Fujimi BMW M635CSi

[Anteater]

I'm nowhere near as productive as some of you and it was probably autumn when I last had anything on the workbench, but after a false start I've got a bit more time now to progress this one...

 

I've always loved the look of the BMW E24 and I built one of the Tamiya kits back in the late 80s. I missed out when the Tamiya racing version was briefly re-released but I then became aware of the Fujimi alternative, which also got re-released last year. It seems the Fujimi has a bit of a reputation for being difficult to build with poor parts fit, and there's also a debate about whether Fujimi or Tamiya captured the shape of the body most accurately, but I don't think either of them nailed it 100%. The Fujimi is a fraction too low in the roof, whilst the Tamiya looks slightly too tall with the glass area being too expansive. However, you can't argue with the complexity of the Fujimi version, even if it might turn out to be a nightmare to put together.

 

Anyway, look - a box!

 

   

 

 

I started on this build back in January but didn't get far, however now we all have the gift of fewer distractions so I'm back into it. First things first, out with the knife. I've had a few old BMWs over the years and they always turn out to be utter rot boxes but I've never had an E24, mainly because they take the business of hidden corrosion to another level and many panels are NLA, hideously expensive, or both. It seems fitting therefore to model real life and capture that moment when a bit of light tidying turns into an unwelcome weldathon.

 

   

 

 

After much careful cutting whilst sticking my tongue out in concentration (well, I am an Anteater after all), the wing was off. We'll save that for later. However, the inner structure on the chassis won't do so I got busy with some scratch building.

 

This...

 

 

 

...became more like this...

 

 

 

...complete with a bit of feathering to make the inner wing nice and frilly to give the authentic old BMW experience.

 

Some time passed.

 

And then I picked it up again. The good weather this week let me shoot some primer on the shell and chassis, and then do it again when I remembered to rub the mould lines off the roof and add the cross-rib at the rear seat base. The body to chassis fit is quite approximate to it's been quite testing getting everything to line up when scratch building the inner arch structures, a portent of what is to come, no doubt. But look at the detail on the floor pressing, ideal for my purposes.

 

 

 

I've blown a few coats of rattle can red over the top and it's currently drying in the spray booth oven (otherwise known as the bottle caddy in the wheelie bin).

 

Anteater.

 

[JeroenS]

I like this one too, I'm in!

[Anteater]

So, a lurch forward in making this maze of sprues look more like a car.

 

At the end of my last update the paint on the body shell was baking in the spray booth oven (wheelie version) and it's gone ok fairly well out of the can. I used some leftover Volkswagen Mars Red out of a Halfords rattle can as I can't go out to buy any more paint #becozvirus. However, it's a pretty good match for BMW Henna Red which available for a short time on these cars during 1983-1984 and nobody's going to know or care in the context of a worldwide pandemic. Saves me a few quid anyway.

 

Looks ok in full resolution real-life-o-vision but will be cut back and polished after I've let if fully go off. That's normally the point when I polish through a wing top and have to bodge a "smart repair". Fun times ahead.

 

 

 

In the meantime I've been detailing the chassis and painted the standard issue E24 rust trap on the inner wing, where they all go frilly and require repairs costing zillions of pounds. Reasonably happy with this now, the key is to know when to stop. I normally start with a silver coat, dab some clear orange on it, then daub it with black matt and highlight it with a light brown, repeating as appropriate. Having had much experience poking holes in 1:1 scale cars, it looks about right to me. The limit of my skillz anyway.

.

 

 

 

And finally for this update, some work on the floorpan. I've added the loom run down the driver's side, and the branches out to the electric seats, all using a bit of artistic licence of course. You'll note the dashboard WIP in this shot, the first real example of mating parts with this kit as the dash top and instrument panel are separate to the lower three quarters. I can confirm the quality of fitment is... approximate at best...

 

This one's going to take some effort to get looking anywhere near good. I will have to seal up the back of the dash too as there are huge gaps where the light will shine through.

 

 

 

Oh well, I like a challenge!

 

Anteater out.

 

[Anteater]

I've been busy with the engine this week and it's a good example of how this kit is designed. It's almost unnecessarily complicated, which would be brilliant if the mouldings were up to the job but they're a bit slack, shall we say. Take the exhaust manifold, you'll see below it's made up of ten separate pieces. With the whole lot hanging interdependently and no place to locate the exhaust end of the downpipes, you just need to weave them all together and hang the assembly off the side of the block, hoping it'll all line up. In the end I temporarily located the engine on the front subframe, lined it up under the shell and offered up the exhaust pipes in situ to make sure I was getting it right.   

 

It's not immediately obvious from the photo below but this is also the first kit I've ever built where the engine has proper engine mounts, but there's no accurate way of locating them so again, it's engine in and engine out before the glue sets.

 

I'm not one for following the instructions in order, but you'd have no chance if you obeyed the sequence.

 

Flawed genius. The kit, not me.

 

:)

 

 

 

Anteater.

[Anteater]

As demonstrated with the exhaust manifold, this kit has a high parts count but it's still missing a few key components that need to be scratch built. One thing that's seemingly always missed off kits (and I don't know why) is the breather pipe from a cam cover to an air box so I built one out of styrene rod. Likewise with the radiator top hose. I used scale plug wire to wire in the coil, this kit unusually already includes plug leads.

 

I wasn't sure what to do about the small bore coolant pipes that run to the header tank. Working from right to left below, you'll see the white rod I used for the top hose is too large in diameter and you can imagine that scale plug wire would be much too narrow. The green stuff is my usual go-to for coolant hoses and is an old garden lights charger lead, but again, not small enough. In the end I found solder wire to be just right and located it in the header tank by drilling out the end and using a bit of wire to secure it.    

 

 

 

 

Much time later and the engine bay is taking shape. I like the inclusion of the fuse/relay box which is included in the kit. It's nicely detailed but oh so approximate when it comes to gluing anything down!

 

This photo shows up my rubbish brush painting on the airbox but it looks better to human eyes. The camera is highly judgemental.

 

 

 

 

The car is going to be displayed jacked up on stands so I've needed to drop the suspension to replicate the hang. At the front I just added a bit to the top of the strut and bent the bottom arm downwards, but at the rear I did it slightly more properly and cut the existing shock at the spring seat, added a new extended piston and added a spring. The rear arms are dropped to suit. I hope Mrs Anteater doesn't have to add anything to the shopping list by the kitchen radio later on because the spring operated clicky pen is no longer operational.

 

 

 

 

Anteater.

 

 

 

[Paul H]

Looking good!  A thought for the floorpan - I think the internal detail was molded primarily for the touring car version.  As your's is a road car, it might be worth adding some insulation pads to the floor (e.g. with masking tape?), to help make it look more like how an interior looks when the carpet is pulled up.

[Anteater]

Hi Paul and thanks for your interest,

 

Good suggestion for the insulation pads. I want to reveal the floor as I like the detail in the moulding but I might have a go at replicating some pads to be chucked in the back, as when stripping a car out stuff tends to get randomly strewn around. I plan to fill the boot full of parts too, partially to conceal the really quite large gaps between the boot floorpan, inner arches and the shell.

 

 

[Anteater]

So... I've been busy setting the ride height, or in this case the float height I suppose as it's going to be propped on axle stands so the suspension needs to hang. Quite pleased with how it looks now, after a bit of faffing about. The longer shocks I made for the rear were exactly the right length, surprisingly, considering I tend to do things by eye rather than calculate and measure. The resting ride height when on the floor and compressed under the body weight would see the hub centres sit above the upper sill line, so this looks good to me.

 

 

 

 

I've also been busy with my least favourite job of ever, not just having to paint the window rubbers but also the narrow chrome strips. I've never tried the chrome pen or bare metal foil approach because I'm far too tight to splash out on decent stuff. Anyway, it's lockdown and that would not be in the spirit of things. Instead I've hand painted the frames and because I have a mental block on successfully using masking tape it's been a process of paint, touch in, paint, touch in, correct, paint, touch in, just a dab more there, too much, paint, touch in... two whole evenings of it. It's a good job I'm spending most of lockdown drunk because I couldn't put up with this whilst sober. The lower edge at the bottom of the window line must be absolutely straight however, so I painted a strip of vinyl for that bit. The next one of these I build (and I have one waiting...) will be finished in Shadowline trim, ie. no window surround brightwork!

 

Even with my monkey skills, and even in 1/24 scale, I am reminded what a good looking car the E24 is. I don't think I could put the time into building a model of a car I didn't fancy in full scale. Thankfully, I have broad and eccentric tastes.

 

 

 

 

Anteater.

Edited April 15, 2020 by Anteater
Typo

[JeroenS]

Looking good and I've always like this BMW, it's one of my favourites along with the 7 series of this generation. 

[Anteater]

The interior is in, or should I say on. It's not a tub style so the sides are separate to the dash, but the dash has no firm location onto the floor and the locating moulding on the dash ends don't really meet the side panels very accurately. I was therefore pleased to find the inner A panels I scratched earlier in the process helped enormously in locating the whole lot together. A bit of superglue and an evening bound by elastic bands, and it's in / on.  

 

 

 

 

Most of the underside is completed now, the detail on the floorpan is impressive and comes up nicely with a bit of weathering and dry brushing. Shows the rot nicely...

 

The hubs look out of alignment in this photo but they're not in the real life. The angle must just be picking up the droop at the rear. Note I have made some bumper mounts at the front, because the bumper will be off.

 

 

 

 

Finally for this update, I've added a boot seal as the bootlid will be open or possibly off. It will have to be, because it sure won't fit snugly now...

 

 

 

 

Anteater.

 

[Schwarz-Brot]

Beautifully crusty and nice attention to detail. I don't think I saw anybody do a seal around the boot at this scale.

[Anteater]

Thanks, and especially thanks for not pointing out the mould line I clearly missed at the top of the rear wing to the rear window! I've not noticed it during the build so far but it's quite clear on an extreme close-up photograph...

 

Oh well, it's staying now and nobody normal would notice... let's just all pretend we haven't seen it.  

 

 

[JeroenS]

Hadn't noticed it until you mentioned it, my eye caught on the rubber seal you made. Great idea.

[Paul H]

On 23/04/2020 at 21:46, Anteater said:

Thanks, and especially thanks for not pointing out the mould line I clearly missed at the top of the rear wing to the rear window! I've not noticed it during the build so far but it's quite clear on an extreme close-up photograph...

 

Oh well, it's staying now and nobody normal would notice... let's just all pretend we haven't seen it.  

 

Could you hide it with some weathering?

[FunkyChiken]

It's a beaut of a build, thanks for sharing!

[Anteater]

I'm getting near to the point where the build is about to transition from a load of disparate sub-assemblies into a single cohesive object, and suddenly it'll be a car. But first, there are lots of little bits to be done, and many are more complicated than expected.

 

For example: some items which appear simple but are really not...

 

 

You'd expect the bootlid to be composed of perhaps two parts; the deck lid and spoiler? It's actually an assembly of seven elements:

1. deck lid, 2. underside trim, 3. left hinge, 4. right hinge, 5. spoiler, 6. badge, 7. badge decal

 

Same with the door mirrors - the body and mirror glass are separate which is fair enough, but the tiny mount you can see on the end of the body is separate too and needs to be coaxed into place. The interior mirror is the tricky too, it's not one piece, the stalk has to be glued on. It's a fabulously futile way to pass the time.

 

The grille and headlamps are composed as you would expect but the individual lenses just kind of float into position rather than locate on a shoulder as you might expect. Much fun with the Glue n Glaze to make sure the lenses set straight and it doesn't go goggle-eyed.

 

It's the nature of this kit to be complicated so the final mile feels more like ten and I'm spending much time with the tweezers! It's bad enough even separating some of the parts from the sprues due to the way they are moulded, often joined right where it's most difficult to get a clean separation despite cutting well away and sanding off the excess. But, if was too easy it wouldn't be half as rewarding... or something like that...

 

Don't expect the big reveal quite yet, the speed I work at.

 

 

Anteater.

 

 

 

  

[JeroenS]

I can wait... not going anywhere any time soon 😉 

[Stef N.]

Just watching an old episode of Wheeler Dealers and I recognised this car. Similar colour too. Hopefully you have the wheels on the box front rather than the ones they had.😀

[Anteater]

If that was in the early days of Wheeler Dealers I seem to recall it was all about superglue and rattle cans back then, keeping it real.

 

On the subject of superglue and rattle cans...

 

Look! Stripy!

 

 

 

I've also taken the plunge and tackled my least favourite part of any build - putting the windows in. This is an easy one as the windows are all-in-one but I was still putting it off because the chances of a gluey fingerprint stuffing everything up has just increased by 1,000,000,000%.

 

Before I had a chance to get static dust on the inside or absentmindedly wave the craft knife across the screen, I quickly sealed up the interior. All the body to chassis test fits I have done so far have been encouraging but now the windows are in it's a tighter fit, so it's setting with a pill box full of water to weigh the front down and two elastic bands around the shell. Just watch that pink one twang forward and swipe the mirrors off... don't breathe...

 

I'll have to glue the sills to the floor later on to give it a bit more grip.

 

 

 

 

I'm off to sit in a another room now.

 

Anteater.

[Bengalensis]

It's looking great so far, you're doing some very nice work here. I'm a bit of fan myself of this generation of BMW (early '90 E34 M5 in my 1/1 scale stash) so it's looking a bit extra for me, especially in solid red paint. Not usually a fan of red cars, but on these BMW's red goes nicely with black trim and thin strips of chrome. Keep the good work going!

[ElectricLightAndy]

I love what you are doing with this BMW, I do like models that look used a little 😁

 

Andy.

[Anteater]

Thanks for the words of support, internet people 👍

 

The pink rubber band stayed in place, glory be.

 

As the car will be wheel-less there would be nothing to hide the usual gaps between the rear arches and the shell. I don't know why all model kits are like this but they never have an insert to close up the gap. It seems the E24 is from an era before plastic liners so my plastic liner needed to be body coloured, or at least underbody coloured. So a bit of trial and error with paper gave me a template to cut one out of plastic sheet. This is the left hand side, as you can tell from my letter "F" drawn on to mark it up.  

 

 

 

 

Back out and a shot of primer, then a wash to match the rest of the inner arch...

 

That'll do. It looks nice and grimy and matches the profile well enough. It's not like anyone will ever see it anyway. It's a form of madness this isn't it, when you think about it...

 

 

 

 

Down at the nose, and I've fitted the passenger side grille as Fujimi intended (in their highly approximate manner) but the driver's side is presented sans grille (it's a left hand drive car). The headlamps on the real car are deeply set into the grille and I did ponder how to replicate the naked headlamp bowls and lenses. I eventually settled on the obvious solution of cutting them out of the grille moulding and sanding them back to the required depth. This destroys the grille but at least it ensures the backing bowls, which are visible from the engine bay, are consistent side to side. I had to mount them up a smidge to get them to sit right.  

 

 

 

 

Not a million miles off now, just a bit of fitting up, decals and some wiring detailing to add here and there. Given how approximate the tolerances seem to be it's a minor miracle to see it resembling something recognisable. The big question is when am I going to put a big gluey fingerprint on it...? There's still time yet.

 

Anteater.

 

[ElectricLightAndy]

25 minutes ago, Anteater said:

The big question is when am I going to put a big gluey fingerprint on it...? There's still time yet.

Definitely, the amount of times I've done that I wouldn't be able to count on my gluey digits!

 

This is looking really special, are you going to make a diorama base for it?

 

Andy

[Anteater]

I don't know about really special but it's going ok, and that's certainly not false modesty! I just take ages to get anything built as us Anteaters have only a nebulous concept of the passing of time when listening to Radio 4 and breathing in vapours.

 

It'll sit in one of my existing garage dioramas until such time lockdown is over and I can buy the materials to build another diorama more befitting. Anyway, I won't get ahead of myself, plenty of time yet for me to spill a load of paint on it, glue it to my hand or drop it out of the window.

 

 

[Anteater]

This is a nice touch, the bonnet is a multi-part assembly and includes the inner structure and special material for the under-bonnet sound deadening. I assumed there would be plastic representations of the pads and searched the sprues and instructions before I realised it was telling me (in Japanese) that I should be looking for the square foamy pad that I took to be a blotter for the decals! Painted up they look ace, in my opinion anyway.

 

 

 

Apart from that...

 

What's this, appeared at the back of the workshop? It's red, and I can smell the corrosion from here... Seeing as I've finished roller painting the rear panel on this '02, I'll go and investigate...

 

 

 

RFI incoming...

 

 

Anteater.