MGB. The Rubber Bumper Variety

[johnlambert]

58 minutes ago, Redstaff said:

Love these cars, had an MGB GT back in the day, but they only seem to have kits of the soft tops not the hard top 

I have seen a resin transkit to convert the Aoshima MGB into a GT.  Or there's the Southeast Finecast metal MGB GT.

[Redstaff]

1 hour ago, johnlambert said:

I have seen a resin transkit to convert the Aoshima MGB into a GT.  Or there's the Southeast Finecast metal MGB GT.

Thanks John, might look in to that 😁

[malpaso]

9 hours ago, Redstaff said:

Love these cars, had an MGB GT back in the day, but they only seem to have kits of the soft tops not the hard top 

The rally Aoshima currently available has the factory Roadster hardtop,  but like you I'd like the GT, personally I think it better looking.  The C1 transkit seems to look well when built but Jack's the price of kit up a fair bit! 

[Marco F.]

C1 models is offering the transkit and soon they will also offer a Sebring GT

Marco F 

[Redstaff]

Like you say, the transkit is there but adding about £50 to the price of the kit is a bit steep

 

Ian

[Spiny]

Looks as though I'm too late to mention the C1 kit...

 

23 hours ago, Fnick said:

Didnt know humidity was that bad...now at least there is a reason for the wet coat on my Cadillac going hazy when drying... 😞. I'll need a humidityometer...

 

Nick

 

Going from my experience, humidity seems to have more impact than temperature, and a hazy clear does appear to be one of the results. I bought the cheapest humidity meter I could find, and it does the job. I've gone down to about 7 degrees C with no ill effects on finishes, although I try and follow the can by keeping to at least 10 degrees. But spraying clear at 75% RH just hinted at a dull finish so I came to the conclusion that the humidity was the bigger evil. That said, low temperatures and high humidity often (but not always!) go hand in hand so the thermometer can be a good proxy apart from when we get a wet summer spell like now.

[Spiny]

Been a while since I posted in this one, but decent weather and having got everything sprayed on the Mustang gave me a chance to add the colour coat onto this one.

 

 

It covered pretty well with only slight orange peel (the camera angle makes it look much worse than it is), so only needs a light sand before i clear it. I am surprised by how much the colour changes with the light, varying from the rich brown it appears above to a sort of Dairy Milk colour under other lighting conditions. Annoyingly there has been a small bit of shrinkage of the filler in the original wiper hole, but I'm hoping that most of that will go once I've cleared and polished it. And even if it doesn't, with it being so close to the windscreen trim I would hope the chrome will distract attention.

[galaxyg]

That's a very period shade.  I see brown cars are back in fashion now, albeit metallic.

[Windy37]

My dad had a brand new Maxi in that colour , with beige interior . 
Gary . 

[Mr Mansfield]

What a fantastically period colour! I’m sure I saw one of these before with a gold coach stripe instead of the chrome beading on the sides. Not sure if it was a factory option or a Halfords go faster special

 

great work, I’ll be watching with interest 

[dnl42]

This is looking grand! 

 

And you've absolutely captured that 1970's brown! It really is a good choice for those bumpers.

 

Could you do that loverly brown and orange seat striping as a decal?

 

On 8/9/2021 at 2:35 AM, Redstaff said:

Like you say, the transkit is there but adding about £50 to the price of the kit is a bit steep

Perhaps think of it as adding the kit to the conversion? Smaller percentage... 

[moviedrone]

gorgeous!

[Spiny]

23 hours ago, galaxyg said:

That's a very period shade.  I see brown cars are back in fashion now, albeit metallic.

 

Something of which I must plead guilty myself - one of my cars is a metallic copper colour which I would call brown (although the DVLA seem to think it's yellow???). And yes I did buy it new, so I did choose the colour...

 

1 hour ago, Mr Mansfield said:

What a fantastically period colour! I’m sure I saw one of these before with a gold coach stripe instead of the chrome beading on the sides. Not sure if it was a factory option or a Halfords go faster special

 

great work, I’ll be watching with interest 

 

I have considered the gold stripe, you can see a few in Google images here and the strip actually sits above the chrome strip:

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=russet+brown+mgb&client=firefox-b-d&sxsrf=AOaemvIWBpXmV_wndBUblOp7CW9RFOsw7w:1631047338562&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjZ7efp3O3yAhWXQUEAHTj7BfEQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1920&bih=927#imgrc=FOzocSeYk4JJhM

 

I have been tempted to see how the gold stripe from the XJS would look cut to size to fit this, but it just seems a bit fussy so I'm leaning heavily towards just having the chrome strip.

 

1 hour ago, dnl42 said:

This is looking grand! 

 

And you've absolutely captured that 1970's brown! It really is a good choice for those bumpers.

 

Could you do that loverly brown and orange seat striping as a decal?

 

Perhaps think of it as adding the kit to the conversion? Smaller percentage... 

 

Still deciding on the seats, but doubt it will be the striped seats as I'm just not keen on them. They're likely to end up either black of tan. Plenty of time to decide on that yet.

 

[Toftdale]

35 minutes ago, Spiny said:

I have considered the gold stripe, you can see a few in Google images here and the strip actually sits above the chrome strip:

 

Looking great so far, personally I believe the gold stripe would really worth the effort - Andy 

[Anteater]

Yeah, a stripe would definitely add to the groovyness. 

[Spiny]

I will have a look at the gold stripe at the weekend, but I'm thinking there may be a headache on the horizon.. I'm beginning to have my doubts about whether the jag stripe will fit without cutting out for the door handle (which would look rubbish).

[Toftdale]

18 minutes ago, Spiny said:

I will have a look at the gold stripe at the weekend, but I'm thinking there may be a headache on the horizon.. I'm beginning to have my doubts about whether the jag stripe will fit without cutting out for the door handle (which would look rubbish).

These might help

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stripes-Narrow-/322006373991?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286&mkrid=707-127634-2357-0

Andy

[Kitkent]

I like the brown paintjob! And decal stripes are your friend,i normally use sliver/aluminium and end up touching up the handles afterwards....Chris 

[Spiny]

Time to get started properly on the B now. Immediate impressions are that this is much simpler than the Jag was so I'm not expecting it to take as long to build - maybe 3 months or so if things go smoothly. I can't be too quick though, no more painted bodies left so I need to make it last until the warm weather

 

First job was to put a wash in the panel lines. Pretty simple job really, run Humbrol black wash into the lines, allow to dry then rub over with a cotton bud dipped in IPA to get rid of where the wash was outside the panel lines. Realise that it hasn't fully in the lines, repeat process and it's another job done, albeit not one which has come out very well on the photo. Next body job it to polish it, hopefully with no burn through.

 

 

In terms of painting the parts, the instructions are somewhat basic; flat black for the entire chassis (with moulded in engine) and all the parts for the front and rear suspension with the only different colour being "silver" for the front brake discs and hub. Not the most interesting look but I think that is partly down to there being limited colours available from Gunze at the time the kit was first made. So I've done mostly satin black, matt black for the gaiters on the steering arm and steel for the hubs with silver for the brake disks. I'm also in the process of adding paint to the engine and gearbox on the chassis - pics for that when complete, hopefully next week. In the meantime, here's the assembled front suspension. The steering arm clicks nice and tightly on to the hub assembly so it looks as though this one will have a robust steering mechanism.

 

 

And finally, I decided to jump ahead a bit and start painting the wheels. After completing half a wheel I've decided that painting a Rostyle wheel is high up on my list of frustrating modelling jobs, so I'm glad I got that early start rather than having to do the whole lot in one go. Half a wheel down so far, 3.5 to go. These are very fiddly work, are difficult to photograph well, and now I have taken the photo don't look as good as they did while painting. I'm not looking forward to the rest - little and often I think for these!

 

 

So there we are, onto the next project. Hope you all like it.

[Fnick]

Well I think that wheel looks very good. You're right about little and often. I tend to do the more tedious jobs that way and always at the start of the modelling session and then finish off with something more fun!

 

Nick

[Paul H]

1 hour ago, Spiny said:

And finally, I decided to jump ahead a bit and start painting the wheels. After completing half a wheel I've decided that painting a Rostyle wheel is high up on my list of frustrating modelling jobs, so I'm glad I got that early start rather than having to do the whole lot in one go. Half a wheel down so far, 3.5 to go. These are very fiddly work, are difficult to photograph well, and now I have taken the photo don't look as good as they did while painting. I'm not looking forward to the rest - little and often I think for these!

 

 

I've found that a sharpie can work really well for doing crisp edges (e.g. for the screenprint on the edge of windscreens etc on models of modern cars), but wonder if that might work here too?  The techique I used was to outline with the sharpie, and then infill with paint.

[Toftdale]

Nice to see you back on this, another way to tackle the wheels is to spray them black, then use a Latex mask (such as maskol) to cover the parts to remain black and then spray the silver. I used this method on for the first time on my Alpine and I was really pleased with the results- Andy

 

[Spiny]

Thanks everyone for looking and the suggestions. Both are very good ideas, but unfortunately I'm not sure will work (for me) here.

 

22 hours ago, Paul H said:

I've found that a sharpie can work really well for doing crisp edges (e.g. for the screenprint on the edge of windscreens etc on models of modern cars), but wonder if that might work here too?  The techique I used was to outline with the sharpie, and then infill with paint.

 

Funnily enough I had looked at this to see if it would work, but the small size of the wheel (the 'half-spoke' is only 2.5mm long) meant that the Sharpie just wasn't small enough. I'm not sure if you can see on the photo in my post above, but there is a very fine ledge around the black part of the wheel which is just too sharp for the small end of the pen to fit in. If the black area was larger I might have got away with the larger edge of the Sharpie as it's softer, but on these wheels there just isn't room to get that in. Incidentally, the nuts will be painted after I've done the black so won't be as rough as they look above (I hope!).

 

21 hours ago, Toftdale said:

Nice to see you back on this, another way to tackle the wheels is to spray them black, then use a Latex mask (such as maskol) to cover the parts to remain black and then spray the silver. I used this method on for the first time on my Alpine and I was really pleased with the results- Andy

 

 

I hadn't thought about this, but it sounds like a good idea which would work at almost any other time of year. The problem I have is that I spray in an unheated garage so spraying during winter is out due to environmental conditions. However, it's funny that you mention the Alpine as I am hoping to get one sprayed over summer so assuming the rally version has the same wheels (I haven't checked yet) that looks like a good thing to try.

 

Thanks again both of you, suggestions are much appreciated and even though I probably won't get to try this time will come in handy in future

[Anteater]

21 minutes ago, Spiny said:

. The problem I have is that I spray in an unheated garage so spraying during winter is out due to environmental conditions.

 

As long as it's not sopping wet, a small fan heater positioned to heat the inside of a cardboard box spray booth can work wonders. 

[TonyW]

Thinned black paint, touched against the outer edge of the intended black area of the wheels runs around the edge by capillary action. Once dry, you have a crisp edge to paint to.  You still need to paint in the bigger area but the nerve wracking edges are already done.

 

Another useful tool for wheel painting is a cocktail stick. I use them to remove mistakes on aircraft canopies and suchlike. Catch the paint still wet or only just set and the pointed end of the stick removes unwanted paint to very fine tolerances.

 

Those Alpine wheels look really good.