Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) 1964 Austin mini Super BAP 245B conversion from mini cooper

[Spiny]

Good work with the screen surrounds. I'd not have thought of getting the chrome strip represented in that way, so that's one I'll be filing in the memory bank ready for when I get a build with those.

 

Extremely detailed work going on here too - changing the gear linkage is testimony to this and gives a good omen for the finished product.

[malpaso]

Excellent approach on the screen surrounds.  This detail is something that lets down 99% of Mini kit builds for anyone who's ever owned a real mini (3 in my case).

Nice model altogether.

Cheers

Will

[Jo NZ]

The pudding stirrer gearstick certainly brought back some memories - including (almost a reflex reaction) dropping the left arm to the floor to start the thing! Did this one have the floor mounted starter button?

[onethritysecond]

On 04/05/2021 at 01:29, Jo NZ said:

The pudding stirrer gearstick certainly brought back some memories - including (almost a reflex reaction) dropping the left arm to the floor to start the thing! Did this one have the floor mounted starter button?

You know I don't know - it was only very early cars that had that but not sure when it was phased out. Also, being a Super Deluxe it may have been up-spec'd to a key start. I'll have to watch the series again and see if I can spot it!

[onethritysecond]

A few small jobs this week plus a couple of minor set backs!

 

Firstly, pictures of the car in the 60s seem to show a black number plate light whereas pictures of the car now, post restoration, show a chrome plated one. The kit’s one is chrome but I decided to, wherever possible, stick to how it appeared in TV shows so I striped the chrome with a little bleach and painted it satin black with a little matt white for the lens. Self-explanatory really and not worth a picture!

 

Next I moved on to the number plates – the car had black plates with separate white plastic letters, typical of the 60s before the slow introduction of reflective plates towards the end of the decade -and I used a technique I have used quite a few times now.

 

Measuring a few 60s number plates on my garage wall shows that the letters are 80mm tall, which scales down to 3.33mm so I use 3mm Slaters plastic letters as being near enough.

 

 

Recently they started coming in a plastic bag but they used to come vacuum packed to a piece of card and these are much easier to use as they don’t ping off never to be seen again when cutting them out!

This also helps as, looking at period pictures of the car, the ‘4’ is an open ‘continental’ 4, i.e the upright doesn’t reach all the way to the top of the diagonal, and this is easier to achieve with the vacuum-packed letters. I had never seen this on a number plate before but once I had noticed it I spotted it on several cars of this age in TV series of the time, so it may have been a quirk of the number plate makers nearest to the film studios? The restored version of the car has a normal closed 4.

 

Cut out all of the letters for both plates before you start as you have to work quickly. Use a bit of masking tape to practice the spacing with one of the sets of letters.

 

 

Paint one plate with a thickish coat of satin black (or gloss if you prefer but satin looks more correct to me) – use enamel (Humbrol 85) as this is slower drying than acrylic and gives you a bit more time – this will stick the letters on. Transfer the other set of letters with the point of a scalpel to match your pattern. Repeat for the other plate using the completed plate as your pattern.

 

 

The letters are a little thick for true scale (although this is more obvious when doing reflective plates) and once dry you may want to sand them down a bit but I have never bothered and you are probably only going to knock them off anyway!

 

 

Another thing the original car has that the restored version doesn’t is white rubber covers on the over riders (bumpers to protect the bumpers from bumps I suppose) – these were aftermarket accessories I believe. It was here that I had the first minor mishap – when masking the over riders I somehow managed to break the front bumper, must be a weak point. It’s an easy fix but annoying. Ironically, in a lot of period pictures, the rear bumper is very beat up, almost flattened in the middle but the front is OK! This is one aspect of the original car that I won’t be trying to re-create as I can’t see how to do it convincingly.

 

 

Second minor set-back is that, with the interior installed, the chassis doesn’t quite go all the way in, which stops the rear skirt from fitting properly.

 

 

Next pic shows the chassis fit without the interior installed – it sits maybe a mm further in and the skirt fits perfectly. It seems to be something to do with the door cards as, on the removing one of them, it fitted better on that side. Interior seemed to be assembled correctly so hopefully just a question of tweaking somehow, otherwise removing a bit from the rear of the chassis to clear the skirt will probably do it.

 

 

[Sabrejet]

Nice work on the number plate. I am going to see if I can find any episodes of R&H(D) on the net and see if it's still as I remembered it. I'll report back...

[Paws4thot]

Nice job. A couple of general points (may not apply to this car):-

1. The distributor on a new(ish) Mini would normally have a cardboard weather cover between it and the front grille.
2. The front bumper actually can get very banged up. I've rescued M*n*s that the driver of had run over a block in the road and got stuck. So don't sweat that one; it's probably more accurate than you know!

[onethritysecond]

Work and domestic commitments have meant that it has taken me weeks to do what could probably have been done in an evening or two!

 

Much disassembling and fettling of the interior and the skirts means that I have finally got the chassis to fit well enough! Humbrol gloss red (19?) was a close enough match to Tartan red to touch in a bit.

 

 

‘Austin Mini’ transfer came form my Motobitz mini countryman kit, which has transfers for both Austin and Morris versions but only a Morris grill so meant they could be spared for this project. Of course I didn’t read the instructions about cutting close to the image until it was too late so there is rather too much carrier film visible! The real car usually sported a GB sticker on the boot lid (although a bit smaller than this one) so I used the one form the original kit.

 

Next came the moustache bits for the grill – picture shows cooper grill (could be Revell or Fujimi, can't remember) to provide the moustaches, one of the resin Austin grills kindly supplied by geebee and the other resin grill with moustaches grafted on.

 

 

I am making a point of showing it place without the bumper as they all but disappear behind the over riders once fitted!

 

 

 

Sliding door windows needed a seal adding – I couldn’t tell what colour this is meant to be (I would assume black?) but all I could find to use was some silver pinstriping tape meant for radio-controlled aircraft (or possibly kites?) picked up years ago from a long defunct model shop.

 

 

Last thing was the exhaust, which I now think should have been a single box system rather than the two box one from the kit. It doesn’t meet properly at the front (presumably) because of the alterations I made to the manifold but nobody looks underneath! Remote gear change has been shortened but I couldn't find any clear pictures of what it was meant to look like so I took a best guess!

 

 

 

 

 

From here on in it was just a matter of assembling in the windows and bumpers etc and I am calling it finished. I have started to work on some figures of the three main characters from the series and I will wait to see how they turn out before posting in ready for inspection.

 

Chris

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

Cracking. One of the best 'Minbins' I've seen in a long time.

It's funny, but my memory of the series says that the Mini was Old English white!?

But that was the Vauxhall, I think. It was always a favourite on TV.

[keefr22]

Excellent work, lovely little Min !

 

Keith

[dnl42]

Nice! 

[klubman01]

Great job.

Trevor

[Marco F.]

Well done Chris. It looks like an original MK1 Mini, nowadays quite rare on the road 

congratulations 

Marco F