break off. You will see what I mean on the next couple of posts. The engine goes in and out of the frame and rear body panel has to go on to shape the exhaust pipes out the back and so on. More next time.

This is hugely impressive amount of work to undertake on a model like this! I know from personal experience just how hard it is to cut one of these things up just to do small things on the body; let alone the amount of surgery you have done. I wouldn't know where to begin on modifying the bodywork to match the drawing. As you have progressed beyond the rough molding process to now using the spray on putty and smoothing out the front end it's really starting to look like the artist rendering. I really like the front end and I can't wait to see how the tail end comes out after you start doing the finish work on the molding back there. I'm assuming that this is going to be sort of a curbside build, without an opening front bonnet or engine? I can see that you will probably do an interior but, with everything else being mostly one piece it would be difficult to add any other details. I could be wrong but, I know from my build how tight things are getting back in the engine area, I don't know how you would do it. Like I said, I could be wrong and, it wouldn't be the first time, it's just my sense of it. Keep up the great work!

I used some model spray interior texture paint and then painted Alclad exhaust manifold color over it to get just the right amount of texture on the turbos.

Thanks Pascal, as always you are a great source of knowledge especially when it comes to scratch building! And, speaking of scratch building, that's quite the project that, you have going on Mirage! I've been waiting to comment on your undertaking but, you were firing out updates as fast as I could read them at the beginning. I'm glad that you found some small bit of inspiration from my build and it encouraged you to join the forum and start posting your outstanding scratch built update to the Pocher F-40. That thing has got to be getting pretty heavy by now that, you have joined most all of the main body pieces together. It's probably not something you just pick up and work on in your lap now that it weighs close to 6-7 pounds! I plan on getting over to your thread and spending some time catching up on your progress and posting more there, keep up the good work! So, Pascal, what ever happened to your F-40 Barchetta in 1/8 scale, did you ever finish it? I'm not posting any updates tonight but, I thought that I should respond to you guys and thank everyone who has popped in to view my last post. I should be posting an update with pictures etc either tomorrow or Friday. And, I intend to work on it quite a bit this weekend since last weekend was mostly taken up with getting ready for winter. Everything is as good as it's going to get on that score so, it's model time and F1 for me this weekend!

Pocher interior “leather” is 💩! You definitely don’t want to use that. I wound up with a whole box full of a lot of different color leather. You just need to make sure that you have enough leather to finish the interior. I had to two tone my door panels because I ran out of the cream color leather and I couldn’t find a match. It has to be from the same dye lot.

Andy, I hope that you find it useful. On the thread I actually built two engines and frames. One of them is for the K91 which is the kit I was building. The K91 has plastic wire wheels and the other one was the K74 cabriolet which has the metal wire wheels. I actually built the wire wheels which is what your kit has. So, that might be helpful for you. Another thing that you really “need” to do is get the Paul Koo dvd for building the Mercedes. Paul and I met during my build and I took the car to his house at some point in the build for his advice/help. The last thing goes to what Codger mentioned earlier about planning the build. If you want to upgrade any of the parts to the Model Motorcar parts be sure to plan ahead for them. They are, in some cases, a significant upgrade but, don’t always just go right on. Most of the parts require some finagling to get to fit and some require modifications to work on the car. I probably added every MMC upgrade but, I didn’t plan ahead for them and it cost me a lot of time. I think that I probably covered most of these things as I went along but, could be important enough to be said up front depending on what you plan on doing with the build. Enjoy your Mercedes and I will be looking forward to seeing you start your build.

I had to go back and read my own thread this morning just to see where I had left off! I think that, I've figured it out. I have been working on a few different things trying to get what I want before posting it. So, consequently I've been jumping around between the turbo lines, turbos, pipes and exhaust system. I figured that, I needed to get the turbos mounted to the headers before I could finish the hoses because of the lengths. I have also made the decision to abandon the muffler completely and make straight pipes like an LM version. This is where it all went sideways the last few weeks. I also needed to fix the the turbo mounting plates to the headers because the screws were not straight, I added texture to the exhaust turbo and repainted them so let's start there with the catch up. Added the texture Repainted Here is where it started to go wrong for me on the turbo flanges. I couldn't get the holes drilled far enough to the outside of the flange without going through the edge of the plastic. The PE flange hole pattern was just slightly wider to get all the bolts straight through So, my solution was to just cut off the molded on flanges and make new ones, Nothing fancy just plastic card using the PE as a pattern Much better fit I know the turbo is facing the wrong way but, I'm just mocking them up One on the right way and one on the wrong way. So at this point things are going OK and would have been a much faster build but, here's where I changed my mind about the muffler! I realized that the turbo pipes were going to need quite a bit of modification to get them going straight back instead of an angle. You can also see that the turbo flange is not lining up with the end of the header. It was at this point that I had to get the turbos glued onto the end of the headers in order to work out the piping from the turbos all the way out the back of the car Working on some tubing size possibilities to connect from the flanges out the back. I wanted to use the Pocher pipe parts as much as possible from the turbos just because everything fits and it's going to be enough work going from there out. I wanted to use solder for the pipes but, I can't find that size solder, it's just too big of an O.D. I will use solder to make the template for the bends and then transfer it to either plastic or metal tubing Back to the turbo lines for a few minutes. I made a hose and did a mock up before I replaced the flanges and these comments are from a friend that, I had sent this picture to. Everything has been done with the possible exception of shortening the pipe out of the turbo. I have the washers and have reversed the collars. So, I had to go back and prep some of the hoses again but, I won't be finishing any of them until the turbos are mounted and ready for the hoses. You can also see the blow out of the bolt through flange and why I made the new flanges I have some more for next time on the hoses and then the pipe reconfiguration.

Here is the link to my Mercedes build thread

Andy, I’m not really an engineer in the sense that you think of one. I was a chief engineer for a resort hotel and the two villages on either side of it on the lake. Now I work at and on the lake in kind of the same capacity. I think that the white 540K cabriolet is my favorite of all of them. I have one in my collection that I have always wanted to do the Special Roadster conversion on. I don’t know if I will ever get to it but that is the plan for it. My Mercedes build is of K91 True Roadster and was a body style that I really wasn’t fond of so, part way through it, I decided to modify the body to look a little more like the 540K roadster. I wanted the long tail end so, I did a lot of work from the seats back to get the look. I had a lot of help from a lot of Pocher guys Including Codger, Paul Koo, Dave Cox, Roymattblack, just to name a few. There were many more people than and, I apologize to any that I forgot here but, I’m just going from memory on my phone. I’m going to post on my F40 build this morning and I will find and post the link to my Mercedes when I get on the computer. I know that Codger is looking forward to seeing another Pocher build on the forum, I hope that he can wait until next year! 🤔

You only need a 2mm tap and you can get one from Model Motorcars for $9. Did you get the black cabriolet or the white cabriolet special? The main body is different but everything else is pretty much the same. I built the Mercedes true roadster a couple years ago which is also different main body but, again everything else is the same. I would post a link to my build but, I don’t have it handy at the moment. I’ll look it up later if you’re interested.

Ah, yes the turbos and exhaust! I have spent more than a couple of hours over the past few weeks figuring out how to make and attach the eye bolts to the hoses and turbos. I have finally done it after about 4-5 different failed scenarios. I just need to do some repaint on one of the turbos and one header and paint the WM fittings and then I’ll be ready for that assembly. I also decided to change the exhaust and that has held me up some too. Hopefully, I can make enough progress this weekend to post over on my thread. I received a question regarding the decals. Somebody said that, they saw where Uli mentions using something like wallpaper paste to put down the decals but, that doesn’t sound right. You put them down like regular decals, correct?

The decals look great and they settled down nicely on the seat backs! Rich, the green stripes are also decals. Exceptionally clean work!

Got it, thanks.

When I was doing all the surgery on the turbo pipes and adding the flange gaskets, I thought that I was ready to start working on the waste gate. So, I decided to cut it apart before I realized that, I was no where near done with the turbos. Here's the Pocher kit waste gate and pipes molded together as one unit. So simple. Slicing and dicing! Now, I just need to remember which way they all go. In the meantime all the eye bolts showed up. Quite a variety of sizes. The nickle one is the one that Pascal showed from Knufper. A little ruler action so you guys can see how big each one is Pay no attention to the white plastic or the brass tubing, I'm just trying to get an idea of what to do and how else they might be used. When I was asking about Aeroquip fittings larger than the 1mm size that came with the kit this, is what Pascal suggested. Use a piece of hex rod and turn it down to look like one. I got as far as finding the hex rod in my supplies. Also, here are the parts that I was waiting for from Uli I started working on making some hoses for all these fittings and trying to figure out the best way to use all these little pieces to get hoses that looked sort of real. Here are some of my first attempts The hose part was going together pretty well but, I needed to figure out how to get the eye bolts in and the collar on Cut down the eye bolt with the collar on and try and stuff the eye bolt inside Not working too well and a little sloppy New plan; solder the cut down eye bolt onto some copper wire First attempt, pretty sloppy soldering work but, it was good enough to test the theory . It came out nice and clean and I was pretty happy with myself, for a minute Yep, everything was looking just peachy until, a close fiend of mine pointed out an inaccuracy with the collars on the end of the hose at the eye bolt. It came up when we were also discussing the turbo fittings and he had some other observations there as well. All that will be covered in my next post but, I won't leave you hanging on the problem with the collars; they are backwards On real hoses, the crimped end forms the bulge at the eye not down on the hose. I also ran into more problems that, I think I mentioned, over the weekend and, they have all been resolved along with the hoses. Sometimes it's easier to go back and do it again correctly and even though it's PIA, it usually comes out much better than what you thought was pretty good to begin with.

Absolutely amazing work! I just love the look and skill of real old world craftsmanship on display here. Unless you have ever done any scratch building you really don’t have any idea of how much thought and how many do overs go into what you are seeing here! Great work Harvey!

Thanks guys for all the great tips! I’m going to jump ahead here and give you a preview of what happened and how I solved the problem. The PE that goes on the exhaust manifold and mates with the turbo via the nuts and bolts with the brass ring sandwiched in between had a couple of issues. When I was drilling the holes using the PE as a template I still had a blowout on one of the corners of the turbo. I didn’t like that the holes were so close to the edges and I thought that if the square of the turbo was slightly bigger it would be better and not really noticeable when painted and I can always sand it down if it looks off. So, I just cut the ends off of the turbos and made new square pieces for each one. This made it easier to drill the holes straight and keep enough material around the edges. Then, I added the center bolt that lines it up on the header and another one to line it up back on the turbo. The the brass ring gave enough space for the bolts heads and there’s the mechanical connection. With the PE piece on I primed it all. I finished the assembly of the nuts and bolts and then cleaned up the edges to size. Once the square sandwich was done I finished the color coat and then glued it back on between the turbo and header. I solved two different problems doing it this way. It gives holes with enough material around them and the ease and cleaner assembly of these parts. Sometimes the only way to save the patient is surgery! 🤔

I kinda had a feeling that was the case and I’m also doing some things that aren’t in the transkit. There’s so much more that you can do beyond the 1000’s of parts in the transkit and, that sounds pretty crazy 😜. I haven’t looked but, the line off the transaxle goes to the rear, does it go to one of the coolers that go in the rear lower body panel or somewhere else?

Even though I'm no where near done with the turbos, I decided to start working on the pipes. The type of work to be done is that you have to cut them apart and prep the flange gaskets. First thing is to cut off the molded on flanges and replace them with the PE and brass washers and 1mm bolts and nuts. Here are the turbo pipes Here's where I made my first mistake with these pipes and flanges. I went ahead and put the muffler side of the PE flanges on the short muffler pipes and glued the brass rings on before I painted the muffler. That, wasn't the problem, I'll get to that in a minute but, here is the waste gate pipe that is going to need surgery and the same treatment as the turbo pipes. Muffler painted and weathered with the aforementioned flanges Some obligatory weathered muffler pictures With the assembled and painted turbo pipes, well sort of Here is where the problem begins and I had to remove the PE flanges and rings from the muffler side. Can you guess the problem? In a nutshell here is the problem. There is hardly any room to start the the bolts and nuts in the proper orientation and even if I could have gotten bolts in, I had no way to tighten them. So, the only way to do it was to put the bolts on with the nuts facing the engine. The only way to deal with it and get things correct was to remove the flanges and start all the nuts and bolts like this. You still have enough room to slide the brass ring inside the flanges and attach the other pipe and after the nuts are tight and the ring is glued onto the other pipe. It's the glue that's going to hold it all together not the flanges. but if the ring is glued to both pipes there is enough of a shoulder to keep the flange on either side of the ring. This one is for you Brad and Rich; you have to do this with all of the pipe flanges unless you have a better method of working with 1mm nuts and bolts in tight spaces! A better idea of just how small these nuts and bolts really are I also just found this out tonight when I was working on the getting the turbos attached to the headers. I again, made the mistake of attaching the square turbo flange to the end of the header before I realized that I should have put all the nuts and bolts together. The other little tip I have is that the S1 bolts are a little too short to mate up the turbo, MB8 brass ring and header. I had to go into my spare hardware box and use 1mm x 8mm long brass bolts from MMC to get the length. The other reason I had to take it apart was to use the PE as a template to drill the 4 holes in the square flange on the turbo for the bolts to go through. Two steps forward, one step back! Obviously, you can probably tell that, I'm really a couple steps ahead of these pictures and, that's probably a good thing. It gives me time to think about how I can fix a problem and then move forward without stalling the thread. Hopefully, I can make enough progress tomorrow so, I can make another post tomorrow. At some point, you will understand my earlier post from today regarding the exhaust system. The next couple of posts are going to be getting the turbo and waste gate pipes mounted and set up before I do the plumbing with the braided lines. I'm kind of saving the more delicate work for later on.