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2009 Dodge Challenger


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15 hours ago, JeroenS said:

Doing good Spiny. Certainly a fast build for you! 

It's amazing how much modelling you can get done when you're not having to waste your time with work!

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9 hours ago, Spiny said:

It's amazing how much modelling you can get done when you're not having to waste your time with work!

Absolutely! Too bad, my line of work is perfect for working from home, I already did that a lot before all this. But now, no commuting at all and that's nice. 

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I did working at home for a week and a bit, but although we can work from home ok there's not much point designing something if it can't be installed :(

 

Anyway, back to the model. I think I'm doing less per day than I usually do as keep finding other jobs to do, but with every day having some modelling in it I'm progressing reasonably well with the Dodge. Today, I got the interior all put together:

 

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After that, it's onto the suspension where for a large part of it the instructions writer still seems to be partaking in their satin-black fetish. The springs are shown as all satin black, but for some reason I'm going to be using gloss, matt and (to follow) satin black on mine. This is in the "Why am I bothering?" category though as I'm struggling to notice the difference in blacks with the naked eye, and it will be even less visible one in the wheel well behind a wheel.

 

49782275262_6a91fdd05a_c.jpg

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Time for another update, and the past couple of days have all been about suspension (well, mostly).

 

Starting with the front, the springs are in the photo above, so once the damper element had been painted, it was time to stick that all to the subframe and steering arm before attaching to the body. The instructions have you putting the springs into the subframe, then attaching the complete component to the chassis, but there's nothing to properly constrain the angle of the springs until they are fitted at both ends. I found the easiest way was to fit the springs to the subframe, then before the glue had completely set fit the entire unit to the chassis. All in all, this process worked better than I expected and it all went together pretty well.

 

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Next up is the rear suspension, which has similar issues with fitting the springs, but with the added complication that the dampers are separate so that's four pieces to align. I tried the same process, but because the hole in the subframe for the damper is MUCH bigger than the damper tab, it was tricky to even get the damper to hold, let alone hold at the correct angle. In the end, I fitted the dampers to the chassis first and, after quite a bit of fiddling around finally got everything sorted.

 

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This is where I am at the moment, still got to fix the sump guard (where the paint doesn't seem to want to cover the white plastic), then it will be onto the brakes and wheels, but apart from that the chassis is pretty much there. If anyone is wondering why the diff doesn't seem to connect to the axle, it's because this kit has a metal rear axle which will just feed through the wheel hubs and diff - at the moment it appears to line up ok.

 

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Finally, onto the wheels themselves. I mentioned earlier that I'd decided to go away from the kit chrome finish and had stripped them. They've since been painted with Tamiya Silver Leaf (TS-30) and I got them clear-coated today. Still need them to cure, but this shows how they look - not quite as shiny as I was hoping but I think they will do. They do look better, and less grey, in the flesh than this photo makes out - I think the 6500K lamp I used to light the photo has done them no favours. The wheels above are the 'custom' wheels which come with the kit and could have been used if all had gone pear-shaped - as it is they give an idea of the before and after finish.

 

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And that's it until the next update. Thanks for reading.

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Time for another update, and at last some visible progress.

 

First of all, time for the chassis. I got the brakes painted up and fitted, fiddly bit of detailing but they came out ok in the end. I had wondered about adding a wash to the brake disks to highlight the grooves, but a bit of googling suggests that this is closer to how they look in real life so I gratefully saved myself a job. Thought I'd messed up as I have my tweezers labelled L and R, but didn't think about labelling Front and Rear. Got the disks all painted up and realised that I didn't know which were the fronts and which the backs. Fortunately, the hole pattern to fix to the suspension is different so I escaped that one :phew:

 

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While that was ongoing, I made a start with the body. First job is that one we all love - masking the window rubbers. I think I may get lucky with this one though as the side windows are recessed so I have an edge to paint up to - very difficult to mask that but much easier to paint a straight-looking edge. So apart from the masking below, I think all I will have to do to the body is mask off the sill. There's still masking lying in wait for the front and rear bumper parts though...

 

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Back to the chassis, and it was time to fit the wheels. Somewhat surprisingly, this went right first time, although I had some concerns that I hadn't got the wheels pushed far enough into the chassis.

 

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Only one thing for it - test fit the body on the chassis to make sure the wheels don't stick out too far, with the added benefit of getting an idea of what the end product will be like. Judging by this, it's going to look ok in the end. (The rear is sitting lower than it will when finished if anyone is wondering).

 

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Thanks for looking.

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The wheel alignment looks perfect to me and the test fit of the body confirms what I thought originally that colour is perfect for this car. Well done 👍

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Suspension work turned out great and it was a good call to use the gloss black on the coils of the springs with the satin black between the coils. Makes for some good contrast. Looks as though the stance of the car will be spot on when everything is finally assembled and the rear of the car sits where it's supposed to. You are captivating "the look" of this car. Well done so far.

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Thanks everyone. Progress the past few days has not been quick. I don't know if I'm the only one who hates painting rubbers on windows, but when I took the clear sprue out of the pack each of the windows had a nice fritted area around the edge for painting the rubbers... which wasn't mentioned in the instructions. I know I should have picked this up a bit earlier, but to be honest I was distracted by the fact that the windscreen and one of the side windows had become detatched on their own so was looking more for damage on them. I also find that it takes a lot of doing to get full opacity when you're painting the rubbers onto the glass - four coats in this case.

 

Anyway, the body has had its window rubbers (2 for the price of one on this kit) done along with the sills, and the windscreen and right hand side window fitted. The side window went in relatively easily, but the windscreen just kept wanting to jump out at the top. Eventually, I figured it it was ever so slightly (fraction of a millimetre) too wide and the bottom which was causing it to go in at the wrong angle. A bit of sanding and it was in.

 

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That wasn't the end of the issues though - it turned out that the UV light setting resin doesn't work when you've painted the rubbers over where you're gluing the window in. (I know this sounds like a statement of the obvious, but I was hoping the light would bleed along the clear plastic like a fibre optic cable - it didn't). In the end, I held the corners in with a dab of CA, then ran more UV resin around the edge of the window to hold it in place, which worked but I had to polish the windscreen when everything was set as it had a light fog to it. Got there in the end, but for the next rear and left windows the initial fix will be by Clearfix with resin surround to give strength afterwards. A little bit of paint over the resin hides it pretty well.

 

While that was all going on, I made a start on the front bumper. As if the windows didn't need a load of careful painting, this needed more masking for the black, and a steady hand with no breathing for the silver. But I've got the painting side of things done on this now - onto assembly.

 

49823198242_bb76604d2b_c.jpg

 

And that's it for now, thanks for the comments.

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It's starting to look as though the end is (already!) coming into sight with this one, although not without a few small issues along the way.

 

First up, I finally got all the windows installed, along with the mirror, sun visors and high level brake light. Once the windows were in, the other bits went in easily.

 

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Meanwhile, I made some more progress with the front bumper. the reflectors for the lights fitted quite easily to the back of the grille. The lenses meanwhile are all separate pieces, and all sit within their own hollow. Again, this went much more smoothly than I expected, particularly given that each lens sits within it's recess, the depth pretty much being determined by the size of the lens. And the clear sprue had just the smallest amount of flash around each lens, not much but enough that you had to sand it down... but not sand it down so much that the lens sunk right down into the recess 😬 I got there in the end, although I took this photo then realised I still needed to add the badge decals.

 

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After that the instructions have you fit it onto the body, which was quite easily and it all fitted together well.

 

 49834165183_f16aaf6b76_c.jpg

 

After that, it was onto fitting things together. The interior tub went into the body quite easily, but fitting the body onto the chassis is usually something which poses a challenge for me. Unfortunately, this time was no different, and a few bits decided they were no longer interested in being part of the model. 🤬

 

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As well as the obvious front bumper coming loose, I also lost the washer bottle. And I do mean lost - it's possible that it has been eaten by the carpet monster but I can't see it there. There was a rattle in the body, so I think it may have disappeared inside the car somewhere, it's not rattling now everything is glued together so I guess it's wedged in there somewhere and not coming out. Hopefully nobody will notice/remember come the RFI ;)

 

As for why the front bumper came loose, a bit of detective work revealed that there are a couple of ejector pin marks which stand proud of the underside of the front cross member in the engine bay. I hadn't done anything with them as I thought they were out of sight and wouldn't interfere with anything. Turns out that although they are out of side, they are right above the radiator, and this is preventing the body sitting quite as far onto the chassis as it should (by about 0.5mm I'd say). I got around this by a bit of judicious trimming of plastic on the bumper and inner wheel arch so the bumper fits ok now (the gap looks big, but if I lift it anymore the front will sit proud of the wing) but if anyone else has this kit and is looking to build it make sure you file off all raised ejector pin marks! This is where I am with it at the moment.

 

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Next job is the rear bumper, and a test fit revealed a problem - the front of the bumper is wider than the body and there aren't any holding tabs (It's the same on the other side too).

 

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So I've made a couple of tabs and fitted them to the body as in the photo. Then I realised that these tabs would foul the inner wheel arch, so I've moved them further back than shown. Fingers crossed they give enough support, at least until the glue holding the bumper to the body has dried.

 

49834165078_ba5db27cc3_c.jpg  

 

Fingers crossed my next update is the completion.

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3 hours ago, Spiny said:

It's starting to look as though the end is (already!) coming into sight with this one, although not without a few small issues along the way.

 

I feel your pain, my Mercedes WiP has been fighting me from start to finish.  But you are making cracking work on this, that blue looks better every time I check in on this build.  I hope your rear bumper fix works mate :)

 

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On 4/3/2020 at 4:05 PM, Spiny said:

As this is proper car, rather than model, paint I'm hoping that the flakes aren't going to be too big. In real life, they aren't but I am conscious that in photos those flakes can sometimes grow massively.

Spiny - Sorry for the late post.  I missed a few days.  Beautiful work, paint, and polish.  I agree, the flake is too large.  I did a 25 Anniversary Camaro for a friend who owns one.  I thought using automotive paint, the same exact paint on his car, would look great.  Unfortunately the flake didn't scale.  I do love the color!

JCH 

Edited by JCH
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20 hours ago, HoolioPaulio said:

 

I feel your pain, my Mercedes WiP has been fighting me from start to finish.  But you are making cracking work on this, that blue looks better every time I check in on this build.  I hope your rear bumper fix works mate :)

 

Thanks. Looking at your Mercedes thread, I think you have much the worse deal. If I'm honest, about half the issues I've had are down to me, and the remaining issues are ones which are at least fixable (I hope!). If I'm honest, the main frustration with this kit is that it is one of those kits which will make a good-looking model, it's just there's quite a few minor bits which should be right and aren't, particularly with the instructions. It's almost as if there was a design team meeting and someone said "I know this is scheduled to be completed in a week, but actually we need it COB tomorrow". As I said, frustrating because it has the potential to be a very good kit if a little more care had been taken.

14 hours ago, JeroenS said:

Quite strange that you would produce a kit with separate rear bumper and not provide any means of attaching it... 

Very strainge, and what makes it stranger to me is they have provided tabs, but they attach to the back of the body where everything fits fine, but the bit which needs holding in a specific place (i.e. the part of the bumper nearest the rear wheel) has no attachment whatsoever. I guess this is just one of those bits which suggests completion of the product design was rushed or lacking care.

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Next step after that lot was to get the rear bumper fitted. After the hassles with the front bumper, and having had to fit my own tabs I was a little nervous about this. But, apart from the left hand side tab coming loose from the bumper, it all went surprisingly smoothly. And I was able to fix the left hand side of the bumper in place with a dab of CA which has held without frosting so that sorted out quite easily.

 

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With that done, the only bits which were left were the air filter, decals, wing mirrors and bonnet. The decals in this kit have been very, very good, releasing from the backing paper easily and laying down with only minimal issues - definitely a thumbs up to Revell here. The bonnet was the usual story where you have to clip the hinges into holes in the body - the hinges always need sanding down to fit in and it was the same story here. Width wise, the bonnet is perfect, length wise the paint build up has made it a tight fit and you need to push down to ensure it clips in the right position. In some of the photos it looks like it's standing high, but actually it's that the front bumper is a little low after the issues mentioned above. Finally, the mirror which fit onto small raised pads on the body. I struggled to hold steady enough to hold for long enough for the CA to dry hard enough to hold them in place, so sanded the base of the mirror stalk back and used normal tube glue instead. That seems to have given a more solid hold than I was expecting.

 

So with that, I'm calling this done. A sneak preview here:

 

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The RFI thread can be found here.

 

 

 

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