1/24 Tired Old Transit

[Anteater]

It's been a busy time in the Anteater household recently, compounded by my laptop packing up and it being seemingly impossible to buy a new one for less than £100,000,000,000. Therefore, model making time has been limited and I haven't been able to post on here anyway. By way of consolation (mainly for me), here's a catch-up on where I've got to. 

 

Look, a Transit van:

 

 

Woop-Woop, that's the sound of da Police... Except this comes from the era of nee-na nee-na instead. Anyway, it's not going to be built as transport for any form of Old Bill (other terms are available). I'll be building this as a ratty old Transit that's been long since de-fleeted from it's first owners and is now more likely to be driven by people who actively avoid interactions with the police. 

 

The kit is curbside (to use the Americanism) so there aren't many parts on the sprues but Italeri have done a nice job with the body moulding given the age of the original kitifisation process. One thing that lets it down however are the door handles. 

 

 

  

A quick scoop and drill to insert some rod and it's much better.

 

 

 

 

Next up, I wanted to build something different than the standard panel van. Seeing as it has cargo doors on each side the obvious conversion is a Kombi / double cab. That means cutting holes in the side and adding some interior detailing but luckily Motobitz offer some resin door inserts. It's still a leap of faith to start cutting and it's quite thick plastic. I mocked up the position of the inserts and drew round the inside of the window frame before getting the drill out...

 

 

 

Eeek! No turning back now... much cutting later and I had roughly the right size of hole...

 

 

 

Repeat on the other side with a lot of fine tuning and careful sanding later and it's a Kombi

 

 

 

 

This age of Transit had various bulkhead options from full steel bulkhead, window bulkhead, half bulkhead or none at at all; the latter option being available to inject some extra peril when carrying goods and help with creating storylines for the BBC's new Saturday evening hosiptal drama, Casualty. Italeri tooled up for the window bulkhead option which sits directly behind the front doors, but for the Kombi the bulkhead needs to be moved back behind the cargo doors. This is quite straightforward but takes a bit of trimming as the body tapers slightly towards the rear.

 

 

 

There we go.

 

 

 

With that, the shell was ready for some colour. I first applied a coat of Tamiya Fine Primer before going in with a good period shade; Ford Tuscan Beige courtesy of Halfords. It's a cool colour on the right car and went on beautifully but I mused on it for a week after spraying whilst I decided whether I liked it on the Transit. As much as I wanted to love it I couldn't help but think it was exactly the same shade as the little presents the cats leave in the garden, the same ones I have to clean off the underside of the lawnmower.

 

Sorry beige, good for a camper van but not quite right for the Kombi, maybe some other time...

 

 

Swish swish swish...

 

It's a Vauxhall blue but it looks right to me.

 

 

The paint quality wasn't quite as good as the beige becuase I didn't strip it back completely, but I'm weathering the paint back anyway. 

 

 

 

 

Now, the thing about old vans is that they all have a history and I like how that remains evident. My pick-up still has sticky gook on the side from the previous owners and loads of vans have ghost signs. Time for a bit of experimenting...

 

I imagined what type of company might have bought a Kombi new, needing to transport materials and people, so I settled on a fictional Groundworks contractors from south Tyneside. Look, these things matter to me, ok....

 

Stickers on to make the old signwriting. Don't judge me on the glitter letters, they were the cheapest 15mm sticky letters that I could find. Don't bother calling the pre-Phoneday number, it's from Ofgems fictional "theatrical" list of area codes, backdated suitably. 

 

 

A once-over with the matt varnish and then off with the letters....

 

 

 

Not completely inept and about what I was looking for.

 

 

That's where it stands right now. More to come, IT permitting.

 

Anteater.

 

 

[dannybgoode]

Nice. Ultra pendant note; uk phone numbers of that era were 5 or 6 digits :). Really nice job though. Love old Transits and love the backstory you’re creating for this one. 

[Chimpion]

You've achieved a really nice effect with the letters - a great idea!

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Works for me. It looks great.

[Marco F.]

Great looking project...I'll keep an eye on this. I love the ideas, especially the way to create the "gone" writing on the back door and the scraped colour on the side, so the "original" colour starts to appear due to careless every day use...lovely 🤗

Marco F 

[Anteater]

2 hours ago, dannybgoode said:

Nice. Ultra pendant note; uk phone numbers of that era were 5 or 6 digits :). Really nice job though. Love old Transits and love the backstory you’re creating for this one. 

Generally in the provinces yes, but the 091 area code was already 3+4 by the 1980s. Same as 061, 051, 071 etc. Post phone day the area code became 0191 but still followed by 3+4. I thought of doing a 4+5 provincial number but the 3+3+4 fitted the tailgate better! 🙂

[dannybgoode]

@Anteater I knew the area codes didn’t have the first 1 but thought the local part of the number was only 5 or 6 numbers for some reason. 
 

You are indeed correct though although some cities did acquire and extra number (such as Sheffield and Leeds)   
 

Really nice effect either way  

Edited November 16, 2020 by dannybgoode

[Anteater]

@dannybgoode Now this is interesting (possible only to me and you), but the Newcastle area changeover took 5 years starting from 1982.

 

091 4 indicates the area immediately south of the Tyne which I think was implemented around 1984-1985 so if I register the van as as a B or C reg which is correct for a Phase 2 facelift Tranny, it would have worn that phone number from new. Phone Day was in 1995 so if a van was kept on fleet for 10 years it would have only ever displayed 091, never having been updated to 0191.

 

It turns out that Tyneside was a very late adopter of the new STD code. Many other cities had been assigned them from the 1960s onwards, such as Liverpool being given 051 which used to be my local code. What boggles my mind is that London kept 01 all the way up to 1990 when I could have sworn they adopted 071 and 081 before that. But then, that's London for you. I went there once.  

 

[dannybgoode]

11 hours ago, Anteater said:

@dannybgoode Now this is interesting (possible only to me and you), but the Newcastle area changeover took 5 years starting from 1982.

 

091 4 indicates the area immediately south of the Tyne which I think was implemented around 1984-1985 so if I register the van as as a B or C reg which is correct for a Phase 2 facelift Tranny, it would have worn that phone number from new. Phone Day was in 1995 so if a van was kept on fleet for 10 years it would have only ever displayed 091, never having been updated to 0191.

 

It turns out that Tyneside was a very late adopter of the new STD code. Many other cities had been assigned them from the 1960s onwards, such as Liverpool being given 051 which used to be my local code. What boggles my mind is that London kept 01 all the way up to 1990 when I could have sworn they adopted 071 and 081 before that. But then, that's London for you. I went there once.  

 

And then of course there were the new ‘up and coming’ cities where they felt the inward part of the number needed an extra digit as they’d run out of numbers so the lines of Sheffield, Leeds, Bristol etc got a new 4 digit STD and then (usually)  a 2. Caused huge confusion because people thought the dialling code for Sheffield was 01142 and the inward number remained xxx xxx. 
 

Giving them the 01xx STD code allowed the overall number length to not exceed the likes of Newcastle and the areas that went to 01xxx and kept 6 digits (Worthing for example went to 01903 from 0903). From memory working in call centres at the time this was important for software reasons but I could be wrong. 
 

Similarly London went to 020 7xxx xxx or 8xxx xxx depending on whether it was inner or outer London this bringing all UK phone numbers to a common length inc the STD. This gave London a common STD of 020 for the whole region but again allowed for an exponential increase in phone numbers. 
 

Very occasionally when driving round the country you’ll see a shop that’s never updated its signage. Looks rather quaint . I wonder if they’ll have to change again?

 

 And yes, apologies to those that don’t quite have the same interest in the history of UK phone number allocation  

 

 

[mbdesignart]

Interesting conversion, liking the mask and spray lettering. So much better looking after you swapped the hearing aid beige paint finish. Maureen Lipman would be proud of your interest in telephone numbers too. Do you have an ology in it? 🤣🤔

[dannybgoode]

12 hours ago, Anteater said:

What boggles my mind is that London kept 01 all the way up to 1990 when I could have sworn they adopted 071 and 081 before that. But then, that's London for you. I went there once. 

And of course London continues to be different because they went from an 01 STD to an 02x STD whereas everyone got moved, at last, to 01xx or 01xxx 🤣.  My aunt and uncle lived there and I have visited on many many occasions and my work in insurance occasionally takes me into 'The City'.  Any more than a week there and start to get twitchy and irritable though - certainly wouldn't want to live there...

[chrispisme]

Awesome!!

[Anteater]

A bit more progress. 

 

I set about improving the wheels as they are moulded without any wheel nut detail, not a problem if you fit the funky 1980's wheel trims but not acceptable if you prefer naked steels. No hard working van retained its wheel trims. Easily solved with a bit of 1mm rod, the only challenge being trimming little sections off flat and straight. 

 

The kit includes a spare wheel to which I applied the drill treatment. 

 

 

 

I'm happy enough with the wheels but I had a bit of a trouble with the rear lights... I'm convinced the right hand lamp looks slightly larger than the left but I'm just as convinced it's an optical illusion. It's all very strange as it doesn't look so obvious in a photograph. I think if you stare at something for long enough you start seeing things...

 

 

A lot of the parts in this kit seem to be designed to virtually snap into place with zero or minimal glue. Unfortunately, Italeri have been a kit keen with creating unnecessary tabs, particularly around the windows, seemingly to aid assembly when it would be aesthetically better without them. The rear lights are prime example. The body shell has two locating holes per lamp cluster but they are not equally placed on either the shell or each corresponding lamp. I can only think this is to make identification of the left and right parts "easier", pointlessly so. The issue is the locating rods are very obvious from the outside, even when painted with multiple coats of clear red and amber. I dirtied them up a bit to hide them in the end.

 

Same with the front indicators which don't represent my best work... but hey ho. For the grille and other plastic trim I've mixed up some grey as Transit plastic never stayed black for long. 

 

 

Looks much more like a Transit with that distinctive front end now. 

 

Anteater.  

[johnlambert]

That's looking good.

[Pete in Lincs]

Very good. Like the wheels. Well worth the effort. And yes, that RH rear light does look bigger. The indicator portion perhaps?

[Toftdale]

Most modellers seem to be the best critics, I wouldn't have noticed the issue with the lights unless you had said.  With the benefit of hindsight (which is always easy to do), could you have cut off the tab on the rear lights and the either used bare metal foil on the  back or painted the rear silver to hide it before gluing them in place?

[Anteater]

35 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Very good. Like the wheels. Well worth the effort. And yes, that RH rear light does look bigger. The indicator portion perhaps?

 

You could be right there, but apart from my shonky painting the left indicator appears to be moulded slightly squatter and wider than the right hand side. It's weird because it seems to measure the same. I'm going to pretend I've not noticed it. 

 

 

31 minutes ago, Toftdale said:

Most modellers seem to be the best critics, I wouldn't have noticed the issue with the lights unless you had said.  With the benefit of hindsight (which is always easy to do), could you have cut off the tab on the rear lights and the either used bare metal foil on the  back or painted the rear silver to hide it before gluing them in place?

 

I tried that on the front indicators but the root of the tab/rod remains visible within the lens, even when the sticky-out bit is no longer sticky-out. The only way to fully conceal it would be to paint the outer surface sliver and then apply amber clear over that, but that would never have the depth of clear lens. I can see the same issues in nearly every other reference photo of an Italeri Tranny so at least it's not just me!

 

Where would we be without being hypercritical of our own work...

[mbdesignart]

Liking the detail painting. I agree with the excess tab issue. Makes me wonder why the rods on the lights couldn't have been where the bulbs would go, at least that would make sense.

[Redstaff]

Liking the look of this one @Anteater something different from the norm, love the idea of the faded paint around the lettering 😁

 

[malpaso]

You could put some gaffer tape over one of the rear light clusters to disguise its odd-sizing and enhance the shonkiness?

[Anteater]

4 hours ago, malpaso said:

You could put some gaffer tape over one of the rear light clusters to disguise its odd-sizing and enhance the shonkiness?

 

It's almost like you're reading my mind... 😀

[Anteater]

Here's an update of limited interest... I can talk a good game but can't evidence any progress. As we all know, if it's not on the internet, then it didn't happen! 

 

My old laptop has finally packed up and this borrowed one doesn't have any photo software on it. The wearing-thin-global-pandemic-excuse means it's impossible to buy a new one at the moment. So while I sort that out (possibly not for a few weeks) I've gone dark and been model making off-radar. You've not missed too much but it's looking more Transity by the day. 

 

This thread is useless without photoz. I'll get it sorted... 

[Marco F.]

Sorry to hear this...unexpected consume☹️

But I think everyone of us will wait until your comeback🤗

Marco F 

 

[ElectricLightAndy]

I love builds like this that look "real life" realistic, I also have deceased laptop issues atm so I feel your frustration, I look forward to some updates... also are you going to be placing the obligatory copy of the 'sun' newspaper on the dash? 

 

Andy.

[Anteater]

The Sun???!!! Wouldn't line a litter tray with it...

 

But I have found another way to upload photographs! So, where did we get to...

 

A Kombi van needs a rear seat, which of course isn't supplied in the Italeri box. I raffled through a pile of old Mini parts and salvaged a rear seat. Once suitably cut down, painted and wrapped in Mr Model Houndstooth #1, it's a tolerably decent match for the front seats. It'll hardly be visible anyway. I toyed with having a lighter interior for easier viewing but darker grey looked more Transity to my eye. A note on the Mr Model Houndstooth #1; don't apply decal fix before placing the decal, it's not easy to reposition. 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, I decided the gearlever was too thick so substituted a length of rod which looks exactly the same in this photo. It is better though, honest. 

 

 

 

Floormats are courtesy of a rubber sheet of HO scale cobbles, and I made a bonus toolbox to cover the holes in the floor for the left-hand drive seat option. 

 

The instructions advise to mount the steering wheel upside down. I am more cleverer than than and thought it looked odd, so checked the reference brochure. I've added some column stalks too. I don't think much of white dial decals but couldn't really substitute them.

 

 

More in a minute...