Fujimi Fiat 500 (C)

[harveyb258]

Crackin' job  so far Jeroen. Everything looks so neat and clean.....hat's off mate....it's not easy .

 

Cheers, H

[Cooper645]

Great work.  Still looking forward to seeing that seat piping done 😉

[JeroenS]

On 09/02/2019 at 22:50, Cooper645 said:

Great work.  Still looking forward to seeing that seat piping done 😉

Piping, yes! Well, Sunday morning 7 o'clock seemed like a very good time to get that done! I was a bit apprehensive about it so I admit I did put it off a little while but it's now done and what's more, I'm also quite pleased with it. I know for a fact that this is the most delicate thing I've ever done (and I'm talking in my life here 😉) which just shows that you can do more than you think. And the seats, I like them even more with the white piping, it really pops. 

 

 

Pheew!

[Cooper645]

@JeroenS congratulations.  Those seats look absolutely amazing. The piping really does complete them.  👌🏼

 

This is is really coming along nicely. 

[harveyb258]

Great job matey!! Really well done!

[JeroenS]

Thanks guys, your comments and encouragements are greatly appreciated. I managed to make the dimple in the back seat headrests a little more shallow which has improved the look. Everything is now glued in place so that's a wrap for the interior. Minus the dash, which needs to be sprayed body colour. I have received the paint from Zero Paints last week but it's no spraying weather just yet. The next step is the "bodywork"... I have an idea how to go about making the (closed) convertible roof but will have to see if that's going to work out. Anyway here's the finished interior. 

 

 

Thanks for watching.

 

[spoly]

are the smiling faces on the rear seats deliberate or just a happy coincidence?

[JeroenS]

6 hours ago, spoly said:

are the smiling faces on the rear seats deliberate or just a happy coincidence?

Totally unintentional 🙂 ... Once I chopped the headrests and sanded away the filler they were there

[JeroenS]

In the past couple of days, I have been addressing the roof issue. I thought about different solutions, I think I'm on the right track now. First, I cut off a piece from the back of the roof to be able to make it follow the sides of the body a bit more. There is a slight difference in the look of the roof, in the way it follows the bodywork at the rear, between the regular 500 and the 500C. To my eye at least.

 

This is the roof in question:

 

 

 

I started with 0.5 mm plastic sheet, because it's easy to work with and very flexible. First I cut out the shape of the rear window. I then shaped the lower part and glued it in place. 

 

Still a bit rough: 

 

 

I let it dry for a bit, fixed the shape of the top of the lower part and cut and fitted the upper part. 

 

 

Some supports on the inside: 

 

 

And the current state of affairs after a good sanding: 

 

 

I rather like the shape. Next, to mimic the shape of the soft top, the plan is to roll a very thin layer of milliput and lay that on top of the roof. I can then also fold this layer around the inner edges of the window, to create some depth. Also, I need to make the chrome trim at the bottom of the soft top, this part is only on the 500C so it's not in the kit. So far so good I think. 

 

Thanks for watching!

 

[JeroenS]

A bit more work on the convertible roof. The photo below clearly shows the roof supports. The photo is part of a larger one, that my brother in law sent me for something else, however by coincidence my sister's car is also on it. 

 

 

I want this effect for the scale roof as well, so I glued the smallest rod I could find in the correct places and sanded the pieces almost flat. 

 

 

I glued a piece below the window to create the chrome trim. This piece needs some more sanding, I thought I had it pretty flat but looking at the pic it's still too obvious. In reality the trim protrudes just a little bit, flush with the roof itself. I'll have to make a really thin piece of putty, to drape over the roof, and then carefully trim the sides... Fingers crossed for that one!

 

 

[JeroenS]

First thing this morning, I thought I'd tackle the milliput roof. I was a bit apprehensive about doing it but now I'm happy that it's done. It's now drying out so later today I'll be able to see what I need to do about it, other then some sanding and maybe filling a spot or two. Also, I actually have no idea whether the roof will be fixed in place or that it comes loose. I used talc powder during the rolling process so maybe that's going to lessen the adhesiveness. I tried adding some texture to it by pressing an aluminium foil pudding cover into it. That worked but I'm not sure if it will show after a bit of sanding and painting. Ah well, I put in the effort 🙂 

 

 

 

[JeroenS]

Yup... the rear window was incorrectly positioned, it sat too low... And damn it, the more I looked at it the more it annoyed me. I had to fix it. I filled in the lower part with a strip of styrene and cut out some material from the upper part.

 

 

I made a thin piece of milliput and ... very ... carefully set about the repairs. This is the result, it's drying out now. The window itself needs a little more shaping but that should be easy enough. I'm already feeling better about it 🙂 

 

 

While I had the milliput out I corrected some scratches etc. The roof itself should be as good as done after a once over with the sanding paper. 

[JeroenS]

I'm getting the body ready for paint. As soon as the weather clears (i.e. warmer and especially less wet) I'd like to get into the shed and start painting. Still a bit more details to take care of. The roof is done, as is the rear window. But there's still the plastic thingy on top of the roof that holds the brake light. At first I thought I might be able to use the kit part but it's a different shape, and it's also made of quite thick and tough plastic. No way to get the desired shape. So white plastic it was. This is what I have now: 

 

 

The shape is as good as I'm going to get it, I just need to fix a couple of rough spots with a bit of putty and some sandpaper. I was so engrossed in this thing that I didn't take a "before" picture. It has 4 parts: a base plate, a square bar and 2 round rods glued on either side of the bar, on the base plate. While the glue dried I bended it and that worked. Then I apllied a round file to the rods to get the curve from the edge of the base plate to the top of the square bar. I used knife and sand paper to taper it all off to the sides. Then I filled the basic curved shapes on either side of the bar with milliput to fill them out. I just finished sanding. Besides the rough spots there's also the brake light... I'm currently trying to work up the courage to make the indentation for it, while at the same time not ruining what I have now...

[JeroenS]

Hi everyone, question: what is the proper glue to attach my styrene brake-light thingy to the milliput roof? My guess is that the milliput and the styrene will not bond with the "regular" plastic cement, so probably CA would be the way to go? 

[Frogeye]

I find the trouble with CA is that you only get one shot at positioning the part. So I end up breaking the joint and starting again. I often use a thin layer of rapid two pack epoxy which gives me a couple of minutes to get the alignment right.

[JeroenS]

5 hours ago, Frogeye said:

I find the trouble with CA is that you only get one shot at positioning the part. So I end up breaking the joint and starting again. I often use a thin layer of rapid two pack epoxy which gives me a couple of minutes to get the alignment right.

The ability to wiggle about is certainly something to keep in mind in this case, thanks. 

[cmatthewbacon]

If you can lay your hands on some Evo Stik Serious Glue, that would be ideal. Clear, bonds anything to anything, grabs quickly but gives you wiggle time, and very strong when cured for 24 hours...

 

https://diy.evo-stik.co.uk/product/serious-glue

 

best,

M.

[JeroenS]

Don't we love to keep ourselves busy... I had one more thing to add to the body, which is not in the kit, and that's the "bullbar" around the number plate. 

 

 

I guess Italian bulls are also small... 

 

Anyway, last weekend I got busy with the styrene: cutting, shaping, glueing, filling, sanding... I was pretty happy with it and then last night I took a really good look at it. 

 

 

On the left: the one where I discovered it wasn't ... entirely... symmetrical, the left side is way off.

In the middle: the one where I got the left side looking pretty much true to life and discovered I now had a problem on the right side.

On the right: the one where I fixed the right side. 

 

So now: fill, sand, and call it done. Hopefully.

 

[JeroenS]

'Evening all... Last weekend, conditions for painting were good so I primed the body and dashboard. It was my first time using the Zero paints primer. I found the stuff quite thick despite it being "pre-thinned for airbrushing". They advise thinning with cellulose thinner if you wish to thin more, which I didn't have at the time so I went ahead and started painting with the primer as is. When I was done and it was dry I found it rather coarse, and I wasn't happy with it so I decided to wet-sand the body down which worked well. I have purchased cellulose thinner so I will thin the primer a bit more and finish it. The dash was not so easy to sand so earlier tonight I gave it a bath of IPA, which did exactly nothing. Then "it" happened. Without really thinking about it I dumped the dash in some cellulose thinner (I guess thinking along the lines of "it will thin paint, so it will probably strip it as well"). And, indeed it does. However, as it turns out it's actually a really stupid thing to do because the thinner eats the plastic as well. So now I am minus one dash, it's completely ruined. You'll have to take my word for it as I'm not in the mood to take a picture 🙂 I guess I'll be giving Mr. Fujimi a call in the morning to ask about spare parts.  

[JeroenS]

Well, after yesterday's mishap I felt I had to get back on the horse ASAP. I finished the primer on the body, this time thinning it down some. That worked well, I sprayed at the lowest indicated pressure of 20 psi and was able to put on a nice layer. And even managed to catch only 1 or 2 small dust particles. So, my mood is considerably better than yesterday I must say 🙂 

 

 

 

[Spiny]

At least with the primer on you can be confident in the success off all that convertible conversion work - from the photo at least it gives the impression of always looking like that so time well spent.

 

One question if I may though - is that grey primer or a trick of the camera? If you're going to have a white car, I'd suggest white primer will give the paint more life once complete.

[Jo NZ]

I'd go with grey primer first - white always seems to pull away from edges and is difficult to get a consistent coat with. A light coating of grey (which has denser colour) allows the white to adhere better. Overall it means a thinner coat to achieve a pure white result.

[JeroenS]

Thanks guys, it's indeed a light grey primer. I remembered having struggled a great deal with white primer on the VW bus and also remembered Jo's subsequent advice of using grey as a primer for white paint. One of the things I found is that with the white primer it's very difficult to see whether the basecoat is consistent and like Jo says, it seems to shrink away from the edges. I don't know if that would have been the case with Zero Paint's white primer, but anyway I used the grey which gave excellent coverage. 

 

The Fiat's colour is called "Bianco Gioioso" which translates as "joyful white". To my eye, on the real car, it's somewhere between white and beige I guess. Zero paints sent me a two part paint system. Part 1 is to go over primer, part 2 (how suprising) over part 1. 

 

 

As you can see part 1 is the "white" part, so part 2 must be the "joyful" part 🙂 .... I think that the application of part 1 will give a nice white base. I have primed two spoons as well so I can practice and see how it will look before taking it to the car's body. I'm very curious to see how it works out, I've never used paint like this before.

 

As I was typing this the doorbell rang, my replacement kit just arrived. That was fast. As I said, I contacted Fujimi for a replacement dash but my hopes are not high, and I could get this kit for a good price. Some shops are selling it for 20 euro more than what I paid now. And, should I be able to get a replacement dash it means I have a full kit that I might be able to sell. Or build, who knows. 

[JeroenS]

Well, I have painted my spoons with parts 1 and 2. They only need clearcoat and polishing, and then I should be ready for the car itself. 

 

This is a spoon painted with part 1, and you can see that the coverage of this white paint is excellent. 

 

 

Here's a side-by-side of the spoon, only part 1 on the left, part 2 applied on the right. Despite my crappy photography the difference is still visible. Looking at this, I think it will look good on the body. 

 

 

 

[Spiny]

That one on the right definitely looks a good match for the pearlescant white of the Fiat 500 - judging by the spoon it's going to look good ont he car.