VW T1 Panel Van - Jaegermeister

[Spiny]

Luckier than you realise I expect, when the pin snapped off it remained in the hole of the door. So all I had to do was get a suitable container (in this case a clean Gu pot) and push the pin into that. It still needed a steady hand and full magnification on the headset, but hopefully I've got it about right - lucky again I guess that it didn't ping off while fixing it in place, but once in contact with the Extra Thin it could still be moved bit wouldn't fly off into the clutches of the carpet monster.

 

The proof of whether my repair worked will be when I come to fix the front doors - I've forgotten which was the broken one and it would be great if I still can't remember after fitting the doors.

[Spiny]

Been distracted with other bits this weekend, so more slow progress.

 

First job was to fit the second side door. For some reason it's sitting about a millimetre too high compared to the other one, not sure why as the body around aligns correctly so I can only presume either the manufacturing is slightly out of tolerance or I have an angle slightly wrong somewhere. But the good news is that it does fit in the hole, even when I have the roof dry-fitted (actually fits better than the photo makes it look).

 

 

The next job is to fit the front doors.These needed a bit of masking to get the black surrounds then according to the instructions they should go in. But I decided that it would be easier to install the windows before fitting the door so distracted myself with that. For some reason the instructions do call for that white around the front window - not sure why but I guess it does a reasonable approximation of silver when viewed from outside. The instructions also have some silver on the inside of the sliding panel only, but a bit inside for the front catch, so the chrome on the outside is more my addition than anything accurate - I think it looks better that way. All the chrome on the side window is BMF, I have that to look forward to again when I do the other door. The door on the left in the photo below still needs a final polish, and I haven't started on the windows yet. The one on the right is ready for fitting, but I figured it was worth leaving it a week so the UV resin is as cured as it's going to be.

 

 

That's all for this week. Thanks for looking.

[Pete in Lincs]

Great paint. That side door is going to be a pain. 

[Quiet Mike]

I'll see if I can find any better photos to help with that door top. The quarter light and the sliding bar are usually body colour, very little chrome, especially on a commercial vehicle.

Sliding door firebus by Mike, on Flickr

[Spiny]

23 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Great paint. That side door is going to be a pain. 

 

Thank you. The good news is that on closer examination about 2/3 of the misalignment is due a little bit of a flex in the chassis which I think will disappear when I fix the roof in place. The other third is an optical illusion caused by me being ever so slightly out with the decalling across the doors - I think it will be bearable when done.

 

22 hours ago, Quiet Mike said:

I'll see if I can find any better photos to help with that door top. The quarter light and the sliding bar are usually body colour, very little chrome, especially on a commercial vehicle.

 

Thank you, you've done what I should have done in the first place and got a picture of the real thing. Looking through my pics, I have one where the sliding bar could be chrome, or more likely polished aluminium. So the BMF has come off the outside apart from the catch at the front of the side window but will be retained on the inside. As for the quarter light, the black ended up like that because it's a pain to accurately paint the raised ridge black, and I made a bit of a mess of getting it done, so I decided to just make the whole surround black. Lazy I know, but with the poor coverage of the orange mentioned earlier in this thread I don't think I will make it better trying to paint orange of the black to return to boddy colour.

[bigbadbadge]

Looking great with the bodywork coming together, gonna have to start mine very soon.

Great work on this little beauty. 

Chris

[Spiny]

I'll look forward to seeing it. I had all sorts of visions of this being a real pain to put together and it ending up with panel gaps British Leyland would be proud of. But, at the risk of tempting fate, so far it's not gone together too badly.

[Spiny]

Not a lot of modelling time this weekend, and most of what I did get went on starting the Alpine. So this is all I have to show - the passenger door has been fully polished now, windows painted and foiled and along with the door handles fitted in place. Meanwhile the driver's door has been fitted without breaking the hinges, although I did knock off a little bit of paint so will need to touch up when the second door is on. Must say I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it's fitting, just got to hope the same is true when I install the other one.

 

 

Even better news is that leaving it sat for a week with the roof dry-fitted in place has aligned things enough that the roof goes on very easily now - should make for a much easier task when it comes to gluing that in place.

 

Thanks for looking, shame I can't show you more updates but sometimes you just get a weekend where other things intrude into modelling time.

[Fnick]

That is really coming together quite nicely!

 

Nick 

[bigbadbadge]

Oooooo doors going on, always a lovely part of any restoration when the doors go back on and you get to see what it looks like in reality and it's the same with a model too, starting to really show it's character.

 

Looks lovely,  great work and good to here the roof fit and door fit too.

Chris

[Spiny]

12 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Looks lovely,  great work and good to here the roof fit and door fit too.

Chris

  Well, one door and the roof fits 😄 Still got to try the passenger door, so still plenty of scope for things to go pear-shaped!

[Anteater]

On 22/08/2022 at 21:04, Spiny said:

 still plenty of scope for things to go pear-shaped!

 

That's the spirit! 😀

[Spiny]

There is a reason why I''m concerned about that door - I'm 99% certain that's the one I broke the hinge on when dry-fitting so if I'm even a fraction of a millimetre out when I glued the pin part of the hinge back it could translate into a much bigger misalignment with the door. I guess we'll find out next time I'm on the bench.

[Spiny]

Another weekend with not so much modelling time, but I did get some work on the roof. The centre console has been put together andfitted to the roof - all went together very easily.

 

 

After that, most of the available time was spent on another interminable polishing job, this time the roof. This has had the full works to get rid of the quite a bit of orange peel in the paint, but I got there eventually, After that fitting the roof was relatively easy, although I suspect the doors may be a bit tricky to open due to lack of anything I can really get hold of.

 

 

After that it will just be a case of the windscreens and the trim pieces. But already I can see a problem, the chroming of the headlights hasn't worked properly and Revell have left it with chrome on the outside but none on the reflector of the headlights. For some reason my pack (from Amazon Warehouse, so maybe that explains it) came with two chrome sprues and it's an issue on both of them. I've given it a going over with Molotow Chrome, but it doesn'thave the shine of the kit chrome so they may be a bit dull. It's getting a few days to cure now though so we'll see next week.

 

Thanks for looking.

[CrazyCrank]

Amazing result, Spiny 👍

[Spiny]

Not really a lot to show you this week, partly due to me trying to get all the Alpine bits which need spraying off the sprues so I'm ready when the time comes.

 

So here's a photo of a barely-moved-forwards van, and this is all I have to show for this week.

 

 

In truth I have done a bit more work than this looks like. The other indicator, tailights and one headlamp reflector have been removed from the sprues, chrome removed from the back to aid adhesion when the time to fit them comes and touchup with chrome paint for the bits around the edge where they attach to the sprues. Equally, all clear orange paint is done now. All those parts are left because I want the chrome paint in particular to harden before I mess with it, but ready for fitting. And why just the one headamp reflector? Purely so I don't accidentally get the two mixed up, althoguh I could have just written L & R on the back if I'd been scratching for things to do. Same reason why I've only got the passenger windscreen fitted - I wanted to get that finished before starting on the driver's side. That's had the top and bottom painted, but again I wanted the paint to harden before I mask up the sides. As usual, all clear parts have been fitted with UV clear resin. Bit of a mistake last week as I got something on the passenger windscreen, so I had to give it a good polish with the Novus 2 then 1 to get it clear again.

 

But I'm afraid that's all for this week. Thanks for looking.

[bigbadbadge]

Getting there now and looks great with the roof on. Shame about the chroming issue.

Chris

[Pete in Lincs]

22 hours ago, Spiny said:

But I'm afraid that's all for this week

You take your time. You obviously want it to be right, and rushing to appease the audience may result in disappointment. 

It's looking very nice and very shiny. 

[Bengalensis]

I can only echo the gentlemen above me; Things need to take their time, some things more than others. And in your case the time is well spent.

[Spiny]

Thank you all of you for your comments, and don't worry I will take my time. I guess it was just looking at it sitting there lopsided with one windscreen and the opposite indicator in place it just didn't feel right. But I have got quite a bit of prep done so next time on the bench it should make a big visual leap forwards.

 

The chrome plating being missing from the headlight was a pain, so last week I gave it a brushcoat with the greenstuff chrome. After a week it's not looking too bad, I suspect once I have the glass in front it should be acceptable.

 

 

Sadly not the easiest thing to get a photo of and show the shine, but hopefully gives an idea of how it looks now the reflector has been silvered.

[Spiny]

Onto the home straight now with the last window fitted and lights on.

 

Chrome parts were fitted with the usual method but for the headlights I used the Revell Contacta nozzle glue rather than tube glue to fit it. The right headlight needed a bit of touching up after sanding off the attchment points, I used the GreenStuffWorld chrome which came out a bit due. Tried polishing it after leaving to dry for a day which has helped but it's still only about a 90% match to the kit chrome. All the clear bits went on with my usual clear UV resin, I'm particularly pleased with how easily the headlights fitted as that's the sort of piece I usually end up getting the glue/resin everywhere due to the small contact patch around the outside.

 

 

The back was also pretty simple. I masked across the tail-lights for painting both the orange (first) and red (second) to make sure the line was straight. Clear paints were Revell Orange and Tamiya Red - I find the Revell Red is a bit pinky and needs quite a few layers with an orange or two in the middle to get a decent look hence switching to Tamiya.

 

 

Of course I couldn't be nearing the end of a build without something going wrong, and this one is no exception. While waiting for the glue to dry I decided to polish the bumpers. And while polishing the front bumper there was a crack and it snapped in half (I wasn't even putting much pressure on but it still went). Fortunately there is a built in weak point in the form of the holes for the number plate which means the damage should be concealable. As it stands, I used a thin sliver of styrene card behind the bumper to help strenthen it and then glued with Tamiya Extra Thin. Somehow it seems to have developed a bit of a twist as can be seen in the photo, but reapplication of Extra Thin then squashing it flat has removed a good chunk of that. And as the break is between the two mounting points for the bumper I'm hoping it will be close to straight when installed.

 

 

Not much left now, I think just bumpers, mirrors and wipers. Plus that now-structural front number plate...

 

Thanks for looking.

[Windy37]

It's looking good  ! I used to struggle with glue fogging up light lenses until I started using a glue that dries clear . If only I used it years ago !

Gary 

[bigbadbadge]

Oooo really coming together now,  the bumper will be fine I am sure, just like the real thing after some battle damage 😉

The front lights turned out well also

Looking rather lovely at both ends.

Great work 

Chris

[Fnick]

Great build. Good fix! As strange as it is to see one of those without the VW logo at the front this makes a nice change from the campers! And I really like the finish you have achieved. 

 

Looking forward to the RFI pics!

 

Nick

[Spiny]

22 hours ago, Windy37 said:

It's looking good  ! I used to struggle with glue fogging up light lenses until I started using a glue that dries clear . If only I used it years ago !

Gary 

 

Not had the fogging issue since I got back into the hobby, but I think that's because I jumped straight to Clearfix on my first model. Trouble with that is that the bond isn't very strong, hence me moving to the UV resin instead.

 

5 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Oooo really coming together now,  the bumper will be fine I am sure, just like the real thing after some battle damage 😉

The front lights turned out well also

Looking rather lovely at both ends.

Great work 

Chris

 

I'm hoping I can get it looking a bit better than it does at the moment. I touched up with Revell orange last night which doesn't seem to be too good a match, but for the tiny little bit which will be left visible it's passable. Then tonight after the funeral was over I gave the part another coat of clear ready for another go at the polishing process. Fingers crossed I can get it looking ok, but anything which doesn't will be hidden behind the number plate (I hope!).

 

54 minutes ago, Fnick said:

Great build. Good fix! As strange as it is to see one of those without the VW logo at the front this makes a nice change from the campers! And I really like the finish you have achieved. 

 

Looking forward to the RFI pics!

 

Nick

 

This is the first build I've done just using polishing compounds (Tamiya Coarse > Tamiya Fine > Novus 1) without using Micromesh beforehand. I think a bit of Micromesh wouldn't have gone amiss at first just to get rid of the last of the orange peel, butoverall this is one of my shinier finishes. Glad you like it There is a school of thought that commercials shouldn't be too shiny but my argument is that this is a promotional classic van from now rather than a working van in the 60s.

 

Incidentally, before clearcoating I did a dry fit of the front bumper. Still need to take some twist out (tomorrow it will be squashed under a weight for the rest of the week), but if anything deserves the description "Wide-mouthed Frog" it will be this one when built...