Maserati 3500 GTI Monogram 1:25

[johnlambert]

I feel a bit bad about starting another build, but I'm struggling to find enthusiasm for the Airfix Aston Martin (it's the moulded plastic one-piece wheels and tyres) and having had a bit of a setback with my metal TVR (I wasn't happy with the paint finish).  This kit has sat tempting me for a few weeks.

 

The funny thing is that I came buy this almost by accident; I love classic 1950s and '60s GT cars, they are so stylish and redolent of a more glamourous age (a world that was probably mostly a creation of books, films and television).  It happened that three of my favourite car shows (Jay Leno's Garage, Chasing Classic Cars and Fantomworks) all featured examples of the Maserati within a week or two of each other.  That set me wondering if there was a model of the 3500 GT and it turned out there was; of course it was made ages ago and any sealed examples were silly money.

 

This one was reasonably priced because it had been opened and parts cut from their sprues.  However, the pictures with the listing showed at least enough parts to make a passable model (all the body parts, glass, wheels and tyres, I figured I could bodge anything else I needed even if it ended up as a kerbside model rather than fully detailed).

 

This is what I saw when I opened the box; it seems very much of its time with the opening features, colour moulding and (although you can't really see here) all the engine parts were chromed.

 

As I often do with build projects I've done a fair bit of internet searching to find out more about the Maserati 3500 series.  This kit represents one of the later 3500 GTI cars, which were Italy's first production car with fuel injection (produced by Lucas in Britain).  Being a low-volume car it seems that the history of most examples is known, the closest match I've found for the car represented by the kit is chassis number 101-2334, which was a USA-market 1962 3500GTI in a similar colour to the maroon plastic but with a slightly darker tan interior and wire wheels.  The combination of maroon (which is sometimes described as red) with biscuit or light tan upholstery as depicted by the kit does not appear to be a catalogued combination; but that doesn't mean that it couldn't have been done to special order.  I'm not sure whether to paint the body in a similar colour to the plastic (I have some suitable paint) or go for a colour change?  I quite like the idea of blue with dark red leather.

 

I've made a bit of progress on the build; cleaning up the body and assembling the engine so I'll post some progress photos tomorrow.

[Space Ranger]

That was originally an Aurora kit, and one of their better ones at that. Fortunately, it was not one of the molds lost in the infamous train wreck while being shipped to Monogram.

[Fnick]

Guessing you mean the DB5? Yep it's not the greatest kit and certainly not a starter kit to tempt someone to stay in the hobby. But you can get a nice car out of it though. Word of warning though...

The dash won't go where the instructions show! Oh and put the front grill on before painting so you can fill the gaps (don't ask me how I know! 😋)

 

Nick

[johnlambert]

11 minutes ago, Fnick said:

Guessing you mean the DB5? Yep it's not the greatest kit and certainly not a starter kit to tempt someone to stay in the hobby. But you can get a nice car out of it though. Word of warning though...

The dash won't go where the instructions show! Oh and put the front grill on before painting so you can fill the gaps (don't ask me how I know! 😋)

 

Nick

Thanks Nick, for some reason it hadn't occurred to test fit the radiator grille although I've test fitted just about every other body part.  Thankfully there is still time as I've not got to primer or paint yet.  Everything else seems to fit quite nicely, I've been pleasantly surprised so far. 

[Fnick]

To be fair to the kit it did fit together nicely but there was a lot of flash and mould line to get rid of.

 

Oh and that Maserati does look really nice!

[cmatthewbacon]

You can find my build notes here:

There are a lot of them! The one thing I wished I’d done better is the windscreen. It’s not just the top line that’s wrong, the bottom is as well. It’s not a rectangular body cut out above the dash but a squished semicircle. Really the scuttle needs filling with a plastic card skin, a new curved recess cutting out, and a new windscreen plunge moulded from a balsa master that blends from the new lower edge to the new top line... YMMV of course!

best,

M.

[johnlambert]

Well, I had an update nearly written and then managed to delete the whole thing.

 

@cmatthewbacon thanks for that, I'm not sure I feel brave enough to reshape the windscreen and front grille.

 

I've cleaned up the mould lines, glued the front panel and filled some sink marks.

 

The moulded on windscreen wipers have been removed as has the radio aerial.  When it gets to primer I'll see how badly I've managed to sand and fill the panel join.

 

The rear of the chassis is dry assembled and held together with an elastic band, but I wanted to see if the car would sit square and level.  I thought I had a photo of the body with the panels fitted, as mine seem to fit reasonably well.

 

Thanks for all the encouraging replies.

[Alan R]

Love this car.
Apart from a few aberrations, Maserati have created may beautiful cars.
This is one of them.

Cheers,

Alan.

[johnlambert]

A quick shot showing the opening panels in place.

 

It's hard to be certain about the doors without gluing them to their hinges but I really think they will fit well.  The boot lid sits a fraction too high because it's resting on the wooden peg that's helping to hold everything together.  However, I find it quite inspiring to see the car looking like this, even though it's a long way from completed.

 

[Stickframe]

It's nice to see a clean fit so early on - no obvious areas that need to be caved/shaped/filled etc.  Those wheels look pretty nice too.  Looking forward to seeing this move along.. 

 

Cheers

Nick

[johnlambert]

Thanks @Stickframe the wheels look so much better on the car than they did on the sprue.  The wheels also look best when viewed directly face on as it isn't so obvious that the spokes are solid all the way to the back of the wheel.  That said, I'm about a metre away from the model at the moment, viewing it from the rear three quarter and the spokes still look fairly convincing; a dark wash for the wheels will probably (hopefully) work wonders.

 

I'd have preferred the kit to come with the steel wheels and chrome hub caps that were standard for the 3500 GT (wires were an extra cost option).  I bought some aftermarket white metal Dunlop alloy wheels (think Jaguar D-type and Lightweight E-type) as they look similar to the standard Maserati wheels, but the Dunlop wheels and associated tyres are just too big to fit inside the Maserati's wheel arches. 

[johnlambert]

It's great to see how much interest there is in this build.  I've done some more dry fitting of body parts today.

 

Tail lights, the right side was a nice fit, the left side needed the hole opening up a bit.

 

Headlights; these seem to fit well, a bit loose so I'll have to make sure they line up correctly when they are finally glued in place.

 

Grille; hmm, some work needed here.  The top and sides should be flatter while the whole thing should sit inside the body, not protrude out from it.  I wasn't planning on reshaping the grille as CMATTHEWBACON did with his Maserati but I think I might have to.  Even if I don't, I need to tighten up the opening and deal with those ejector pin marks on the grille itself (the outer one I've done as it's easy, the inner one on the trident will need a tiny dob of filler).

[johnlambert]

Setting aside the body for the moment, this is the progress on the engine and chassis.

 

This is what you get in the box, most of it was doused in oven cleaner.

 

The engine parts themselves seem to fit together quite nicely.

 

One missing part was #28 but I was sure I could bodge a passable replacement.  However, to get there would mean at least partially assembling the chassis.

 

Probably the most intricate/fiddly part so far was the front suspension, tiny wishbones, tiny springs and fiddly uprights; not much to help it al locate together.  There's no provision for steering, functional or otherwise, but you could assemble the model with the wheels posed at an angle and it might not be too difficult to fabricate working steering although the kingpins are quite far inboard of the wheels.

 

Front half of the chassis was glued together, rear half was dry assembled (hence the tape and rubber bands) and the engine was mostly assembled at this point.  You can see the gap between the gearbox and the driveshaft.

 

A bit of sprue; cut, filed and drilled plus a square of 0.5mm styrene sheet were close enough, I thought.

 

The engine complete with my bodge.  I thought this was far enough to go with assembly before adding the basic engine colours.  In general the engine block and transmission are bare aluminium with the cylinder head painted black.  I have seen some examples where only the cam covers were painted but I'm going for giving the entire head a coat of black (in the hope that it will be easier to mask).

 

Just for fun, I was curious how the engine compared in size with the Jaguar XK six-cylinder (I was tempted to assemble the XK, which comes from the Tamiya Jaguar Mk.II).

 

Engine and gearbox with a coat of Tamiya Fine Surface Primer, which has given a nice smooth surface.  I've since sprayed a coat of Valejo aluminium, which went on a bit shiny although it seems to have calmed down a bit as it has dried.  No photo of that yet, because I want to make sure the paint has properly cured before handling.

[Toftdale]

hi John,

 

I too have often seen these kits for sale at silly money, however I had always assumed that the work needed on an old monogram kit to make a good end result would not be worth the effort.   Happily your proving me wrong - Andy

[johnlambert]

Thanks for the encouraging words, Andy (and everyone else).

 

I realised that I'd never shown the body as it came out of the box, or the work I did to tidy it up.

 

You can just about see some of the mould lines, to be honest it wasn't as bad as I was expecting.

 

There's a fine line around the side vent, a mouded stub for the radio aerial and moulded on windscreen wipers.  Because I'm picky I decided that the wipers would have to go and I'll have to find or bodge some new ones.  I might drill a hole for a wire radio aerial or just leave it off.  Either way, I think the fewer lumps and bumps there are, the easier it is to paint and rub down.

 

Some tricky-to-fix flash around the tail light housings.

 

I mentioned changing the wheels and tyres (since there is no way that the new wheels would fit the existing tyres.

 

The indications were that this was a strategy doomed to failure, so I've set the Dunlop wheels aside for a future project.

 

And finally, a couple of pictures of the aluminium painted engine:

 

It's a bit shiny, but I hope I can tone it down.  I made a mistake and bought ordinary aluminium acrylic instead of flat aluminium.

 

You can just about see where I made another silly mistake and topped up the airbrush with steel paint and shot some on the cylinder head.  Thankfully the engine has been masked and the top part is now covered in satin black paint (photos once the paint has dried).  I'd like the engine to look cared for but used, so I might apply some washes and an overall matt or satin clearcoat.

[johnlambert]

A little more progress, although I don't feel brave enough to tackle the windscreen I had to do something with the radiator grille.  The box art shows the grille sitting flush, which is about right for most 3500 GTIs, but my test fit had the grille protruding slightly (which is right for earlier 3500 GTs and one or two GTIs seemed to get this style).  It is also the wrong shape; as CMATTHEWBACON pointed out, the grille is more of a rounded rectangle and less of an oval as reproduced here.

 

It's hard to tell with the original grille in place, but I have filed out the top corners to square off the shape slightly.  At the moment my plan is to keep the badge and bottom curve but replace the lattice and top part of the grille frame.

 

Don't worry about the apparent poor fitment, it's just temporarily assembled.  As the two photos above show, I've given the bonnet bulge a slight under cut with a razor saw to give the impression that the vents actually go through to the engine bay.  It's a pity I slipped with the saw and put a mark on the bonnet but I'm sure a little filler will fix it (it's just a bit too deep to sand out).

 

I also taped the rear valance in place, its not encouraging.

 

I think the best thing will be to glue it in place and file it down to fit.  It'll mean altering the build sequence slightly but I can't see any way around it if I want these parts to fit together.

 

One of the things that I've been pondering is the colour scheme for this build; I don't mind the burgundy and cream, I've got it on a Corgi Rolls-Royce Corniche that I restored but I didn't fancy repeating the colour scheme and I don't think I found any pictures of real cars that quite matched those colours (not to say there isn't one).  I toyed with the idea of dark blue with dark red upholstery, but I've got that colour scheme set aside for another build.  Silver and grey seemed quite popular colours but are perhaps a little too boring.  I'd pretty much settled on metallic blue with dark red seats, I've even found pictures of one in that colour scheme (handy, as I wasn't sure what colour carpets were fitted. You can see for yourself here.

[johnlambert]

Time for today's update.  I've not done a lot as I've been caught up in sensible stuff like cleaning and gardening.

 

The engine and gearbox, even at this stage it's a handsome lump.

 

I've cut the fake mesh out of the grille, because I've hacked the nose about I need to reshape the top half.  Even if I wasn't reshaping I think I'd replace the fake mesh with some open mesh.

 

You can see where I've cut it away but I don't quite know how I'll get it to the right shape?  Current thoughts are that I'll have to build up the grille surround with putty and use styrene strip to make up the missing part, or maybe a segment of plastic tube to get the corner shape?

[johnlambert]

Only a tiny bit of progress.

 

I've got a couple of options for the grille, plus some replacement windscreen wipers.  I really hope I've not ruined the grille beyond all hope.

 

Some white Milliput to shape the grille opening and hide the holes that were (I assume) where the body came off the sprue.

[johnlambert]

Time for another brief update after more fiddling around with the Maserati's grille.

 

Cutting and splicing the grille surround to give it a squarer shape.

 

Sanding down the putty, I think it's almost there.  I need to add a little filler on the right hand side (as you look at this picture) but it's not bad.  Probably not symmetrical but I'm willing to bet that the real thing wasn't either and that no two cars were quite the same.

 

And I've fitted the rear valance.  Well, it fits where it touches and will need a fair bit of making good.  There aren't any locating pins or tabs either, which is a bit of a surprise as most of the kit seems quite well thought out in that respect.

 

Fingers crossed that I might be able to throw some primer at the body by the weekend.

[johnlambert]

Not much to show, but a little filler applied:

 

Depending on the job I use either Milliput for building up large volumes and Squadron putty for filling smaller gaps, this time it was Squadron putty, which is quite good as long as you don't get it near any paint.

[Six97s]

That's coming on nicely.  I have one of these part built in the loft somewhere.   With all the corrections listed in this thread and @cmatthewbacon's, I'm not sure I'm brave enough to resurrect it!

[johnlambert]

@Six97s don't let my efforts put you off, I think it builds up quite nicely even without hacking it about.

 

There's an OOB built one on the Scale Auto forum

 

Or maybe I'll take on yours if you don't want it - lol

[Sabrejet]

Have you settled on a colour yet?

[johnlambert]

10 minutes ago, Sabrejet said:

Have you settled on a colour yet?

I have, thanks.  Light metallic blue, Tamiya Pearl Light Blue, which I've asked my local shop to get in.

 

The interior will be dark red for the seats (Tamiya Hull Red looks good) with beige carpet.  I hope it turns out a bit like this one.

[Sabrejet]

Great minds think alike: there I was thinking that this would look great in pale metallic blue!