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1/76 Cuthbertson Land Rover (British Telecom)


milktrip

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Hello,

As mentioned in the chat thread I'll be trying to build a 1/76 Cuthberson Land Rover. Makes a change from my usual helicopters :)

I've wanted to build this for some time (I forgot that I had started it but all I've done is removed the parts from the sprues and glued two bits together) ; at the time I was looking into building a landrover centaur and during a google image search I came across these photos and thought "YES! This must be built!"

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I will be using the Airfix Land Rover Hard top (ex JB models) kit and will attempt to resin cast the drive wheels and probably the road wheels from the Ace Scorpion kit. I'll be using the old airfix series 1 landrover from the Bristol Bloodhound set to help get the size right as I will have the shorten the body of the Hard top landrover.

Thanks to RobG for the idea for the tracks in the chat thread; I was going to to use the PE tracks that come with the Ace Scorpion kit but they look completely different, so will try using thin strips of plastic card and short lengths of brass.

A fair bit of surgery involved with this one, but looking forward to it.

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Happy Newyear folks and all the best for 2016

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What a fascinating choice! Bearing in mind the extra work IIRC the JB kit has the larger LWB wheel arches whereas this jobbie needs the smaller ones. The rear end of the front opening to the door hinge line is the give away. As the JB kit is quite thick it's easy to glue some strip inside the opening to correct it.

I hope the build goes well.

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Thanks for the support guys and cheers for the advice sleeperservice.

I don't know much about land rovers; all I know is that this is a series III SWB. I believe that means this is a 90 inch wheelbase? I didn't know about the different wheel arch sizes either. Not sure what series the airfix kit is suppose to represent but the front needs some mods for the light arrangements. The plastic is very thick, like you say, so I'll be thinning this down a fair bit.

Any advise, Land Rover knowledge, pics, details would be greatly appreciated. I found a load of pics of a cuthbertson restoration which will help with the frame (it's a LWB but I can get the general idea). I intend to use this for the vignette GB later in the year. There will be a tall grass / mud hiding the frame anyway, so not too fussed on the accuracy in this area. I do plan to have the driver's door open, so detailing the interior - might even include a bottle of ginger (Irn Bru) too :D

Thanks again

Aaron

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The G.P.O. - Post Office Telecommunications and BT certainly had some strange looking vehicles.

I have a book concerning GPO vehicles, I will have a look to see if there is any info you might find useful.

Roxley models used to specialize in GPO/BT vehicles and carried a range of decals if you were not aware.

Good luck with the build.

Ian

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That is a completely fantastic bit of engineering which would probably only be borne out of a British shed?? Heath Robinson would've been proud!

Good luck, great subject!

. . . Dave

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Looking forward to seeing this one. From what little I know I am fairly sure the Airfix kit is a series 3

and so is the Telecom one in your pic the SWB was 88 inches back then and the LWB was 109 inches

regards Bikkit

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As a Landie nut for years with a huge collection of mags to support that, I'm pretty sure there was no difference in wheel arches between SWB & LWB. LR as a company was very good at making one size fit all & didn't offer options unless it was utterly necessary & even then often not. I've seen SWB with 7.50x16 or 235/85R16 tyres (LWB sizes) in standard wheel arches & they fit just fine, the different tyre sizes do make them look a different size though, a lot less air around them. That picture of the Telecom machine shows standard wheel arches other than an angled cutaway on the rear of the front arches & front of the rear arches. I'll be looking forward to following this.

Steve.

Edited by stevehnz
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Hey, I just remembered I used to work for Land Rover (and Jaguar), this particular project preceded my employee by a couple of decades but I might be able to pull a few strings on my old contacts to retrieve some useful information.

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Wow, thanks for all the support and help so far folks.

Cheers Stevehnz, very helpful.

And Nigel, thanks again. I was going to ask you about this one as I knew you use to work at Landrover / Jaguar.

Right; update. I was round and my parents house yesterday so took this, a few tools, some liquid cement and set to work. This continued this evening when I came back home. The wheel base has been cut (shortened) and glued back together. The panels, base have also seen some hacking/ cutting.

Photos are poor as I was at the kitchen table rather than my modelling room, sorry about that.

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I also made a jig for making the grill. I tried using some brass tube but it looked far too thick. After further checks of some references I noted that the framing for the grill is not tubular so will try again with some thin strip of plastic card.

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I've also been working on the interior; footwells made and now working on the dashboard. Still plenty to do but thought it best to leave this to dry.

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I also couldn't resist dry fitting all the bits; just to see that it still looked like a land rover :)

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Thanks for looking

Cheers

Aaron

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Yup, that still looks like a Landy Aaron, needs plenty clutter in the dash for full authenticity but you're off to a great start.

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