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Pocher Mercedes 540K True Roadster Build


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Fantastic stuff.

Any info on where to get all the electrical gear. Very small and not easily obtainable in general. Can you give a breakdown on components that you have used please?.

Beautiful model.

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Mr. C, I have one of the inner door handles on one door but not the other one yet and neither have the outer handles on yet. These are going to be last minute adds due to the delicate nature. There are no window handles on this car since there are no side windows, hence the name true roadster.

Neil, I pretty much made my own set up using components designed for electronics projects. The mini breadboard is designed to be able to power all the rails on both sides so all you have to do is plug in a positive and negative wire and power up whatever is on the other end. These are good for working out projects by just plugging in, sort of like a plug and play circuit board. The mini that I used is 8 cm long by 5 cm wide or roughly 3 1/4" by 2 1/8" and it has 400 holes in it with two sides that can be powered by the same voltage or a different voltage depending on the power cape you plug in. The one on my car and the one in the pictures below has a switchable 3V or 5V power choice. All the SMD LED's I'm using are 3V so I'm just pushing the switch to 3V and the 12V AC power supply will convert the 12V down to 3V and it's all safe. The mini breadboards are all over eBay for about $1.50 and the power capes can be anywhere from $1.50 each to $3-$4 but, I only paid $1.50 for mine. There are a few that look different, for instance, the one in my car is different from the one in the picture below but, they are essentially the same. The one in the car has two slide switches to switch between 3V and 5V where the other has a little bridge pin that you pull and plug into te other set of pins if you want to change voltage. This is usually a one shot deal because if you're powering up 3V lights you would have no need to change. On my Testarossa project I will have a need to power one rail with 3V and the other with 5V just because of what I'm going to use on the car. A 12V power supply is about $3.95 so, what you're looking at was only about $6.95 on eBay, just do a search for mini breadboards in electronics. The SMD LED's were about $2.25 each from a train supplier and the mini connectors are $1.00 each from the same supplier. You can add an IR sensor and remote control for another $10 if you want so, all readily available and pretty cheap.

Because they are so cheap, I keep a few extra on hand because I also have more than one model lighting project going.

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This is the one in the Mercedes and you can see the power cape is slightly different from the next one. Here you see the slide switches to change voltage.

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This is the one that has the bridge pins

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Here are the three basic components

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I hope that helps. All of this stuff on eBay is coming from China and there are tons of micro controllers and other cool little things that can be used like servos and, the list goes on.

Edited by larchiefeng
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Tons of very useful info. Thanks a Million.

My next project is the 806 which again has no lights etc. But most probably i will consider this for the turboblower

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I've had to work on my water heater all day and probably some tomorrow so, here are just some random pictures with my good camera that I took today. I did get the marker lights sanded and painted and got the LED's fitted but, there isn't really much to show so, we'll wait until they're mounted on the fenders and lit up. These are higher quality pictures that I took at 12 MP but, unfortunately with Photo bucket you have to take them down from that to 800 x 600. So, hopefully the higher quality sharper pictures will come through better than my iPhone.

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Hopefully, I'll be able to do some more work on the Mercedes tomorrow after, I get the hot water back on in the house.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, it's been a while since my last post and for some reason I just needed a break. I finally got back to it over the last few days and here are some of the results of what I've been working on.

First, I finished up the gauge cluster housing in the back of the dash so it's all sealed up and I routed the wiring from the dash along the lower side of the body in order to plug it in under the seat.

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Polished the body prior to adding the windshield and frame as well as the grab bars on the rumble seat.

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Grab bars on the rumble seat

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Cutting templates for the windshield glass and fitting

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Had to cut new templates because the first ones were made before the frame was chromed and now it wasn't quite right

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Time to cut the actual pieces out of Lexan.

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Need to finish trimming and fitting

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Done

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Got a shift boot made but, I need to make another one a little longer to stay in place when I throw the shift lever to turn the lights on. Right now, when I push the lever forward it pulls out. I should have left the wiring the way I had it in the first place so, when I pulled the lever down toward the seat they came on. Oh well.

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The breadboard is permanently mounted now and the on/off switch in the trans is spliced into the power supply and all the connectors are routed to where they're going. Body is off the frame here.

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Body on the frame and the right and left headlight/marker light connectors are on the front of the board and you can see them going under the floor on each side. The dash light connector is coming from under body and is plugged in on the front side of the board. The two connectors on either side head toward the rear are for the tail lights. i have gotten rid of all the wheat bulbs and will be using all LED's mainly just to keep everything the same. That was one of those things that I changed 2-3 times as this lighting project evolved.

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I have just a couple more small things to wrap up at this stage but, I expect to be mounting the body permanently tomorrow or the next day and then adding the fenders and wiring up the rest of the lights. When I get the fenders on, I'll be doing the modification to my jig so I can flip the the assembled car and work on it from below without any damage to the car. The list is getting shorter.

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All looking absolutely fantastic. Superb build and skills. Modelling master.

Can I ask what connectors you use on the ends of your lighting leads going onto the breadboard. Very small.

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Neil, Poul and Sarge, thanks for the comments. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is out there. I appreciate the kind words! Today's efforts aren't finished yet but, I'm in a holding pattern at the moment. I'm waiting for paint to dry and some Goop adhesive to set up. So, like I mentioned yesterday, I'm converting over to all LED's for this build. I'm using the SMD chip type LEDs. For those of you that don't know the jargon. SMD is surface mount display. I am using the warm white color rendition so, hopefully the lights will look period correct. The headlights are the "chip" size and the markers are "nano" size and the tail lights will be the "pico" size. These are all very tiny and the ones you will see the most of today are the chip size in the headlights. Because they are so small I needed to figure out a way to mount them in the reflector and the also glue the reflector in the HL bucket. But, first, I took apart the tail lights and removed the bulbs and wiring . The first picture shows just how much smaller the LED is than the wheat bulb and the wiring. When I drilled out the tail light stalk I had to drill around a bend in order to string the two wires inside it. Here you can see how much bigger the hole was for the two wires and now with the LED wire inside it.

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Here they are all torn apart and you can see one of the red bulb ends lying there by the three panel reflectors. Also, when I took all this apart, I lost one of the clear pieces and another one had a hole in it from the fiber optic cable. I was fortunately, able to get a set of three from Peter at Pocher Parts and when they get here I can assemble them again.

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When I was taking the wire out, I blew through the hole that I made when originally drilling them out and, this need to be repaired again.

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This had to be repaired with the wire inside otherwise i might not have a hole to run the wire through.

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All re-painted and waiting for the clear lenses from Peter.

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So, now to the headlights. What we have here are the reflector, HL bucket, two pieces of styrene rod to go inside the reflector, two pieces of aluminum tubing to go inside the the styrene rod, the chip LED and two pieces of the kit throttle cable. The hollow flexible throttle cable is also used to run the e-brake cables through from the rear brakes to the side of the frame. I had in mind back then that, I could use this cable for hopefully running the headlight wire through from the headlight to the fender. I had abandoned that idea when I discovered that the two wires on the wheat bulbs were just not going to fit inside this cable. But, I put it aside for future use and used a guitar string for the throttle cable.

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So, here, the styrene rod is glued inside the reflector with the aluminum tube inside of it. What I'm trying to do here is close down the hole in the reflector so the LED won't fall through and give it a place to glue it down on the reflector with some Goop. You're not supposed to use super glue to glue down the LED's but the Goop is OK.

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Here, the LED's are glued to the reflector and the wiring is also glued down on the back with Goop. You can see here the difference is size from the opening where the wheat bulb went and the chip LED glued to one side of the rod.

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Both reflectors are now glued inside the buckets with lots of Goop to hold the reflectors in place. These are the MMC replacement headlights and reflectors and they have no way to hold them in position short of slopping a ton of Goop inside and positioning them in place until it dries; very disappointed with this. These LEDs are going to be very bright and I doubt them being not exactly centered is going to make a difference when on.

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With the lens covers on and waiting for everything set up and dry before doing anything else with them.

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Here is the cable installed over the headlight wiring creating a sheathing like you would find on the real car.

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By the end of the day, I should have all the lights assembled and ready to go to be installed on the fenders when I get the body and fenders bolted on. More tomorrow.

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Some great work here Wayne.

I keep on about my own 'Boat tail' that I really want to build 'one day' but your Merc does inspire me.

I'm equally as guilty as all the others who view, and never comment.

I'm always looking in and pinching collecting ideas.

I know what you mean about anyone looking in though.

It is frustrating to keep updating your thread, and getting virtually zero response.

I appreciate it isn't about 'oohh-aahh' comments, but a few questions or better still, suggestions, are very much appreciated.

I appreciate your efforts in both the build, and the updates.

Roy.

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I feel very guilty also. I scan and watch virtually every night without a comment good or bad......

I will make a real effort to add my say as I love these models and the time it takes to upload all the nitty gritty for us to enjoy.

Loading photos is my nightmare, can't seem to get a grip of it.

I have built 5 pochers to date and now building the alfa dinner jacket.......just wish I could share my build.

Maybe one day I will get the hang of loading pics.

Keep sharing people, and I, for one will try not to be the silent watcher.

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I appreciate all of you guys popping in and commenting, as some of you know, it does take a bit of time to get things ready to post. Neil, I had a bit of hassle in the beginning learning how to get my pictures from my computer to Photobucket and then to the thread. Once you get the process down its really pretty easy.

First thing is to get your pictures onto your computer.

Second thing is to go to Photobucket and set up an account like any other online account

Third is to get into your account and click on the upload box. That should open up a selection box of where to find your pictures on your computer, like my pictures

Fourth would be to select two or three to start with. This should start the download to photobucket

Fifth, once the pictures show up in your "library" click on one of the pictures and that will open another page which, an editing page

Sixth, you select the resize icon on the picture and click on that, it thinks for a second and then it opens a new window and you click on the resize icon again.

Seven, it should open a new window that shows the actual size in pixels, I think. It will be something like 1320 X 1620 for example. Pick the one with the largest number and click on the number to highlight the whole number and type in 800 it will then auto fill the other number

Eight, you click on the save button and a small box will be there asking if you want to replace the original picture with the new one. Click the box for yes and it will do its thing and then it will go back to the picture

Nine, over to the right of picture will be some boxes, right click on the second one down and copy it

Ten, Now go back to your post and in the tool bar above the text window there's a small square green box which is for adding pictures

Eleven, a horizontal box will then appear. Click the cursor in the box and hit Ctrl key and the v key at the same time. Ctrl-V that will then paste the photo in your text area of the post.

I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is but, unless I write each step it won't work. Once you do it a few times it's really easy.

Having said that, sometimes photo bucket has website problems so just try again later. The other thing I've found, is it's better to only upload no more than 4-5 pictures at a time to photo bucket because it tends to take too long and it chokes on the upload.

If I missed something here, please feel free to pop in and correct me. I'm writing all this from memory.

I only got a few small things done today toward getting all the lights ready to mount as soon as I get the fenders on the car.

Unfortunately, I had a bit of a personal issue today and that pretty much killed the rest of the day. Hopefully, tomorrow I will get the major pieces assembled.

Sorry for the long drawn out explanation for uploading pictures but, I think that there's more than one person out there who would otherwise be posting if they could add pictures with their builds

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Thanks for the really detailed walkthrough Wayne.

I will play around with this at the weekend and see if I can master it. Hopefully your explanation will do it. If not, then I think I must be a Muppet !!!!

Take care, you're a kind man......

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...

First thing is to get your pictures onto your computer.

Second thing is to go to Photobucket and set up an account like any other online account

Third is to get into your account and click on the upload box. That should open up a selection box of where to find your pictures on your computer, like my pictures

Fourth would be to select two or three to start with. This should start the download to photobucket

Fifth, once the pictures show up in your "library" click on one of the pictures and that will open another page which, an editing page

Sixth, you select the resize icon on the picture and click on that, it thinks for a second and then it opens a new window and you click on the resize icon again.

Seven, it should open a new window that shows the actual size in pixels, I think. It will be something like 1320 X 1620 for example. Pick the one with the largest number and click on the number to highlight the whole number and type in 800 it will then auto fill the other number

Eight, you click on the save button and a small box will be there asking if you want to replace the original picture with the new one. Click the box for yes and it will do its thing and then it will go back to the picture

Nine, over to the right of picture will be some boxes, right click on the second one down and copy it

Ten, Now go back to your post and in the tool bar above the text window there's a small square green box which is for adding pictures

Eleven, a horizontal box will then appear. Click the cursor in the box and hit Ctrl key and the v key at the same time. Ctrl-V that will then paste the photo in your text area of the post.

I'm probably making it sound more complicated than it really is but, unless I write each step it won't work. Once you do it a few times it's really easy.

Having said that, sometimes photo bucket has website problems so just try again later. The other thing I've found, is it's better to only upload no more than 4-5 pictures at a time to photo bucket because it tends to take too long and it chokes on the upload.

...

Wayne, this sounds very complicated to me (no insult intended).

Here's what I did (with almost all 200 pictures in my thread):

- Took photo with iPhone

- Opened in SimpleResize App (free) and resized it to my needs, one after the other (this also removes location data), remember the first photo so you know where to start uploading

- I kept a tab open in iOS Safari all the time with the photobucket upload page and uploaded the resized pictures directly from my phone while on WLAN, goes very fast with the resized images, one after the other

- Opened Photobucket in my desktop browser and moved the uploaded pictures from Mobile Uploads album to my project folder by drag & drop (not necessary, just to keep oversight in your library), checkmark one, then 'Select all', then drag and drop

- Open the first picture in Photobucket. On the right side there is a section SHARE THIS PHOTO, click in the IMG code window, the IMG code will be auto-copied into your clipboard

- head over to your britmodeller post, and paste the code where you want the picture

- Switch to next picture in Photobucket and repeat code copy

- Et voilà, that's all

Edited by Danny_G
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Both of you, thanks for explaining the procedure. I will start a thread on the build of my alfa Coupe Elegant soon.

Did not check-out the procedures yet, so this helps.

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No problem, I'm glad if we were of any help. It does no good to have a forum if you can't participate. And, like I said there are more than one way to get the pictures posted, the way I outlined is what I actually got off the forum a while back. My way does sound like it takes a while but, it's really pretty quick and I always download all my pictures to my computer and rarely ever use all the shots that I take.

I just noticed an error on my directions- six should be click on the edit icon and then the resize in the next window

And nine- the second box down is the Direct box but it's still the second one down.

I spent most of the day cleaning up some wiring and getting all the LEDs mounted in the light housings. I also received the tail light lenses today from Peter at Pocher Parts, thanks Peter, so, I'm ready to finish the tail lights. i got the red and amber lenses painted and tomorrow I will do the final assembly of the tail lights. I drilled a hole about 5mm deep in the center of the red lens the diameter of the pico size LED so I can mount the LED inside of the red lens and hopefully keep it from lighting up he amber one. I also decided that I needed a disconnect connector under the car to remove the 12V power supply and log wire from the car to make it easier to work on when I start putting fenders on and flipping it over the finish soldering the rest of the lighting.

So, not a lot of pictures but, the next two, I'm really happy with.I know I talked about this yesterday but that, is the way I was able to get the headlight wiring inside the hollow cable. This was something that I had thought about for a long time and until I made the decision to switch to the SMD LEDs would not have been possible.

A better view of how they fit in the bucket but, still needed a finish at the bucket

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So, after I glued the cable end in the bucket I added the nut to finish off the look.

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Here are most of the rest of the lights pretty much ready to be installed but, before I mount anything I will double check all the lights to make sure everything works.

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As I mentioned back a few weeks ago, I needed to make some modifications to my jig so that I can turn my car upside down in the jig with the fenders and windshield on the car. I started playing around with the idea of slipping the foam over the top of the side plates but, as I was doing that I came up with a better way. So tomorrow, it's out to the workshop with the jig, foam and fenders to cut the profiles after I get the mounting sorted out. The thing about my jig is that, it is totally adjustable which, allows me to make it longer or shorter or wider or narrower. So, as long as I have the foam secured to the side supports and the fender profiles cut correctly, I can adjust it to fit.

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As I looked at the foam sitting on top of the side piece I realized that it doesn't need to be quite that high and it needs to be more firmly mounted. That, is tomorrow's task and this is one of the pictures that made me realize that.

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Last thing to add to the body was to better secure the grab bars. So, I removed them and added some light glue on the spears to keep them from pivoting on the single stud mounting screw.

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So, nothing too exciting but, all the little detail work that needs to get out of the way before the big changes of the body and fenders getting mounted and lights. I'm just trying to have everything ready so, it goes from this to assembled in one update.

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