Aurora's Super Spy Car: James Bond's DB5 wannabe

[Nigel Heath]

Oh, my 3000th post, well there you go.

[hendie]

and congrats on your 3000th post

you really should get a day job!

[Nigel Heath]

Sadly I have but I seem to be able to spend most of my time at work on BM. Result!!

[hendie]

Update time again folks.

It's been a slow week. I have been waiting for paint to arrive, and it's turning out to be similar to Nigel waiting for PE.

I am ready (I think) to give the bodyshell a coat of paint, but I don't want to use bog standard silver paint, as the original car apparently was more of a light grey, and not metallic. So, until those paints arrive I am left mooching about looking for other bits and pieces to do.

Well, the headlamps are the main issue just now so I might as well tackle them.

I mentioned in my previous post that the Airfix DB5 headlamp covers seemed to be more suitable than the Aurora supplied kit parts.

The Aurora parts are at the rear here in this photo, the Airfix parts are the front pair. As you can see, the Aurora parts are absolutely nothing like a DB5 whatsoever. I think this is a direct carry over from their version of the DB4, and they didn't want to spend the pennies to modify the mold. I can only imagine the despair of thousands of spotty teenagers trying to make the Aurora kit work.

Well, I can't use the Airfix parts on this build as I need them for the Airfix kit I have and intend to build some time later. Bit - I can use them to make a mold and recast the parts!

So of we go to the plasticine.... build a nice little enclosure, press the lamp covers very gently into the plasticine, back side down. I pressed them down just hard enough so that the outer edge was embedded in the plasticine. The lamp covers then stood proud.

That meant that the silicone would give me a nice concave impression of the head lamp covers. I could have made a two part mold here but The parts are so thin that I am hoping I can get away with a single sided mold. If this doesn't work, I'll make a male and female mold.

Then, mix up some silicone, and pour into cavity... and wait.

The next day, gently pry the silicone out from the plasticine backing, and it looked like it worked.

The lenses were then removed from the silicone leaving a nice impression behind, ready for casting.

I was so impressed with the Alumilite resin I used previously, that I thought I would give their clear resin a go.

This arrived earlier in the week....

So, it was out with the resin.... and then had a quick thought...

While looking at the headlamps, I had yet another one of those sinking feelings (great movie by the way!) - in the DB5 the actual headlamps chrome rims are quite prominent behind the headlamp covers. Maybe I could have a go at making a couple of headlamps?

Since I am casting the headlamp covers... why don't I try casting the actual headlamps themselves? Nothing to lose... 'cept some resin.

Well, I was mixing resin anyway, and the smallest amount I could probably mix was going to be much greater than was needed for just the two head lamp covers, so I looked around for a suitable headlamp substitute.... and ended up with this....

I polished the end of one of my brushes...

and made some imprints in the plasticine - and while I was at it, I made some more head lamp cover imprints.

I figured I may as well make as many as I can because I am bound to screw something up (again)

Then it was time to mix the resin and gently pour it into the "molds"

Now I have to leave it a minimum of 48 hours to see if it worked or not.

Okay, what else can I do now?

Well, I can give the white walls another coat of white....

Okay, that's done! What else can I do now???

Headlamps again! - starting to get repetitive here

I started by punching out some small discs of styrene, the thought being that I can paint these silver and they will sit behind the lens. We'll see how that idea turns out!

Then, using some stainless steel wire (left over from the Dalek!) I began rolling some coils.

I started with this wooden dowel, which proved to be too large in diameter. I ended up using a center punch, but this is the only photo I took, sorry. - but you get the idea.

Once the coil was made, I snipped the ends off, and then it was a case of holding the coil in a pair of pliers, so that I could file the ends flat.

It was a bit of trial and error to get the correct diameter. - File a bit, close the gap, dry fit...file a bit more etc.

It was a lot easier to use a smaller diameter pin shown here. But when I dry fitted both, it was obvious the stainless steel wire looked much better, and more in scale.

I could then glue the stainless steel rings to the styrene discs I had cut earlier.

Hopefully, my resin headlamp lenses will work, and I can drop them into these little assemblies. If not, I am sure I can figure something else out.

And when fitted to the vehicle, they look not too bad at all - even although I am not sure you will be able to see them through the headlamp covers - at least I shall know they are there.

and that's about it for today's episode... who knows what will be next???

[Nigel Heath]

This is all looking really good hendie. excellent work on the clear casting and I think you will be able to see the SS wire rings through the lenses so they are worth all the effort.

[hendie]

This is all looking really good hendie. excellent work on the clear casting and I think you will be able to see the SS wire rings through the lenses so they are worth all the effort.

Thanks Nigel, - we'll see exactly how good once it's cured.

I am really at a holding point just now. I don't want to assemble the wheels, exhaust etc to the chassis until the chassis is fitted to the bodywork. In order to do that, the body needs to be painted and the transparencies fitted. I've no idea when the paint shall arrive.

I guess I can take a look at how the chassis will fit into the bodywork with the front and rear rams already fitted - that could be interesting!

[roymattblack]

This is blinkin' amazing.

Serious pat on the back for what you're doing here.

Roy.

[hendie]

This is blinkin' amazing.

Serious pat on the back for what you're doing here.

Roy.

Thanks Roy.

I have to say the very same to you considering the work you are doing on the Aston and the trials and tribulations you had with the RR - both very entertaining threads.

It's been an interesting journey. When I think back to when I first got this from ebay, I was really quite naive and had no idea what I was getting into, or what work lay ahead. I am however, quite pleased that I am resurrecting it from the dead, and hopefully to do it some justice.

On the downside, it's probably put me off starting the Airfix kit for a while, so I'll need to find some other avenue with which to entertain myself next.

[Nigel Heath]

On the downside, it's probably put me off starting the Airfix kit for a while, so I'll need to find some other avenue with which to entertain myself next.

I know what you mean here, I would not want to build two very similar models in succession. I try to vary the subject as much as I can between builds and maybe do a new kit followed by and old one. On that logic it should probably be an old aircraft model for me next.

[hendie]

I was actually thinking about starting the Comet Dalek, but I may leave that for a while. I really want to get started on the train carriage as it has a bit of special meaning for me, but that's going to take upwards of a year to build I reckon. I also have a few helicopters, and Robbie the Robot and Robot B9 from Lost in Space, as well as the Polar Lights deluxe edition Batmobile... I must finish this though before making a decision.

Edited January 18, 2014 by hendie

[Nigel Heath]

Too soon for the Dalek I reckon. Any of the others sound good but a year to build the carriage is a bit of a turn off for me - can I suggest a helicopter?

[hendie]

Well, today was a bit strange. I started off with a bit of a disaster, but at the end of the day, I felt I had really taken a step or two forward.

There was a lot going on today so I may break this into more than one post in order to try and keep some order to things.

Carrying on from last night - I decided that rather than painting the inside of the headlamps silver, I could add a little disc punched from an aluminum can... cue the punch...

Of course, while I was trying to insert it into the little headlamp thingy, I went and dropped it!

I don't have a carpet monster, but my cement floor is just as hungry apparently! No way could I find the little sod.

So I had to make a replacement, and then common sense made a rare appearance... Put the aluminum disc behind the stainless steel wire before it's glued... duh'

So now I was making two replacements - I'll just count last night as practice.

Okay - styrene discs punched - check! - aluminum discs punched - check! now glue the little sods together - check!

I managed to rescue one stainless steel ring from the remaining item, and made another. These two are going in a safe box until I need them!

Now, as I mentioned last night (I think) - I have to figure out a way to assemble the chassis to the bodywork in one easy operation.

I took the decision way back to glue the front and rear valances to the body shell so I could get decent joins and eliminate seams. Aurora would have you assemble the front battering rams, rear battering rams and then the front a rear valances, leaving big seams everywhere.

I decided to do a trial fit, and for the first time (why, I don't know as I should have done this way earlier!) I put in the support for the bullet proof shield. As soon as I did that I realized that the floor would be sitting hard against it - leaving next to no room for me to try and lever the rear battering rams in.

Here they are fitted to the chassis - you can see that this isn't going to work at all.

Many weeks ago I thought I was making progress when I made this little assembly - now I had to take a step back.

I figured that I could still get this to work. - If the assembly was fitted to the body work first, I could then fit the chassis, and slide the handle through the slot in the floor, however, the handle I had made for this previously, was too thick to fit through the slot in the floor at the rear.

So, out with the file.... I thought I could thin the handle back down to one layer of styrene, making it thin enough for me to fit through the slot

It was all going so well.... until it broke!

Well, no big deal really. It was easy enough to cut another section of styrene, and start the shaping process over again.

Here you can see the rams fitted through the body shell...

Which would then allow me to slide the handle through the slot in the floor as the chassis is being fitted. Once the chassis is in place, I can add another couple of pieces of styrene to beef the handle up, and to make sure it can't fall back through the slot. That will be easy enough.

Here's the "in progress" version.

I know the ram is supposed to be a working feature, but looking at the gap between the rear valance, and the bullet proof shield support, I think I'll be lucky if there's more than 5mm to move the rams. fyi the ram support assembly I made is no thicker/wider than the original.

Maybe it's just as well that this will be a display model and not for playing with!

Next up were the machine guns! Hooray!!!

Well, maybe not so much... I had to try and figure out how to make the guns and fit them into this little area.

If you can remember back... these are the kit supplied machine guns.... maybe you can see it, but I certainly cannot! They're binned!

I had some 1.5mm brass tube that I thought would be suitable for the gun barrels, but they needed some kind of support.

I had some styrene tubing which the brass tubes fitted quite nicely.

However, the styrene required some shaping before it would fit into the odd shaped recess with any degree of accuracy.

The usual file, try, file some more scenario ensued, until I got what I thought was a reasonable fit.

The styrene was then bonded using 5 minute epoxy, while I held the gun barrels, trying to keep them centered in the indicator (USA: flashers!) opening. The brass tubes still have to be cut down to length and painted.

But I think you will agree that this looks a little better than the kit supplied items.

Well, things seem to be moving forward after what seems like an age where nothing much seemed to happen.

After my earlier encounter with Alclad, and discovering that Alclad and my greasy mitts don't go too well together, I decided to try and give the Alclad a coat of clear gloss to try and protect it.

However, not knowing how it was going to react, and knowing my luck, I opted to clear coat just one piece first, in case it all went belly up.

I used crystal clear acrylic gloss - the same I used on the Dalek hemispheres. It certainly seemed to dull the Alclad down substantially, but there was no disaster, which was good.

This is the rear bumper after being clear coated.

And just for some kind of reference, here's the bumper against the Airfix DB5 chrome parts.

Actually, it doesn't look too bad. I would have preferred it to be slightly shinier, but I think I can live with that.

I may try other some other methods as I have to respray some alclad anyway.

In my post last night I had given the tire white walls another quick coat. I thought I would press ahead with the wheels as this seemed something I could actually get finished.

I gave the wheels a quick coat of the clear gloss to protect them form my greasy mitts, and they seemed to darken down considerably. They'll do for now but I may alclad them again before the final fit.

I had a problem with the front wheels. The front wheels were supposed to be held on by some discs that were fixed to the inside of the front wheels. The original kit parts were beyond repair, having been covered in masses of glue, they were almost unrecognizable, and completely useless.

I had started to make some styrene discs to replace them, but I wasn't really happy with the method - then I had an "uh oh" moment... Rivets!

Several pages back, I was working on the rear wheels and the extending tire shredders, and I found that the mandrel form some tucker pop rivets was perfect for the extending rod. Surely I could adapt another couple of mandrels to fit the front wheels?

A quick tap with the hammer remover the rivet, leaving me with the mandrels, which were a perfect fit for the wheel, but still had the bulb head which was intended for expanding the rivet. Actually, there was some fettling of the mandrel as the stem had a couple of notches which held the rivet in place. A quick rub with the file eliminated those notches, allowing the mandrel to slide home in the wheel.

That worked - now I had to deal with the wheel knock-off.

The knock-off had a hole in the center, but the diameter was too small to allow the mandrel to fit through.

As it turned out, I did not have a drill that matched the mandrel stem diameter...crap! - I wanted a nice snug fit for this.

I ended up using the mandrel stem as a drill to bore it's way through the plastic - you can see the sharp end of the stem protruding through the knock-off here. It took me a little while to accomplish, but it did the job. Of course, now there's next to no alclad left on the knock-off, so they'll have to be redone again.

I did a quick trial fit, and to me, the knock-off's stood far too proud of the wheel itself. You can see how deep they are here in this photo.

So, it was out with the file yet again, and I cleaned the wheel side of the knock-off back to this... much better.

I still had to deal with the big bulbous head of the mandrel. - Once again, I forgot to take photo's, but I just filed a tad off the head, then polished it as best I could.

It was quite fortuitous really, as the knock-off's had holes in the centers, and Aurora hadn't provided anything in the kit to cover them with.

I had originally bought these etched parts, supposedly for 1/24-1/25 scale but they looked far too small. I was going to use the discs at the top to cover the holes in the knock-off's, but the mandrel stem seemed to work better.

I think this looks pretty good

All I had to do now was to fit them to the vehicle!

As I didn't have the right size drill to match the mandrel, I started by drilling the kit "axle" (and I used the term loosely!) undersize.

Then, by the simple expedient of putting a mandrel in my drill, in the same way as I had "drilled" the knock-off's - I opened out the hole in the axle to accept the mandrel stem.

I then cut the mandrel stem down to length, and it's a nice push fit into the axle, which is great as I don't need to use glue. The wheel turns on the axle quite smoothly. - and I can always remove them when I come to replace them with "real" wire wheels

and I couldn't resist a quick dry fit with the body shell in place.

okay, so I didn't break it up into several posts... anyway, it's dinner time so I must go eat!

I feel I have accomplished something today.

enjoy

Edited January 19, 2014 by hendie

[Nigel Heath]

Phew, that's some quite exhausting post there hendi.

As it turned out, I did not have a drill that matched the mandrel stem diameter...crap! - I wanted a nice snug fit for this.

It may be worth you getting some reamers like these:

I got then recently and have been finding them incredibly useful.

I think this looks pretty good

Yes it does, it looks fantastic.

I think this looks very good. My experience with Alclad is that putting varnishes over it doesn't do it any favours. Best to let it harden up for a week or so before handling and it should be fine without varnish.

[hendie]

I shall certainly look into get some reamers - good idea, thanks Nigel.

The alclad has been on the parts for over two weeks now, and it's still coming off. The parts were washed, primed gloss black, cured for about a week, then washed, dried and alclad applied. Several coats were misted on.

They then stayed in my work area (the basement is always warm as that's where the furnaces are) for well over a week before they were touched in any way. - and it's still coming off.

I don't see that I have any option but to spray some kind of protective coating over the damn stuff.

[Nigel Heath]

Bad luck with the Alclad hendie, it is pesky stuff. Maybe its because its on a glossy finish. I had a lot of problems with it on my Rotodyne but when I left it for a week on my Natter tail area on top of grey primer it was quite robust not being bothered by handling or masking tape:

But on the Rotodyne, oh boy:

Well I could go on and on but I think you get the idea. This was all on top of thier black (not glossy) primer and microfiller.

Good luck with today.

[Darren Rhodes]

Hi Hendie,

Been watching with interest for weeks, excellent work. With regards to Alclad Chrome, the best option is to leave painting until as late a possible and always handle with latex gloves, unless one varnishes and accepts some dulling. Here, Alclad recommend their relatively new Aqua Gloss clear acrylic varnish. Haven't tried it over Alclad Chrome yet, but it definitely sprays nice for gloss coats.

Darren

[hendie]

hi Darren, I have the Aqua Gloss earmarked for the next time I make a purchase.

I'll give it a try though to be honest, I don't see why their clear acrylic varnish would be better than anyone else.

I have only just started using it, so it could well have been something to do with how I applied it- I'll need to do some experimenting

[hendie]

Bad luck with the Alclad hendie, it is pesky stuff. Maybe its because its on a glossy finish. I had a lot of problems with it on my Rotodyne but when I left it for a week on my Natter tail area on top of grey primer it was quite robust not being bothered by handling or masking tape:

But on the Rotodyne, oh boy:

Good luck with today.

It was on a gloss black base - which is what I thought was recommended, and it was definitely left for over a week before being handled.

The finish looked great when applied, but it's not really much of a finish if it will not stay on the intended part.

If the product is that susceptible to handling, or application, then Alclad need to state explicitly how to apply it, and how to handle it.

How did the finish of the alclad on the Natter compare to the finish of the alclad on the Rotodyne?

[Nigel Heath]

Gloss black is what is recommended for all their high shine finishes like chrome and polished aluminium, you were doing the right thing. Any gloss black will work (enamel is probably best). Putting a protective coat on should help but I did put a coat of Klear on my Rotodyne as it was getting so desperate but it still continued to rub off - I was at the end of my tether with it and I have a pretty long tether. Tiny amounts of damage can be retouched with a brush if that helps.

I totally agree that Alclad should give better guidance on how to use their products. The long cure time appears to be key to me, I don't know why you are seeing such problems. Of course a black undercoat is easier to see through to than a grey base if the top coat does rub off.

The finish on the Natter was no different other than the matt grey primer and the week long cure. It was also a homemade shade but I can't see that being a factor. I used four different aluminium shades on the Rotodyne and they all rubbed off.

Edited January 19, 2014 by Nigel Heath

[hendie]

well then, ignoring the alclad issues for the moment... there is another update.

I started off my usual day by breaking something. This time it was the rear axle. The wheel base was slightly too large and when I tried to take it apart, it just snapped.

I wasn't too happy with it anyway, but it did cause me a hour or so trying to figure out how to fix it.

I ended up using some brass tubing - which I had been using in the last version. The big problem was the kit axle parts - I needed the hubs on the end, and the kit axle was just too large in diameter to sleeve into the brass tubing. The hubs slip over the end of the kit axle and glue to the inside of the rear wheels - here are the parts

and in order to reduce the diameter of the kit axles sufficiently to fit inside the brass tubing, it was back to the old trick of using the drill and a scrap of sandpaper

the hubs slip over like so...

and once the axles were reduced in diameter sufficiently, it all goes together like so...

Then it was a case of reducing the brass tube length enough so that the wheel base was good. True to form, the front and rear wheels have sightly different spacing.

I kept dry fitting the rear wheels until they looked okay with the surrounding bodywork. Difficult to tell from this photo because of the perspective... just trust me... it looks okay!

For those of you who have been following this thread, you will no doubt know that I like double sided tape and pop rivets! It's amazing what those little bits of hardware can accomplish when you put your mind to it.

Yes, you should remember that I had opted to use the mandrels from some pop rivets for the tire shredders.

I had opened out the wheel weeks ago, so it was a simple case of inserting the river mandrel and then gluing on the knock-off.

ACtually, I polished up the mandrel stem with some wire wool first.

And then I remembered that I had shaved the rear of the knock-off's on the front wheels and it looked much better.

Yes, I had forgotten to remove that when I fitted the rear knock-off's! It didn't look very nice at all when the tire shredders were retracted... here we go again!

I tried pulling the knock-off's off the mandrel but they were stuck fast.
So, I began by cutting around the protrusion with my razor saw, which worked nicely. Of course, when I got to the last part, the knock-off's fell off the mandrel. Sod's law isn't it?

No problem, that gave me the chance to file the back end and even it up a tad.

The last problem to overcome on the rear wheels was the opening on the tire shredders. I thought the easiest option was to copy the method I used on the front wheels (see previous post)

Of course, this time it was a touch more difficult. With the front wheels I just filed the stem head of the mandrel down, and inserted the mandrel from the outside of the wheel. Looked great.

This time, I have the mandrels coming from the opposite direction, as I needed the bulb head on the stem on the inside of the wheel to stop the tire shredders from pulling out of the wheel completely.

If you look at the photo up above, you will see what I mean about the hole in the knock-off. I had to close it up somehow.

Well, let's start the process by getting a couple of the mandrel bulbs, which were duly filed down to reduce the thickness.

I then stuck the mandrel in a drill and polished the flat end as best I could.

Once that was complete, I snipped the ends of, giving me these parts you see here....

And you will notice that there is a bit of a shard left on the rear side which I need to get rid of, so that these will sit flat on the knock-off's.

I began by reverting to my old favorite, the double sided tape, but even that was not strong enough to hold the rivet in place while I filed away. In order to hold the rivet securely, I cobbled up this contraption.... a piece of styrene with a hole drilled in it, the same diameter as the rivet bulb. The Styrene was then placed on the double sided tape, and the rivet bulb was dropped in the hole... like this...

Believe it or not, but that held the river securely enough for me to file the roughness off the rear.

My cunning planning had selected a sheet of styrene that was just the right thickness to give me what I wanted! - note the furry file!

Once that operation was complete on both rivets, it was a simple case of dropping a blob of superglue gel on to the top of the tire shredder, and hey presto, we have the completed item. (Alclad decay not withstanding!)

and then stick a white wall on a tire, insert the rim, and we have this... (sorry for the focus issues)

and dry fitted to the vehicle

I am getting dangerously close to the point where I will actually have to begin assembling something!

[hendie]

and in case you are wondering - No, I haven't forgotten about the clear resin from a few days ago!

I may have to have a rethink - I shall need to see how this transpires....

The resin hardened up nicely, and was crystal clear - the stuff I had left in the mixing bowl that is!.

When the resin was in a thin layer, it had cured - it wasn't sticky or anything, it just didn't seem to go hard, and remained like really tough, but soft plastic.

Anyway, here are the head lamp covers... these came from a silicone mold. They are certainly clear, but there is one bubble on the rear of one part - I don't know if I'll be able to sand that out or not.

and here are the parts that came out of the plasticine. These were my attempt at headlamp lenses. As you can see, the plasticine sticks very nicely to the resin.

However, the plasticine comes off quite easily using blu-tac as a removal tool.

I picked a punch that was closest to the size I needed, but oversize, and punched out my "headlamp". The headlamp itself was slightly larger than the stainless steel rings I had made a few days ago, however, being slightly pliable, I was able to push the headlamp into the ring and with a knife, I shoved the edges just under the inside of the ring.

Okay, it's not great, but it's much better than what I started with.

at least it does actually look sort of like a headlamp... if you squint a bit and face the other way!

and who knows, maybe I will be able to polish it up in a week or so.

Edited January 21, 2014 by hendie

[Nigel Heath]

Good work on the axle and the wheels do look smart with the white walls in place. When reapplying Alclad to the rear tyre shredders I would suggest you leave them on the pop rivet mandrel - spraying the whole lot for an overall even finish and minimising subsequent handling.

[hendie]

that's what I intended to do. The rims are a nice push fit to the tires, so I think I am going to leave all the wheels removable as well, so that sometime in the future, I may replace the wheels with real wire wheels.

[roymattblack]

Sorry if this is a bit 'after the event', but I've used sticky-back plastic 'dots' as headlamps on many of my kits.

They come from card-making supply shops and you can get them in all kinds of colours, or a light silver-grey, which is what I use.

The plastic 'dome' is clear, with a silver b/g.

A sheet has loads on it, ranging from tiny - about 3.5mm across - ideal for 1/43 cars, to the biggest ones - 10mm.

A pack cost me £1.50

Roy.

[hendie]

Roy, that's a great idea.

I had actually been looking at something very similar for the tail lamps - but it never occurred to me to look for something similar for the headlamps!

I shall have a check the next time I am in Walmart, or have to take my daughter to the craft shop.