Build Five Boogie

[keefr22]

1 hour ago, Toftdale said:

Great masking work on the Chevies,  I particularly like the red and gold together,  its got just a hint of the Gold Leaf Lotus Scheme. - Andy 

 

Or Alan Mann racing

 

Keith

[johnlambert]

9 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

Or Alan Mann racing

 

Keith

I was thinking that.

[Toftdale]

13 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

Or Alan Mann racing

 

Keith

I'd forgotten about that 😀

[nearsightedjohn]

Some progress on the four 1/25 interiors. Still need to do some foil and detail additions to the side panels.

 

Dashes from top : ‘60 Impala, ‘65 Comet, ‘64 Dodge, ‘62 Bel Air

Three-tone ‘60 Impala interior:

 

 

‘62 Bel Air interior:

 

[keefr22]

Lovely work John, that all looks very good indeed!

 

Keith

[nearsightedjohn]

Spent time today detail painting and foiling the interior side panels of the two Chevies and the Comet:

 

 

 

I also 5 min. epoxy coated the gages on three of the dashes, here’s pics of the ‘60 Chevy and ‘65 Comet:

 

 

It’s a warm 73F here today and more importantly, no wind, so I was able to finish clear coating the two 2-tone Chevies using Tamiya TS-13 lacquer rattle can clear coat. I seem to get my best gloss lacquer finishes outside on windless days, I guess my garage work area is just too dusty? 

Relatives arriving for holiday visit so this all may come to a screeching stop for awhile. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back on it this weekend. Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers!

[JeroenS]

That's some lovely work on those panels and the dashboards! The Impala especially, wow. 

[TonyW]

8 hours ago, nearsightedjohn said:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2000RPM and no oil pressure! Shut that motor down John.

[nearsightedjohn]

I decided to dive-in and attempt to complete the Lotus 33 build before resorting to the hammer (applied to the model or more appropriately to the side of my cranium). I'll post finished pics under RFI (I think my photos make this finished model look better than it actually came out). I give Ebbro and myself both a C-/D+ grade on this build.

 

Here’s a summary of the issues I encountered near the end of the build:

 

Body shell problems: The fit of the front cowling(part A39) and rear cowling(A?) to each other and to the chassis assembly is a mess. The small molded bosses on the underside of both cowlings are incredibly weak and do not align with the mating holes in the chassis (B2) or between the front and rear cowlings.

I tried extending these bosses with 1 mm brass rod, it helped somewhat but I still had to open up the mating holes and it’s still not right. Really frustrating.  I also had to remove material from the small square opening on the engine cover as well as a few other areas on the underside of both covers. There just seems to be a multitude of interference points.

 

Windscreen bonding issue: The windscreen (F2) conforms really close to contours on the front cowling (A39) adjacent to the main bonding contact surface such that if you bond them together with clear plastic non-crazing cement like Testor’s “Clear Parts Cement and Window Maker” or Tamiya Extra Thin Cement, it will wick up on both sides resulting in an “unfixable” disaster:

 

 

I initially used the Testor’s cement but the cured bond is really exposed and looked terrible with poor adhesion. I separated the parts and scraped off the adhesive and green paint to try to bond the two by wicking in a very micro application of Tamiya extra thin cement which created a much stronger more secure bond but still resulted in this nasty excess wicking problem at the cowling contours. My recommendation: bond the windshield to the body only at the rear end of the windscreen to the rear of the upper front cowling and let the remainder of the windscreen just float on the body. Or don’t even bond the windscreen?

 

Exhaust issues: Per a previous post, the alignment of the exhaust headers (A1, A2, A6, A7, A9, A10, A20 and A21) and the chromed exhaust support brace with the two loops (E6) and the two machined aluminum exhaust pipes is a real problem. When I assembled everything per the instructions and test installed the two pipes, they ended up at weird unsightly angles as shown in my previous posting. I tried re-aligning the exhaust header bundles by blunt force bending and softening the header to engine bond joints with solvent but nothing worked. I ended up breaking apart the exhaust support loop part and splicing in a short styrene rod extender to finesse the geometry to at least reduce the mis-alignment:

 

Recommendation: if you build this kit, don’t pre-bond the exhaust headers to the engine block.  Bond the engine assembly without the headers to the chassis + the support E6, pre-bond each aluminum extension pipe to each header assembly, feed the pipes thru the loops on the sport and then, lastly, bond the headers to the block with the pipes aligned.  The header "plates" may not be perfectly aligned to the bottom of each head on the engine but this area is nearly invisible on the finished model whereas the two exhaust pipes are very visible and look terrible unless they are somewhat aligned.

 

Installation of the roll bar to chassis: if you follow the instructions and pre-install part D1 to the bulkhead (B21) at the front of the engine block assembly beforehand, the roll bar (E3) will not fit onto the chassis. I also had to fracture and reconfigure the left hose coming off of part D1 to reinstall it to the front of the engine block after installing the roll bar.

 

Hopefully anyone else out there who attempts this one will be better skilled and benefit from the mistakes I made and disclosed in this WIP. I applaud Ebbro for kitting this wonderful subject but I just wish they could perform more debugging and fine-tuning of their molds before releasing it to market.  I also love the decals and the machined aluminum velocity stacks and exhaust extension pipes and the small sheet of PE are really nice enhancements to include with the kit. I have a Tamiya Lotus 25 in the stash and hope it will assemble with less issues than this Lotus 33.

Edited November 27, 2021 by nearsightedjohn
Removed unnecessary sentence and corrected grammar.

[nearsightedjohn]

On my four 1/25 builds, completed the following:

I lost one of the four brake drum/ disc thingies and had to fabricate a replacement using Evergreen styrene sheet and tubing:

 

I've started assembly of, from right to left, the Comet 427 SOHC, the Dodge 426 Hemi and the Chevy 409 including epoxy bonding of the resin carbs onto the intake manifolds:

 

These simple and fun old 1/25 kits are doing wonders for my Ebbro-induced PTSD!

[johnlambert]

That Lotus definitely seems to be giving you lots of trouble...

 

The 1:25 V8s are looking mighty fine.

[nearsightedjohn]

Build progress slowed down this last week after coming down with a case of bronchitis last weekend, finally feeling better so I'm back on the bench. Catching a cold in these COVID days is unfortunately a big deal, I tested negative after three tests so I get to stay in the house for now!

Got the interiors for the  Dodge and Bel Air pretty much assembled:

 

 

I then spent several bench sessions masking off all of the window and trim features on all four 1/25 bodies in preparation for airbrushing Alclad Chrome, photos shown the Impala masking are shown below:

 

 

 

Here are all four bodies and the Comet windows (with frames molded in) completely masked:

 

Here they are after airbrushing Modelmaster gloss black enamel over the exposed frame and metal details:

 

I usually let the black enamel dry/ cure for a good 2 - 4 days before spraying the Alclad so I hope to make progress on the engines and chassis assemblies for these four cars in the next report. Thanks for reading!

[Fnick]

Lovely interior! That's quite an assembly line you've got going there.

 

Nick

[nearsightedjohn]

Still waiting for my Alclad Chrome order to arrive to spray my window frames and trim so I continue to whittle away on the interiors, chassis and engines.

Finished the '60 Impala and '65 Comet interiors:

 

 

 

Masked and sprayed the underside of the four hoods with Tamiya X-18 semi-gloss black:

 

 

Attempted to hand-paint the molded-in wiring on the '60 Impala and '64 Dodge:

 

 

 

I generally do this using a fine brush and Tamiya acrylic paint over the lacquer clear coated engine bay panels and scrap the excess paint away using a chiseled toothpick - let me know if there's a clever way too detail these features short of grinding off the molded-in cables/ wires and installing actual wire.

 

Initial work on detailing the four engines:

 

 

That's all for now!

 

Edited December 10, 2021 by nearsightedjohn
corrected word errors

[JeroenS]

That's 4 high quality builds John, a pleasure to watch. About your painting method of the moulded in wiring: makes sense. And the result looks good so... I usually do such detail work with Vallejo acrylics, in which case you can use a brush and water to clean or redo some bits (if the paint is still wet). 

[keefr22]

Some lovely work going on there John, very nice indeed!

 

Keith

[nearsightedjohn]

The four 1/25 engines are nearly completed including addition of plug wires, fuel lines and carb linkage on three of them:

 

I also airbrushed the Alclad chrome over all the masked trim and window frames on the four bodies. Here are the results after removing the masking, not bad!:

 

 

 

 

The masking was left on for about a week so I was really pleased and relieved to see no crazing or other reaction on the clear coat lacquer from the green Frog tape. Most modelers here and other forums swear by Tamiya tape but I have had it attack both fully hardened Tamiya gloss lacquers/ clear coat as well as gloss acrylics and other brands of gloss model paint. Never have a problem with the green Frog tape.

[Toftdale]

Thanks for the tip on the green Frog tape. I almost exclusively use Tamiya tape, but have definitely suffered issues as you've described.   I also only ever use foil for my trims, however having seen you results I think I may change my tack, great progress- Andy 

[nearsightedjohn]

Despite family and health distractions, I continue to make slow progress on my assembly line. All four chassis are completed and the engines installed:

Started prepping the front and rear lights to the grills/ bumpers:

And started one of the scariest steps of car model builds, bonding the windows to the bodies while avoiding getting the clear cement on the remaining visible portion of each window:

Hope to have these four cars nearly assembled and ready for decals by the next report. Thanks for watching!

[nearsightedjohn]

I'm back and pretty much done with the remaining four 1/25 kits despite a multitude of distractions during the last few weeks (a case of bronchitis, the birth of our first grandchild last week, family & friends visiting and, of course, Xmas).

 

Here's a shot of all five together:

 

I'll try to post some pics of these last four in RFI soon.  My conclusion: Five is too many for me to build at one time! Too many boxes on my bench! Too many mix-ups of radiator hoses! More lost parts than I can handle! My knees are still recovering from all that time I spent on my cold garage floor checking all the corners with my cell phone flashlight ap! It was kind of fun and glad I was able to complete this build but next time no more than two or three for me!

Cheers, John

 

 

[keefr22]

Excellent achievement to get all 5 completed John and they all look really good! I'm happy if I can finish 5 in a year!

 

Congratulations on your first grand-child - our son and daughter in law presented us with our first grandson last March and our daughter and son in law our third granddaughter just before Christmas! 

 

Keith

 

 

[nearsightedjohn]

Thank you Keith! My wife and I are looking forward to spoiling our new grand daughter and then passing her back to mom & dad for the parenting drudgery part 😁👨🏻‍🦳😁!

[keefr22]

19 hours ago, nearsightedjohn said:

passing her back to mom & dad for the parenting drudgery part 😁👨🏻‍🦳😁!

 

That's the best bit...!! 🤣

 

Keith