Fiesta S2000

[Mr Mansfield]

Nice work on those decals. Very clean lines. How long before you figured out it was the semi circle that was the wrong way round? I’ve had a few parts that don’t fit right & usually end up pulling all to bits to find out what I’ve done wrong, never thinking that the kit might be at fault!

[Spiny]

8 hours ago, Mr Mansfield said:

Nice work on those decals. Very clean lines. How long before you figured out it was the semi circle that was the wrong way round? I’ve had a few parts that don’t fit right & usually end up pulling all to bits to find out what I’ve done wrong, never thinking that the kit might be at fault!

Thanks.

 

As for how long until I worked out something was wrong? The easy answer was after dry fitting - I looked at the instruction manual and thought something wasn't tying up between that and my model; I appeared to have two suspension struts for the same side. Most of the joints are quite tight, so in many cases I can leave the joint dry fitted and just add some Extra Thin rather than having to glue and hold in place while it dries. It took a bit of puzzling out as the instructions aren't always that clear (being more of a CAD mesh than drawing which sometimes reduces clarity). But the important thing was that I managed to work out what was wrong before getting any glue there

 

Incidentally, the decals are still having their regular Microsol coatings but are nearly there with only the worst bits left. And even better news is that the silver and titanium gold paints have covered quite well on the brakes so they shouldn't take as long as I was fearing.

[Andy J]

Nice work again mate, good steady progress that will all be worth it when you cross the finish line 👍

[Redstaff]

Looking good mate, will be a stunner when you've done  

[Spiny]

As expected painting the brakes has put the, er, brake on things a little, although not quite so bad as I was expecting - only the gunmetal is requiring lots of coats. That means I can at least report a little progress during the week.

 

The subframes have been fitted. That was a bit nerve-wracking as the silver struts installed right at the beginning fit into holes in this, but couldn't be positioned that accurately when they were installed. I got lucky, one of the struts was in the right place. The other one was changed by adding some Extra Thin around the attachement which softened things and allowed me to adjust the strut to the right position.

 

The front brakes have been painted now, and it was onto fitting them. They have fitting slots to make sure you get them at the right angle for the calipers, but are tricky to place accurately around the pin for the wheel. Solution - glue the brake in place, then dryfit one of the wheels through the centre to ensure the brake is in the right place.

 

 

Once the glue has set, the wheel rim can be pulled off (sorry, at the moment I just can't think of a better way of putting that ) ready for detailing up and adding the tyre. I also test fitted all the rims to the hubs to check for alignment which led to a readjustment of the suspension I mentioned earlier which had the semi-circular peg the wrong way around which hopefully will make the wheel a bit straighter. I fear there may still be a risk of tripoding, but hopefully it's a lot closer to having all wheels on the ground that it was. Enough waffling though, today's other picture is the brake disk fitted in place - at the risk of blowing my own trumpet this is probably up there with the best detail painting I've managed to date.

 

 

Thanks for looking.

[Andy J]

Nice work on the brakes they look bang on to me. Your dry fitting and planning ahead is definitely working in your favour. Keep up the good work looking forward to seeing the next update 👍

[Windy37]

Getting brake discs to sit in the correct position is always a stress for me . Slightly out of alignment and the wheel then doesn't sit right . Good solution with the wheel idea though . Might try that.  

  Gary . 

[Spiny]

This is one kit where the position of the brake disk is almost unrelated to the position of the wheel - the wheel will attach through the centre of the brake disk onto the hub, so the main thing was making sure the brake disk doesn't clash with the wheel. Alignment, for better or for worse, is already set when I created the springs as you attach the hub to them, then there's a semi-circular peg for attaching that assembly to the chassis. I am a little concerned about the alignment of one of the rear wheels so just hoping that when they all go together tomorrow it looks something like ok.

 

I'd always recommend dry-fitting where possible - it doesn't always allow you to eliminate problems but it can highlight issues before glue is introduced into the equation.

[Spiny]

Some more progress, in fact I've got the chassis finished now.

 

First up is just a follow-up to the previous progress report in that all the disks and subframes are fitted now. This stage was fairly easy when I used the wheels as guides to make sure that the disks were in the right place.

 

 

The main problem with all the work so far is that you then cover most of it up with the underbody guards. The rear one has soft vinyl flaps which need fitting - nothing wrong with that at all apart from that you have to paint them, and the paint really isn't keen on sticking to the vinyl. In the end, the only way I could avoid the paint coming off on fingers, tools etc. was to just use the tweezers on the attachment area to hold them while painting. The part isn't perfect, but none of the bits where the paint has come off will be visible.

 

 

The remaining guards have been painted earlier, so it was a quick job to fit the guards and hide the majority of my previous work.

 

 

After that and it was onto the wheels, and the return of decalling. To be exact, five small decals on each wheel. I've done the wheels which touch the road, the spare is going to be done as and when later in the job. Not really difficult, just a bit of a fiddly job which involves leaving time between each decal to let them dry and avoid risking losing them.

 

 

Given that they'd already been dry-fitted, it wasn't a surprise that the wheels went on easily, nor that one of the rear wheels is slightly lifting off the ground. However, when test fitting the interior base, it does appear as though there is a slight warp to the chassis so I'm hoping that when everything is fitted together we will see all four wheels approximately on the ground.

 

 

And that's it for the chassis, time to put it in its box until needed. Also done over the past few days was clear-coating the body. Obviously it had a couple of mist-coats first to avoid damaging all those decals, and this job actually went pretty well. I used the Revell clear as it seems to be gentle on decals, although you do need to avoid handling it with bare fingers so it will be gloves from now on when I'm doing work on this. This is probably the first time I've had a decent enough finish to avoid using the micromesh, which is a relief as I wanted to avoid polishing through the decals, so I'm aiming to just use the Tamiya polishing compounds on this. The only annoying thing is that the clear appears to have brought out the differences between the decals and the blue paint I used for touch up, although the camera has made the difference even more enhanced. (And before anyone mentions it, the window rubbers will be getting a coat of matt clear in a couple of weeks!).

 

 

That's it for now, onto the interior. Thanks for looking.

[Andy J]

Coming along nicely clean and smart very nice indeed. And as for window rubbers after my last build I've heard enough to last a lifetime 😂

[Spiny]

9 minutes ago, Andy J said:

Coming along nicely clean and smart very nice indeed. And as for window rubbers after my last build I've heard enough to last a lifetime 😂

I can't apologise enough for starting the flood of comments on rubbers on that one

[Andy J]

7 minutes ago, Spiny said:

I can't apologise enough for starting the flood of comments on rubbers on that one

No problem mate you made a valid point and a very popular one judging by the reaction 😂

[Mr Mansfield]

Those wheels and brakes look amazing. Nice detailing

 

 

[Spiny]

3 hours ago, Mr Mansfield said:

Those wheels and brakes look amazing. Nice detailing

 

 

Thanks. This sort of goes back to my comment about the magnifying headset - they look only acceptable under magnification, but once you get to it being on camera, and even more to the naked eye, you (literally!) lose sight of the imperfections and it appears quite good.

Incidentally, there's not all that much detailing on the wheels, just steel paint for the centre hub and wheel nuts, the rest is spray paint and (teeny tiny) decals.

[Spiny]

Over the past few days I've been making a start on the interior. It's amazing what a difference even the first few parts can make when added to a blank white piece of plastic. Lots of holes ready for parts, and the instructions aren't always accurate as to which hole you should fit a part - fortunately all the moulding is good so you can easily work out which is the correct place when the instructions are wrong.

 

First bits are all sitting in the footwells:

 

 

...as indeed are many of the next set of pieces added.  The decal for the display panel required another huge done of Microsol just as on the body. This is where I am with it at the moment:

 

 

From now on, things are likely to revert to my usual glacial pace for two reasons. Firstly, I'm moving onto the seats with all their fabric and photo-etch seatbels. And secondly, I'm back at work next week  so it's onto weekend modelling again.

[Redstaff]

Looking good, I feel your pain about going back to work, I've been back a fornight now and can only model at weekends 😮

Must admit though, after the first week back at work I couldn't be bothered last weekrnd as I was so knackered, might get something done tomorrow hopefully  

 

Ian  

 

[JeroenS]

Just give it a good push this weekend Spiny!

[Spiny]

15 hours ago, JeroenS said:

Just give it a good push this weekend Spiny!

If only... when I went on furlough I moved the modelling to the desk I was using for work as there was more room. Now I'm back at work, tomorrow I'll have to move everything back to my usual place. At least the carpet where I'll be moving to is much less capable of swallowing small parts, important with all the photoetch coming up 😬

[Spiny]

Only a little update today. I've been working on the seats as mentioned, but it looks very much as though they are going to take most of next weekend to be ready (paint + decals + photoetch & fabric seatbelts). So just the one pic here - I got the spare wheel ready and fitted and a bit of painting done at the back. Not lots of news, but it's a baby step in the right direction.

 

 

(Probably should have taken it from a bit further away to avoid the forced perspective effect on that spare wheel). Thanks for looking,

[Spiny]

As expected, the seats are indeed proving to be time-consuming. I've actually put in more effort than probably shows from this update, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

 

First up, the seats themselves. For some reason, the instructions don't call out the paint on these, so I went with matt black for the seats and gloss black for the back. Thinking behind painting the back gloss was that it should help with getting the carbon fibre decal on there to look something like ok, and if it all went wrong it still wouldn't look too bad.

 

 

Brush marks look awful at this stage, but worse on camera than in real life. But it's all been covered up with the carbon fibre decal now - current step is applying layer after layer after layer of Microsol to try to get the decal to conform to some of the curves of chair. Fingers crossed that works.

 

The other bit has been the seatbelts. There's a choice of decal or photoetch + fabric for this, needless to say I haven't gone down the decal route. The seatbelt fastener is quite a neat piece, two bits of photoetch with one folded and clipped to give a 3-d effect.

 

 

After that, it was time to create the seatbelt spider - I've deliberately gone a little bit long for all the bits except the one through the base of the chair as I intend to fix to the roll cage once installed. The fabric comes neatly tied, but unfortunately holds its shape pretty well - this is the first time I've had to iron part of a model kit! All quite fiddly, but the fastener threaded easily, although the clips on the belt were a pain until I got the fabric ironed. But it's there now apart from adding the couple of clips which need to go on the back of the chair - they'll go once I have the seats fitted.

 

 

The only other thing of note is that last weekend I worked out what the two mysterious stripes on the decal sheet were for - they fit over the door handles it turns out although it really isn't obvious from the instructions. Typically, I found that out after clearcoating, but there was nothing for it, I fitted them last weekend and the body got another clearcoat this weekend.

 

Thanks for looking.

[Mr Mansfield]

The seatbelt clasp looks really good. Real seatbelt material is definitely the best choice over decals

[Spiny]

Thanks, but I can't claim much credit for that - it's all photoetch from the box which you just have to bend into shape then join the two bits together. One of them is just held in place by the clips, the other I broke the end off the photoetch and had to glue in place (that's the one in the photo).

 

More good news (which is only slightly model related). The robins fledged over the weekend so with a bit of luck I can go back to spraying in the garage. 🐦

[Spiny]

Far too busy with all these builds going on on the site - had to scroll halfway down the second page to find this thread

 

Anyway, another weekend spent on the Fiesta and another weekend with no work on the interior tub. But there has been progress...

 

First of all, the elephant in the room in the form of the seats. After 5 days of applying both Microset and Microsol, it became apparent that the carbon fibre decal was not going to conform to the tightest curves on the back of the seat. Nothing for it, I grabbed a new blade and cut the decal along the inner edge, then grabbed some grey to fill in the inevitable gaps which appeared. Not perfect, but better than the decal stretching taut over the inner curve. Then this weekend it was a case of adding the Sparco decals, plust the p/e bits and pieces I got ready last weekend (the seats took even longer than I was expecting).

 

 

The next step was fitting the seatbelts to the seat, or at least threading them through the holes. At the moment, the only belt which is fastened in place is the one through the seat base. Annoyingly, I fitted one belt the wrong way round to the fastener last weekend, so had to cut that off and rethread it. Good job I went a bit long with the belts!

 

 

Still need to line up the buckles on the top belts, especially on the seat on the left of the pic, not to mention adding buckles behind the seat and Sparco decals, but the seats are to all intents and purposes ready to finally fit into the car

 

The other job this weekend (not counting lots of masking of the underbody on the next project) was to make a start on the roll cage. I decided to use the interior tub as a jig so hopefully this is going to be lined up about right - it certainly was before gluing although the rear brace keeps trying to twist and will need the top section of roll cage to hold it firmly in place.

 

 

Not sure it really needs another pic outside the car but here's one anyway outside of the car. Once glued together it's surprisingly solid apart from that rear brace which only has two points on contact. I've started painting it (rollcages aren't fun to brush paint!) now - hopefully this will fit ok once all is done.

 

 

Thanks for looking.

[Windy37]

Seats and rollcage looking good . I like admiring the complexity of modern rollcages and , like you say , you can feel how strong they are once you build the model car cage up . How some of the old school drivers survived big accidents in cars with flimsy rollcages always amazes me . Good work . 
Gary . 

[Spiny]

Three weeks on the seats and rollcage - I always knew this would be slow progress but hadn't quite anticipated how much this section would slam the brakes on the build. Still, as promised last week, I got the seats fitted to the interior.

 

 

Unfortunately, once the seats were fitted, it became obvious that the instructions here are a red herring - there is absolutely no way that the roll cage will fit around the radio on the side of each seat, and that's before trying to get it behind the co-driver's footrest which is another job in itself. So I had to remove the cross-bracing from the back of the roll-cage (that bit which was so loose last week). Unfortunately, by adding more glue last week it meant that this week the tabs came off when I removed it which will make it a bit harder to place once it goes back in (a job for the future I think). If anyone else is building this kit, at this point I would strongly recommend ignoring the instructions and not adding the rear cross-brace until the rest of the roll cage is in place. I'vealso ignored the bit which wants the steering wheel adding before fitting the roll-cage as I noticed further on that the steering column still needs to be placed, and I expect it will be much easier to position without the steering wheel in the way.

 

But, after a bit of fiddling around the roll-cage is in place apart from the rear cross-brace, Sparco decals added to the seat belts and the inside seat belts fitted to the chassis. The outside belt will be glued to the roll-cage, and i haven't decided yet how to secure the belts which go out of the back of the seats. This is where the interior sits at the moment:

 

 

The only other work done on this over the weekend is with the photoetch ratchet for the spare wheel belt. It's a nice little piece, but the instructions call for pins through the ratched, and I can't see them in the kit. So I got a freezer-bag wire tiewrap and stripped it down for the wire - a couple of pieces CA'd in will hopefully hold it in place when I have to wrap the straps around the pins.

 

 

Thanks for looking.