A Brace of 1/12 Revell Custom Choppers

[81-er]

I hear that when one hits 40 you’re supposed to buy a motorbike or sports car, grow your hair long (if you’ve still got any), and trade the mrs in for a younger model. I’ve already got the hair (from 20 years of playing in heavy metal bands), I’m rather attached to my lady, and we’ve just bought a house that needs a fair bit of work so digging out these from the dark depths of my parents’ loft will have to suffice!

 

 

I’ve had these around a decade or so but hadn’t got any further than taking a few bits off the sprues. I decided to start with the Gambler kit, though these will probably end up being built in tandem as I’m thinking of doing some parts swapping between the two. Decal wise, I’m not sure if I’ll use anything other than the license plate decal from the Gambler kit, the rest of the designs are “of their era” shall we say.

 

 

I will be using the scallops and green pin stripes from Aces Wild, however

 

 

I’ve made a start on cleaning up the frame and filling some of the sink holes and ejector pin marks. There’s still a way to go yet and the lower plates will need some attention when I come to join the frame as the alignment isn’t perfect

 

 

 

I’ve also glued the bottom into one of the tanks and applied some filler. I think I need to get a tube of something more suited to larger areas of filling as I only have a tube of Vallejo precision plastic putty at the moment. This seems to be a good product (first time using it), these areas feel more suited something I could trowel on and level out over the width of the tank as there’s quite a step

 

 

I also assembled the engine and part of the transmission. While the engine looks ok from the front, there’s some obvious joins around the side and areas where the chrome plate has chipped off during my attempts to remove the flash

 

 

 

I had resigned myself to just having to touch in the missing chrome as best I could with some paint and living with the gaps, until I removed the tape I’d used to hold the transmission together while it glued. It seems there was a reaction between the adhesive in the tape and the chrome plating and the tape took a large amount of the chrome with it

 

 

I may have utilised some of the more colourful words in the English language at this point. Then I figured if the chrome was ruined anyway, it gave me a chance to do something about the excess chrome flash and gaps I had been left with

 

 

After perusing the web for ideas on how to fix this, I discovered a few builds where the builder had removed the chrome plating and painted the parts instead, which I preferred the look of. My plan now is to remove the chrome plating from all parts, except for the wheels. Although I may still change my mind and strip the wheels as well. This works out rather nicely as there’s some nasty ejector pin marks on some parts, plus some wrinkling of the chrome

 

 

There’s also some nasty seem lines on the triple trees

 

 

That brings me up to date. Progress may be slow as it has to be fitted around work, the kids, sorting the house etc, but I’m hoping to still manage to make a reasonable rate of progress. I’m currently mulling over the best way to modify the fork/triple tree assembly to enable me to install it after the frame is joined/filled/painted, as that would appear to be a wise move to save me an awful lot of fiddly work and masking. I’m thinking that drilling out the steerer tube from below and replacing with a piece of rod of the right diameter might work. That way I can maintain the flush look on top, then disguise the end of the rod under the lower triple tree to look like a bolt. Comments/suggestions welcomed.

[Mumbly]

That’s a lot of chrome!

 

I am with you on the forks and frame, I would probably go with brass tube as plastic rod might be too bendy.  I used mirror foil on the forks of the KH250 that I recently finished, or bare metal foil is nearly as good.

 

If you have a lot of filling, maybe use some plastic sheet and sand it back rather than filling, the other benefit for this method is if you get the plastic well glued up a bit of pressure will push the melting plastic up the gaps so you don’t need to fill.  Just give it at least a day to cure properly.

 

Always good to get some more bikes on the rosta.

[81-er]

I'm with you on using metal rod, I've got a few coat hanger's I'm eyeing up as possible donors for the pivot. I'm also considering using some aluminium rod to replace the top end of the forks, I found a build that did that and it looked really effective. Alternatively I've got some self adhesive foil left over from shielding control cavities on a guitar.

 

Thanks for the suggestion of using plastic sheet, I'll add that to the ideas pot.

[81-er]

My next job was to have a crack at removing the chrome plating. I nabbed some plastic trays from the kid’s crafting box and laid the parts out. The parts from Gambler are in the coloured trays with the Aces Wild parts on the clear one

 

 

I grabbed the Mr Muscle from under the sink, headed to the garage and set to work

 

 

 

A few minutes in and I could see it was already doing the job

 

 

After about 20 minutes or so I rinsed the parts off. On the whole, a pretty good result

 

 

However, one sprue from the Aces Wild kit had barely been touched

 

 

Gathering the parts back up I noticed that the Aces Wild parts were much cleaner than the Gambler bits, which still had a lot of varnish residue on them.

 

 

I dried the parts off well with some kitchen roll and a bit of gentle hairdryer action. I gave the Gambler parts and the stubborn Aces Wild sprue another hour-ish long soak in Mr Muscle, which has left the Gambler parts as clean as the Aces Wild parts. The stubborn sprue is still being stubborn, so I’ve clipped a couple of the smaller parts off and put them in a disposable plastic cup with some bleach. I’m leaving that to soak for 24 hours to see if that shifts it.

 

I started cleaning up the filler, with the addition of my LED bedside light brought down to my desk to give me some more light to see the imperfections by. The righthand side of the frame came up pretty well, just a small touch more filler needed in these two sink marks

 

 

The additional light showed up this ejector mark, so I filled that along with the previous two areas and set it aside to dry

 

 

 

The tank needed some more filler to help smooth out the transition from the sides to the underside

 

 

The lefthand side of the frame is pretty good now, just a bit of filler required here

 

 

A bit of filler was stuck on the top of the battery to remove some sink marks and a bit on the side of the rear fender to hide a step at the seam line around the mounting pegs

 

 

 

I filled both sides of the drive belt as there were sink marks by the pulleys

 

 

 

The underside of the seat will need some attention in due course, I’ll probably use some Milliput for this. I’m going to leave that until the frame and rear fender are assembled as I’ll be better able to assess the shape I’ll need to sculpt it to at that point

 

 

The front fender is cleaned up and nearly ready for some primer. I’ll give it a final once over with the fine sanding stick beforehand

 

 

Time to start on the wheels. For Gambler, I’m currently going with the spoked option and seeing how it works out sticking with the chrome. There’s another set of these in the other kit, as well as two alloy options. I’m thinking of using the alternative alloy design from this bike on Aces Wild and binning the alloys from that kit as they’re a very dated tribal spoked design. If I mess these up or decide I don’t like the chrome, I can always stripped the spoked set from the other bike

 

 

There were some nasty ejector marks on the mating faces of the front wheels, exacerbated by a build-up of plating on the flash

 

 

I cleaned those up and took as much of the chrome off the faces as I dared, being particularly careful along the inner edge as the spoke faces come very close to that

 

 

Glue applied, I clamped the two halves together with a load of pegs and set aside to dry for the night

 

 

Turning my attention to the rear wheel, it was much the same story. The outer rim was concave, so the glue joint was not going to be the best

 

 

I added some marks to help with alignment as it was a little difficult to tell the alignment features from the ejector marks. I didn’t do much in the way of cleaning off the outer faces as it was very late and I didn’t think it would make any difference to the fit of the tyres

 

 

Clothes pegs didn’t have the reach to fit over the rim, so being wary of using masking tape after the incident with the transmission I elected to wrap some paper over the wheel and tightly tape with sticky tape

 

 

Come the morning I unwrapped/unclamped the wheels. Not a bad result, just a bit of squeeze out on the inside to sort. I used Revell Contacta Special contact cement (mainly because I bought a tub when I originally bought the kits as the instructions said to use that for the chrome parts). Preliminary poking with a cocktail stick suggests the excess should be easy to remove like that

 

 

 

The join line on the rear wheel wasn’t amazing, thankfully it doesn’t appear to be obvious between the spokes

 

 

The joint on the front wheel was much better

 

 

I couldn’t resist slipping the tyres on. I think once I’ve removed the excess glue between the spokes that these should be ok

 

 

The final thing I did was to take my micro drill and have a small test at drilling out between one of the moulded spokes on the rear sprocket. Two holes and a bit of scalpel work to remove the bit in between and it looks pretty good to me. I’ll continue to drill the rest out when I next manage to work on the bike.

 

[Natter]

Great way of dealing with the mid-life crisis!

[81-er]

I managed to fit in a bit of modelling time between everything else I had to do over the weekend. First job on the list was the continuation of removing the infill on the rear sprocket, starting by drilling out the corners:

 

 

After much careful scalpel work to remove the plastic between my drill holes I was left with this. The top part is about as good as I’m going to get it before paint (other than a little sanding to get rid of the last loose bits clinging on), the bottom is the part from the other bike which is still to do. That’s one of the parts that has been very stubbornly resisting the chrome removal, I’ve been soaking that and the rest of the stubborn bits repeatedly over the weekend and it’s gradually giving in

 

 

After having given the frame a last once over, I figured it was good enough to glue together. I made copious use of tape to keep it clamped together due to the awkward shape. I attempted to keep the bottom plates aligned with more tape wrapped around the joins as they were quite badly misaligned

 

 

That was left to harden up from Friday night to last night. When I removed the tape I discovered it leaves a really nasty sticky residue (it’s very old tape), so I’ll have to get some more that doesn’t. Stickiness aside, it’s not come out too badly. There’s less filler required than I was expecting on the main frame:

 

 

 

The bottom mounting plates are going to need some sorting out though. I’m hoping I can sort most of them with filler, with the exception of the transmission mounting bracket. That’s quite badly out of alignment, I think I’ll cut through the glue joint and try and glue it back together in the right alignment

 

 

That’ll have to wait until I’ve dealt with the tape residue.

 

On a more positive note, the fuel tank and primary drive are looking much better after another round of filler and sanding. I think I’ll add those to the pile awaiting primer

 

 

I cleaned off the flash from the exhausts. They’ve been moulded with large recesses in the back, presumably to save on plastic. I think that will be a Milliput job for when I do the underside of the seat

 

 

 

I want to do an alignment check with the engine in the frame beforehand as well, which will have to wait for a while. In my research to see what other people have done with these, I discovered there used to be a supercharger kit available for these. I managed to track down the chap who made them and I’ve asked him to make me a couple. I’m hoping this exhaust still fits around the blower

 

 

 

My next task was the forks. These had some big chunks of sprue on the sides, some nasty seem lines on the tripe trees, as well as a couple of ejector pin marks on the back:

 

 

 

I had debated removing the locating pegs for the handlebars and replacing them with metal rod (which would be a first for me), however the decision was taken out of my hands as I managed to knock the pins off during clean-up

 

 

Still, it gave me an excuse to try out my new pin vice and micro drills

 

 

Yes, I did start one of the holes in the wrong place, nothing a spot of filler won’t fix. I put some blobs on the ejector pin marks at the same time. Now the frame is together, I can look into what the bore size is of the steerer tube and hunt for an appropriate sized bit of rod to attached the forks to the frame later on. I haven’t removed the kit pivot pin yet, I’ll leave that until I’m ready to attempt the surgery (and I’ve taken the brave pills!)

 

 

I figured I might as well clean the handlebars up while I was there, there wasn’t much to do on them

 

 

I turned my attention to the back primary cover. There was a bit of flash and some enormous ejector marks on the back

 

 

 

After a bit of cleaning up the front was looking pretty good. Note that there’s another piece to mount in the two holes in the “lump”

 

 

The back was looking better than it did, but it still had some marks. I filled those after this shot was taken and put it aside to dry

 

 

Looking at the brake rotors, a lot of the vent holes were full of the varnish put on before the chroming process. The ones on the front rotor appeared to be about 0.3mm, which correlated with my smallest drill size. Before:

 

 

Halfway through, the left side is done with the right still to go:

 

 

Finished and removed from the sprues. There were a couple of holes that where a bit close to the edge for comfort, so I just cleaned those up as best I could with a pin. I decided against giving the same treatment to the rear rotor, its holes were much smaller in diameter and very close to the edge

 

 

For a quick win after that, I glued the two halves of the oil tank together. I’ll add the end caps another day as I want to square the ends of the tank halves after they’re dry

 

 

Moving on, I turned my attention to this section of sprue containing my chosen pair of grips (there are two sets in the kit), the kickstand, license plate holder, and the additional piece for the primary backplate I mentioned earlier

 

 

The license plate holder had a bit ejector pin mark, smack bang in the middle of the face that the plate decal will attach to:

 

 

A bit of a sand and that left a much better result

 

 

Given the amount of clean up I’ve had to do on them, I’m rather glad I decided to take the chrome off the plated parts. I’ll end up with a much cleaner model.

 

The kickstand thankfully only needed minor cleaning to remove the sprue mark. I’ll leave it attached to this bit of sprue it’s painted. It’s the end that glues into the frame, so any bit that isn’t painted won’t be seen

 

 

This part is the additional bit of the rear primary cover, it wraps partly over the top of the belt drive. It had a bit of flash both by the mounting pegs and along the bottom edge

 

 

It was fairly easily cleaned up

 

 

The last job of the night was the hand grips/controls. I’ve opted for this set as both the brake and clutch levers are hydraulic, the other set only has a hydraulic brake lever and it looks a little odd. There’s a bit of a recess on the underside of the reservoirs. I think they’d look better filled, I just need to have a think about the best way to clean that up afterwards

 

 

 

Cleaned up, I put them on a couple of cut down cocktail sticks for paint. I gave them a tiny bit more clean up after this as my camera showed up some flash I’d missed (the bonus of having a macro lens). You can also see from the 2nd shot why I’m still thinking about how to clean up the filler if I use it on the reservoirs, they’re tiny and access is tight

 

 

 

While I didn’t work on it last night, I’m debating how best to remove the tribal design and the flame inside the Maltese cross, without removing the cross. A micro chisel and some very narrow sanding sticks? There’s also a curve top to bottom on this primary cover (the other option is flat with raised ace of spades detail). I’m open to suggestions, either way I’m going to need to buy more tools as I have nothing suitable at the moment

 

[81-er]

Things have been extra hectic here of late, so I haven’t had a lot of free time to work on the bikes. This update covers a lot of 5 minute moments as well as a solid session from last night, so you’ll have to excuse the light levels being all over the place.

 

The first job I managed to fit in was squaring up the ends of the oil tank. As you can see from the photos below, there were some pronounced steps at the joints, but nothing a couple of minutes and a bit of sandpaper soon fixed that:

 

 

 

 

After that, I got the ends glued on (it’s back in the clamp as one of the joints between the halves came apart during my attempts to square the ends off):

 

 

Here it is after the glue set. There’s some filler work to be done to hide the seams:

 

 

 

I also cleaned up the filler on the triple trees and the back of the primary backplate:

 

 

 

The bottom ejector pin mark on the backplate got another dose of filler, I just didn’t take a pic of that. I did get the belt guard glued to the other side of it though:

 

 

That’s since had some filler and blending in undertaken.

 

The big bit of news is that the supercharger kits arrived from America yesterday. Here’s one of them with a cotton bud for scale (excuse the dust in the pot):

 

 

Here they are both laid out showing the options of short or long velocity stacks:

 

 

I’m still debating the intake arrangement. I’d like to use the stock Maltese cross air cleaner for at least one of the bikes, maybe I’ll have the other with the long velocity stacks.

 

I came to the conclusion that I’d be best removing the flame from the primary cover with a chisel, so I bought myself a Trumpeter 1mm version which is rapidly becoming one of my favourite tools. I went from this:

 

 

To this in only a few minutes

 

 

It still needs a bit of filler and smoothing, but it’s a big improvement. I tackled the tribal design with varying grades of sanding stick, starting with a 60 grit to take the bulk off. In hindsight, using something that course was a mistake as it’s left a lot of gouges to fill. This is it after the first round of filler. Not perfect, but an improvement:

 

 

I put that aside to let the next lot of filler properly dry and had a crack at the air cleaner with my new chisel:

 

 

 

Much like the primary cover, there’s still some tidying to do but it’s a big improvement.

 

Partly because I wanted to see how the supercharger will fit and partly because I wanted to try out my new PE razor saw blades, I had a crack at that. The cam cover needs to be removed to fit the drive for the blower, meaning this projection needed to come off:

 

 

The razor saw took it off nicely then I flattened the face using some sandpaper and opened up the hole to fit the projection on the back of the blower drive. That was when I discovered the back of the blower drive wasn’t flat, so I had to do a bit of surgery to that as well. I’m contemplating removing the projection that would contain the drive shaft for the blower and replacing it with some metal tube, which would have the double advantage of pinning the drive to the blower. Here’s how I left things:

 

[81-er]

Not a huge amount of progress since the last update, in part because I’ve been the recipient of more glue than the models. Watch out for what’s above you when doing DIY, standing up into the corner of a wall cupboard isn’t fun. Doubly so when you spend 6 hours potential modelling time in A&E! (I’m fine, just a small cut that needed gluing, but better to get checked out).

 

Continuing on with the engine, I’ve cleaned up the pushrod covers. There was quite a lot of flash on these that I hope is evident from the before & after comparison shot below:

 

 

 

I’m still not 100% sure about the point I’ve got them to. There’s still flash that I’ve struggling to remove in between the two covers as they’re so close together, plus the fit on the engine isn’t great. Looking through some of the other builds on here I’m starting to be tempted to chop them off the bases and build replacements out of some brass tubing. Still a little apprehensive as that would be a first for me.

 

I treated myself to a set of the super skinny Albion sanding sticks and put them to good use continuing the clean up of the air cleaner and primary covers. They’ve helped no end in getting rid of the worst of the scrape marks left from the operations to remove the unwanted moulding details. They now look like this:

 

 

 

The primary cover still looks badly gouged from the 60 grit I used to take the bulk of the tribal pattern off, but that’s actually the filler in the grooves.

 

I dug out the parts from the other bike to do a before/after comparison. It was interesting to note that the parts for the other bike are an opaque ivory whereas the ones from this bike are slightly translucent:

 

 

 

The last bit I did last night was clean up the front brake calliper. I didn’t take a before shot, but much the same as the rest of the formerly chrome parts there was a lot of flash or varnish residue around the edge. I also fettled the mounting on the fork so that it actually fitted into the slot. I think that was blocked with varnish residue. I’ll add a back to it from plasticard another day, and fill the backs of the mudguard mounts on the forks.