Spiny

That's a very good model to have built as a teenager - I wish my teenage models were even half as good as that. As for building cars you've owned, I think we'd all love that and most of us face exactly the same problem. For me, I decided to just get something which shares the name, even if not much else. So for that Corolla you could get the racing '80s Corolla instead (using my logic at least )

That biscuit/tan interior colour is one I always associated with Jags, although oddly not the E-Type. I do think it will go very well with the metallic grey though. 👍

I've not had to do carbon fibre decalling yet, and from what I've seen I'm not in any rush - it looks very painful so well done for persisting with it to get it looking that well. Thanks for the review of Indycals - I think I have a purchase imminent now....

The glue didn't get a look in this weekend, I seem to have spent the time I had on the bench just removing parts from the sprue and painting them. All the bits needed for Step 3 of the instructions, and mostly ready to fit. You can see in the photo though why I haven't got onto assembly yet - for those of you who think one of the driveshaft gaitors is suspisciously shiny, well it is. It seems that when someone was applying the second coat of matt black to it he grabbed the pot of gloss black instead . Not a major issue and easily sorted, but it's a slight delay. Not that I'm going to complain, I suspect any time gained here will be lost when I get to the Alpine unless we have a very un-humid autumn. There's still a little bit of painting on the wheel hubs and the dampers, but it's pretty much there for assembling the rear suspension now. Incidentally, it doesn't show in the photos, and barely shows under magnification, but I did spend time getting the outside of the springs gloss black and the recesses matt black. Looks as though that may have been a bit of a wasted effot That isn't all I've done though, with the good weather we've had this weekend I got the clearcoat onto the bonnet and onto my sill repair, so all spraying is (hopefully!) done on this now. If you're thinking that looks a pretty shonky repair, you're probably not wrong. But it looks a lot worse as I had started sanding the rest of the body so the surface of the clear is different between the old and new clearcoats. And then I deliberately maked the line there as even if I don't get it smoothed enough to blend in there will be some chrome trim covering the line when I've finished which should disguise any slight differences. And that's all I have to show for this week. Thanks for looking.

What sort of quality are they like? I've been looking for some decals for a restoration I was planning and saw indycals have them available so if they're good I'll probably take the plunge.

I always liked the look of the Mk3 Cortina, so if it was better looking than the saloon it must have been a very pretty car. Anyway, today's 'spot' from me is actually a non-spot. For the past 3 weeks, someone has been parking a Bentley Bentayga next to a no-parking sign around the corner from our office and had a ticket every day (the exception being when a scaffolding lorry was parked there to get loaded). Today it wasn't there. Is it too much to hope that after all those parking tickets the owner has finally learned their lesson? (Probably it is too much to hope)

I shouldn't worry about the front spoiler not quite fitting correctly as a) it doesn't show in the photos, and b) it would be somehow appropriate to this if it wasn't fitted correctly. I'd say it's looking nice, but obviously it's not (in the best possible way! ). As for you saying it's taking a while, it's odd you say that because I was just thinking how quickly you seemed to be making progress on it!

And despite all the success, my main memory of Makinen is from the RAC after being stopped by the police having lost his rear wheel. I think the conversation went something like this (can't find the video):😄 Officer: "You can't drive a car like this on the road" TM: "No, I can drive a car like this" Officer: "No, I won't let you drive a car like this on the road" Having watched the video of the stage though I'm glad I took it a bit easier when I went around Milbrook Alpine Course.

I wouldn't worry about the lack of a WIP thread, while it's always nice to see how other people build their models the old maxim of "build for yourself, not for other people" should always come into play if you want to keep the enjoyment in the hobby. The model itself looks very clean and tidy, it may have been simple but it's a good end result.

Got to say that that bonnet strut mechanism is extremely impressive - not just the design but the execution of it too. Great work.

Glad my commentary has helped. Even if outside factors have slowed progress, it's looking very tidy in your photos. 👍

Good work on the dash. They always seem to suck time, but you have got the detail on there and it's looking good. Always seems a bummer when you get to the end of the build and realise nobody will see it, but you'll know it's there.

Thank you, much appreciated. I'm looking forward to seeing how yours turns out, if mine is anything to go by these do go together pretty well, but you do need to take your time, make sure everything is aligned, and not rush things. I agree with you about the wipers, they did look odd in the photo above and I wasn't really happy as they were, much happier with them parked as in the RFI thread.

Bit of a race to get the last bits of paint on this. I also started the polishing, all was going well until I managed to burn through the paint. Fortunately, that was on the underside of the sill so I was able mask up and give it another clearcoat without too much difficulty - the edge of the colour layer is pretty much on the outer edge of the underside of the sill so not obvious. And then I will clearcoat it a bit higher so there isn't much of a step - in fact the plan is to put the edge of the clear part way up the side so the edge will be hidden by the trim. I'm hoping I've managed to dodge a bullet there. So onto better news. The plan with the spaceframe appears to have worked ok - these are the two halves after gluing all the pieces on. I am aware following @CrazyCrank's excellent build of last year that there are other bits on the real spaceframe, but as usual I'm doing this near enough out of the box. The reasoning behind leaving the spaceframe as two halves was that I figured it would be easier to paint that way. And when it came to painting I was glad I did as still some mildly awkward places to get around other members. I think it would have been much more difficult if I'd fully assembled the chassis before painting, but all painting is done now and the method of assembly meant that the two halves joined together with almost no adjustement needed. Next steps are the diff, which is easy - remove from sprue, sand, paint - and the coil springs which are a bit more of a pain. Unfortunately, the parts have an ejector pin peg halfway up each spring as shown below in the blue circle. I guess the idea is that it will be part hidden, but I'll probably end up putting it in the wrong way so I decided to get the PE saw onto it. With the peg sawn in half and sanded relatively smooth, it ended up like the coil in the yellow circle. Not perfect by any means, but with some paint on and hidden in a dark wheel well it shouldn't be too visible. (Not the best pics I'm afraid, these are touching the camera lens so as to be visible, but that does reduce the amount of light on there) And that's it for this week. Thanks for looking.

Looks a nice build, dust is always a nightmare, especially on black cars so I wouldn't beat yourself up over that. I have to say I don't envy you painting the seats - all those little metal circles must have been a pain to do and good to see them done so neatly. If I may be permitted one minor suggestion, if you add matt black to the inside of the exhaust tailpipes it would add really finish it off and make it look as though it's had the engine running. (The engine isn't half bad either come to mention it).

Thanks both of you, much appreciated as I know the standards you both achieve. This is the Revell kit, being just the van I suspect it's probably quite a simpler than the camper as you don't need to fit any furniture, nor all the windows (although they were all supplied for some reason). I guess I also had the advantage that I could take my time over it while I'd imagine if you were building for the magazine there would be more of a deadline. As for photography, I'll try anything although I'm not very good at pictures of people. But I do like a good landscape shot, particularly if there's water in there which often helps make up for my lack of skills. I'm not on Instragram, but had a look down your list as far as it would let me - very odd to find that one of them is from near enough the same spot (Kirkham) as a picture I took earlier in the year. Yours has much better lighting though, not to mention they've obviously repaired the damage from where the bridge was hit (yet again!) over winter.

Adjusting the handles is something I wouldn't have even considered, which just goes to show how much detail you're putting into this. It's looking very good, and the detail here shows why all your models end up looking superb.

With having a week off work I figured the nice weather meant it was a good excuse to go for a walk and get some fresh air. Turns out that there was a steam fair in the early stages of setting up, not much there yet but there was this (I'm afraid I know next to nothing about steam machinery so can't add any more detail): Also a couple of Fordson tractors, the Dexta (first one, which I loved) is from c. 1960 while the plate on the dual-wheeled Major suggested 1964 which would make it one of the last ones (as would the blue & white colour scheme)

That's looking good, I would say it will polish up nicely but I know that's not the route you're going down with this one I wouldn't bother too much about the wipers either, they won't look so bad once you paint them and at least you won't have the issue of the wiper sticking up in the air because the kit manufacturer didn't put a bend in them to suit the windscreen.

Good of you to say so, but I haven't started polishing it yet so (provided I don't burn through the paint) there should be more to come on that score. It's the ribs over the wheels which I'm most concerned about, guess I just have to take extra care there.

Thanks everyone for your comments, always nice to receive. There do seem to be a couple of points which have kept coming up, namely paint and photography. Paint colours are nothing whatsoever to do with me, they are entirely down to whoever chose those colours at Jaegermeister so the credit for that is all theirs. All I did was spray it on (which took ages, and leaves me wondering if I will get through winter without running out of painted parts due to how long it took), then polish it with various compounds. Mostly I'm happy with it, but as usual there are a few bits which could be improved. As for the photography, that is another hobby, although I'm very much in the amateur ranks there. The best advice I can give for anyone is to either have a tripod or lots of light as it can be difficult to get a photo without shake sometimes. That's made worse by the face that when you want to photograph models you ideally want a tight aperture (higher f-number) to give some depth of field which lengthens the exposure time. You can go with a lower f-number in those circumstances where you want to blur the background or want to highlight a specific part of the model and blur the rest. As always, there's limits to what can be done - for example with those pictures of the interior I had the front of the camera lens touching the van to enable me to get as close as possible. That not only limits the light available (I had to pull back on the engine bay for example because the camera blocked all the light), but to do this you will also need a camera which can cope with being so close.

It certainly doesn't look like a training exercise. I must admit that producing a weathered car doesn't really appeal to me, but you've done a good job here.

Hopefully that didn't do any damage to the paint - my brain was spinning a bit in neutral a bit last night when I wrote that I think EDIT: Just seen @CrazyCrank's 'confused' reaction so I guess thatdidn't translate - basically I was saying I was being a bit stupid last night.

With the VW finished and this falling down to page 3 it's time to make a proper start on building this one up. But first of all, more painting. I had a bit of an issue with the bonnet in that I went a bit too heavy with the mist coat of the clear and reactivated the silver leading to a patchy finish. It's since had another coat of silver on top and I'm letting that cure before giving it another top coat, this time with lighter mist coats! On a bright note thought, I got the one and only panel line on this body done - Humbrol dark grey wash around the boot, left it for 4 hours or so then ran over it with a cotton bud dipped in clean IPA. Happily, this is one pleace where things have gone to plan and the panel line has ended up with a good solid and clean line, and even better the IPA appears to have had no impact on the clear coat. I still have to polish it up, but at least I don't need to do that to get rid of any residue. First bit of building is the spaceframe. Seeing as it's basically two big pieces with interconnecting smaller pieces, I figured it was better to approach this with some sort of plan to make sure things aligned, rather than do as the instructions suggest and fit the smaller parts to each large piece before sticking the two halves together. Instead, I've joined the two halves together with food bag ties, which holds things reasonably tightly but also allows specific areas to be loosened enough to fit the smaller pieces in the right place and ensure reasonably correct alignment. (I should also say that after taking this photo, I added a tie front and rear too to hold it more firmly in place while adding pieces). These were a real pain to prepare, I must have spent close on an hour removing mouldlines from each large piece just because of the complexity of the parts. And there were still a couple more I found as I went along. I also managed to snap one of the longer rods on a small part, but fortunately by having the two halves held together I was able to glue it back together without knocking things out of alignment. The plan is to get the two halves assembled as in the instructions, then undo the ties, separate the two halves, paint each one up then put the two halves together. Still a bit more part removal and assembly before I get to there though... Thanks for looking.

Try rubbing over the top of the wheels with a cotton bud dipped in isoproanyl alcohol. Usually the wash comes off easier than the paint underneath which will mean you have nice shiny high points. Although this won't be a good idea if you did the wheels in the chrome paint as that is readily soluble in IPA too.