Man from UNCLE Piranha

[hendie]

On 8/6/2022 at 3:56 PM, Pete in Lincs said:

I've seen worse. It all seems to be bending to your will though. I'm confident that you will win in the end. 

I'll also go with engine lid. Enjoy your commutes.

 

it's not about winning... more about whining on this one.

 

On 8/6/2022 at 5:03 PM, Neddy said:

Although I really feel your frustration I'm loving what you're achieving with what is in essence a bloody awful kit. 

 

thanks Neddy.  I'm sure there will be more frustration to play with before this build is over.

 

On 8/6/2022 at 5:33 PM, Six97s said:

Plastic wheel covers? Would never have guessed. 

 

It's looking good, considering....   if you fancy a real challenge, try an AMT truck kit - no part numbers on the sprues, vague instructions and the same sloppy fit you're already enjoying.

 

Based on this one I'll be happy if I never see another AMT kit

 

On 8/7/2022 at 3:35 PM, giemme said:

I'm done pondering, yes. Following your hint, I did search for a model of the car I currently drive, but there are none (probably too new and maybe not so interesting). So I payed a visit to my LMS and followed @keefr22 advice, and bought a Tamiya kit:

 

<snip>

 

Mainly because it was the only Tamiya kit at a reasonable price (for a first time with a car model, at least); it was in fact pre-owned, so I could get it at a bargain price. The only problem is that the decals are missing, but I figure it won't be a big deal - there were probably three of them, all in all

 

Done using kit parts on this build yet?  

 

Ciao

 

 

Looking forward to seeing what you do with that one Giorgio.   Kit parts?  I think I may just have hit double figures if I include their tires.

 

On 8/7/2022 at 6:59 PM, The Spadgent said:

Amazing!!! Following along now after a lovely catch up.  Makes me want to do my Ecto 1 🤔 great work on the printed engine and wheels. 🤤

 I’ll tag along and watch with awe as the magic happens. 🤩🤩🤩

 

And @giemme buying car kits. 😯

 

 whatever next? 😉

 

 Johnny

 

He'll be 3D printing before the year is out.  Mark my words.

 

7 hours ago, TheBaron said:

I'm sorry that I hadn't twigged this was up and running sooner Alan. To be honest, with your technical background I'd always simply just assumed that you worked for U.N.C.L.E. in some undisclosed capacity and probably looked like Napoleon Solo.

 

Is it possible that kit partially melted whilst in transit to you?

In fairness, I would probably have begun using wine at that point too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

S'funny... when I was a kid I always thought Napoleon Solo was the cool looking one.  Now I'm older though not necessarily wiser I think Illya K is the cool looking one and Napoleon is a bit of a [insert disparaging description here]

I still love this shot (okay, pun intended) though even after all these years

 

 

but

 

5 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Or this bloke

 

More like Professor Abronsius these days I'm afraid, Pete.

 

 

 

3 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

And that's a good choice G, nice classic Tamiya car kit of a lovely car! Only thing you might want to address if it were to bother you is that the kit has a join line where the rear spoiler is attached that doesn't exist on the real one so needs filling if you feel inclined. Look forward to seeing it built!

 

Now back to the latest episode of the Man from U.N.C.L.E....!! 

 

Keith

 

The Oh Bloomin 'Eck Affair

 

The door hinge mechanism which I forgot to snap piccies of is very toy like and had to be discarded.  Additionally, the headliner supplied is nothing like the 1:1 but may just be salvageable 

In my infinite wisdom lack of foresight I decided it might be worth trying to replicate the actualy hinges used on the 1:1 albeit at a larger scale for strength and durability purposes.  I should stress that these will be static hinges, and not working hinges because I'm fairly certain the doors would never fit in an anywhere near decent manner.

Initially I was going to use brass for this but soon came to the conclusion that I would never get a decent joint between a brass hinge and the plastic of the door - it was bound to fail, so...

I found some plastic tube which I filed into a C shape then added some 0.01 x 0.03" strips along the edges.  The not-a-tube-any-longer was cut into 4mm slices which I am going to try and use as a make believe hinge.

 

 

by gluing them like so

 

 

Once the "hinges" were in place it was time to start building up the surrounding headliner

 

 

I was a bit worried that the hinges may not be up to the task but once the glue cured they appeared incredibly sturdy.  I could probably have got away with making them a bit smaller/narrower though until the door is glued in position I'll never be certain.

This was a rather fiddly job in that I could only glue a piece or two in position then had to find other tasks to moan about until the glue had cured and it was ready for the next addition.

 

One of those tasks was to fit the exhausts, fans and carburetors to the engine compartment. The air intakes are slightly misaligned but I still have the smoke genrators to add and those will nudge the intakes back into alignment.(at least that's the plan)

 

 

Another task best avoided was painting the dashboard.  As if my detail painting wasn't bad enough, the molded detail on this aberration was so soft it made thinking of an adequate humorous description nigh on impossible.

A small square of ciggy wrapper tinfoil was used for the speaker grill - the  embossing working nicely as a grill feature at this scale.  

 

 

If you hold it far enough away you could almost be convinced a 10 year old has painted it 

 

 

You'll note the absence of a speedometer or rev counter in the above shot.  They are supplied as separate misshapen items. Why? I know not, but they are.  Not only are they slightly misshapen and don't quite fit in the holes on the dash, but they are just shy of 5mm in diameter, with soft lumpy bits on the front pretending to be numbers and a pointer. (Eek!)  I did try painting them but the embarassment was so great I just couldn't live with it so I dug out the decal sheet just to see if they had supplied anything worthwhile. 

Oh look... there's a speedometer and a rev counter, and the print quality is really quite reasonable.  Oh good...oh wait...thats' one of the gauges placed beside the decal. 

If only they had made the decal twice the size I might have gotten away with it.

 

 

Immediately following the taking of this shot, I grabbed the decal to put it back in the decal stash - completely forgetting the gauge was on top of the sheet , and only remembered when sat back at the bench to be greeted with one lone gauge grinning at me..."alright mate?"   'Doh!

Believe it or not but I did find the gauge in less than 1 hour of searching the concrete monster. 

 

Those gauges have now had their faces sanded flat and I have a plan to be revealed later when I can think of something akin to a plan that might actually work.

 

While temporarily stunned by the ongoing madness this kit presents me with I threw some of my latest paint purchase over the upper body.  It's a Mr Color light bluish greenish color.  It's nowhere near accurate but it's the lightest metallic blue I could find and to be honest I quite like the color. - Seats are only resting in position to provide some contrast to the overall bling

 

 

Painting the body at this stage may well come back to bite me as the roof still needs to be fitted, but there are areas on the body and areas on the roof that once assembled, the airbrush would never have reached so at least some of the body and roof would have needed to be sprayed prior to assembly - I just got carried away and sprayed the whole shebang.  Sorry.

 

I should have shown this next shot earlier when I was describing the door hingery but it would have given the game away on the painting front.   This is how the door will be hinged/fixed in place.  The door interior will be the metallic blue and the hinfery and headliner will be black.  I'm hoping the black will go some way to hiding the huge over scaleness that's going on.  Maybe it won't.

 

 

My original plan was to have both doors open, but now I've started building all the gubbins needed I've kind of changed my mind and I think it will look better with one door open (drivers door) and the other door in the closed position.   What thinketh the hive?

Also what about those hinges?   As much as I think they are over scale I am tempted to leave them since tghere was nothing like this in the kit in the first place, but I could be convinced to go back and have another go if the protest was loud enough

 

So while procrastinating on the hingery doodads I chose to start on the door handles.  Now I'm aware that the style of handle changes depending upon which particular car you look at but since this is my build and it's never going to be fully accurate I chose what I thought looked better.  Therefore I chose this style of handle, made up from gluing several tiny bits of plastic together

 

 

which when rubbed with micromesh, takes on a nicely rounded shape and actually looks quite decent once in place on the door.

 

 

I'll mask that up and paint a nice black 'door card' on the inside the next time the airbriush is fired up.

 

What sayeth thee on the hingery (I know I shouldn't have asked) and one door or two door open?

 

 

 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

I think the hinges look great. As does that blue. 🤤

For me it’s a vote for one for open and one closed. Good luck with the dials. Ciggie paper looks great in place btw. Are you doing a bit of a wash on that dash

/ control thing? Even though I think it looks great a wash is what I use if I don’t like my detail work. 

 

More of this please sir.

 

 Johnny

[giemme]

I'm sure the hinges will look good under a black paint coat, Alan. As for the doors, I'd go with both open, for a bit of a show off, you know  

 

It's all looking splendid, anyway   

 

Ciao

[giemme]

12 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

And that's a good choice G, nice classic Tamiya car kit of a lovely car! Only thing you might want to address if it were to bother you is that the kit has a join line where the rear spoiler is attached that doesn't exist on the real one so needs filling if you feel inclined. Look forward to seeing it built!

Now that you mentioned it, I cannot pretend I didn't read it, so.....   

 

Anyway, I will be pestering asking your advice when the time comes, rest assured

 

Ciao

[TonyW]

Good idea with the hinges, and the dash looks the part as well.

 

Could you loose a bit of the overscale hinge thing by drilling out the centres of them, then squaring the holes up? It seems like a pretty simple job from where I'm sitting. 😉

 

Backseat modelling. The way forward.

[Neddy]

I wholeheartedly agree with the general consensus - doors one open (drivers) and one closed and the hinges look great as they are.  On a semi-mythical vehicle like this the hingery could easily be that size bearing in mind possible power-assisted opening mechanisms would need to be of a certain size.  I love the colour, the cig foil speaker works well and your detail painting is better than mine by a mile!  Bear in mind that close-up photography makes everything look worse than with the naked eye, I reckon the dash will look fine once installed.  Keep going buddy, I think you've got it on the run now. 

[keefr22]

I'd go with one door open, one closed - as long as you can beat the closed one into submission and make it almost fit....!! 🤣

 

As to the hinges if you close one door you'd only have one set to worry about! I think if painted black they'd be fine.

 

Very nice paintjob - cracking colour!

 

8 hours ago, hendie said:

If you hold it far enough away you could almost be convinced a 10 year old has painted it 

 

 

As opposed to the 5 year old that does mine...!!

 

Keith

[TheBaron]

LOVE that blue colour!

Another vote for one one door open.

[hendie]

On 8/9/2022 at 1:56 AM, The Spadgent said:

I think the hinges look great. As does that blue. 🤤

For me it’s a vote for one for open and one closed. Good luck with the dials. Ciggie paper looks great in place btw. Are you doing a bit of a wash on that dash

/ control thing? Even though I think it looks great a wash is what I use if I don’t like my detail work. 

 

More of this please sir.

 

 Johnny

 

the detail is so soft on this plastic that I don't think a wash would really do any difference Johnny.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 4:04 AM, giemme said:

I'm sure the hinges will look good under a black paint coat, Alan. As for the doors, I'd go with both open, for a bit of a show off, you know  

 

It's all looking splendid, anyway   

 

Ciao

 

thanks Giorgio, but it's one door up, one door down on this build.

 

On 8/9/2022 at 4:14 AM, TonyW said:

Good idea with the hinges, and the dash looks the part as well.

 

Could you loose a bit of the overscale hinge thing by drilling out the centres of them, then squaring the holes up? It seems like a pretty simple job from where I'm sitting. 😉

 

Backseat modelling. The way forward.

 

It's not the actual hing part of the hinge, it's the headliner that surrounds the hinge.  I've hit it with some black and am a lot happier with it - I may just get away with it, who knows?

 

On 8/9/2022 at 4:47 AM, Neddy said:

I wholeheartedly agree with the general consensus - doors one open (drivers) and one closed and the hinges look great as they are.  On a semi-mythical vehicle like this the hingery could easily be that size bearing in mind possible power-assisted opening mechanisms would need to be of a certain size.  I love the colour, the cig foil speaker works well and your detail painting is better than mine by a mile!  Bear in mind that close-up photography makes everything look worse than with the naked eye, I reckon the dash will look fine once installed.  Keep going buddy, I think you've got it on the run now. 

 

on the run?  I hoped so but it still keeps fighting back 

 

On 8/9/2022 at 5:01 AM, keefr22 said:

I'd go with one door open, one closed - as long as you can beat the closed one into submission and make it almost fit....!! 🤣

 

As to the hinges if you close one door you'd only have one set to worry about! I think if painted black they'd be fine.

 

Very nice paintjob - cracking colour!

 

 

As opposed to the 5 year old that does mine...!!

 

Keith

 

haha.. I forgot about the "fit" on the doors. Yes, the fit.  I think that's the part that's missing on this kit

 

On 8/9/2022 at 9:22 AM, TheBaron said:

LOVE that blue colour!

Another vote for one one door open.

 

It is a good looking blue isn't it Tony.

So nice I painted the roof in that blue too.  I was a bit aprehensive about painting the body and the roof separately knowing I'm going to have glue all all over the place when I try to join them but there are areas inside that slope that I would never be able to get an airbrush into, likewise on the body when that roof is in place so the only real option was to paint 'em and hope for the best

 

 

Carrying on from where we left off last time around, the doors got their door cards painted in and as you can see on the offside door I had to perform a bit of butchery to get the door to actually sit in the opening.  That is just preliminary butchery by the way - once the roof goes on there will more than likely need to be some secondary butchery to gat things all aligned.  Headliner and hinges painted black and as you can see here it really fades into the background - which is what we need on this kit.  I've also started attacking the roof at this point, hence the masking tape to try and  pull the roof down to close up any gaps.

 

 

I should maybe take a step back here - those photos above are the output of some of todays work so I should probably bring you up to date on what happened since last time.   I did a little bit of masking.

 

 

Just so I could get that little bit of aluminum on the center console that you can hardly see.  The same level of masking was carried out to paint that little black oval (air vent?) on the rear bulkhead. Testors 'Wood' and Unmber oils for the panels on top of the door ledge. I deliberately kept these quite gaudy looking as this car was designed in the age of formica and imitation wood never really looked like wood back then.

 

 

the weapons tray got colored in and ended up looking a lot better than I thought it would

 

 

Some plastic wood on the dashboard and I found a couple of spare gauges from my Revell VW that could double up as Spy car dials.

 

 

and the dashboard was glued in place without any further ado.

 

 

while it looks fine in that shot it all looks a bit wonky in this shot - the opening for the communications wotsit is offset from the center console as well as leaning to one side and I also noted that the steering wheel notch is not centered per the drivers seat.  I've no idea if that was the case in the 1:1 and none of the reference shots provide any further info. There's no option to reposition it as that would mean alsohaving to reposition the speedometer and the rev counter - it's not happening.

 

 

All that work dictated there should be the obligatory dry fit to see how things are coming along.Not bad to be honest.

 

 

It was getting close to close-up time and so to avoid that eventuality I found some other bits to paint, namely the bullet proof shield and the two smoke generator covers which I scratched fro sheet styrene as the kit parts were rather nasty.  I also threw away the kit gear stick and scratch one from some stainless wire  with a blob of pva on the end for a gear knob.

 

 

As it turns out the kit steering wheel is also incorrect.  I guess they must have included the drag racer wheel instead and I wasn't that keen on that style so it was back to the laptop and knock one out for printing.  As I was doing that I took the opportunity to adjust the wheels slightly by adding another 0.25mm to the diameter to give a better fit in the tires and those were knocked out in an afternoon.

 

 

Since I now had a spare set of wheels I could throw some different paints on the old ones to see which looked better.  I actually preferred the Model Master Aluminum as a color but it appeared to blur the detail

 

 

Alclad Hi Shine+ Aluminum it was then , followed up with a coat of Mr Color clear gloss.   It's worth noting that there was no post processing whatsoever on these wheels  - aside from snipping off the supports these wheels are as they come straight out of the printer.

 

 

******   darn it! Another ghost post - back in a few...

 

 

I wasn't so lucky with the steering wheel though and ended up making it a millimeter to large in diameter. Now, a millimeter may not seems like much, but when I placed it in the car, it was way too large... back to the printer again

 

 

and an hour or so later we have another pair of steering wheel to play with - once that wood enamel is dry I'll streak some oils around the rims for the wood effect

 

 

DId I mention that by now the body was joined?  I forgot to mention that didn't I?   Oh well,  It's done now - this side was relatively easy and it all lined up, requiring just some masking tape to pull things together.  The other side proved a lot more difficult and required copious amounts of masking tape as well as a few clamps to pull things into line.

 

 

Remember that bullet shield from earlier?  Well it didn't fit either.  Lots of tweaking and I finally managed to squeeze it in there. A few paint touch ups will be necessary but nothing drastic - not like the scrape on the side where the clamp slipped and scratched the body.  That scratch isn't a big deal as I will need to give the body a once over with the blue to cover a coupl eof small glue smears anyway.

 

 

... and the bullet shield does a wonderful job of almost completely hiding the weapons tray from view - yeah that's it, tucked in behind the seats in the dark and gloom

 

 

Now with the body in place and the roof glued on it was time to start on the worst job of all on this build - fitting the glass.  I had messed about with the spare smoked glass windows the kit provides but now it was time for the clear stuff.  It was a bit of a shocker to find that on the doors the glass does not fit into, but rather behind the doors so it came as no surprise to find that the windscreen is also oversized and fits behind the opening.

Now when I say oversized...

 

 

I mean overSIZED.  Thay shot above is quite deceiving and this shot shows the problem a lot better.  That's a good 2 3mm gap there between the body and the A pillars.

 

 

and it's not a simple job of just removing a section at the top. Oh no. Some needs to come off the top, some off the bottom, and the curvature of the glass doesn't match the curvature where it meets the body. Take into account the rake of the windscreen and the thicknesss of the plastic and you also have to match the rake anlge on the lower edge of the window or it won't sit nicely.  Curses.

I spent about an hour or more last night and a good hour or more today filing away the excess and almost had it fitting perfectly and was feeling well pleased with myself when... oh yeah, the file slipped and made a nice gouge on the front of the glass, then it all went downhill from there - I tried to tidy up the curve at the bottom just-that-little-bit-more and made a right hash of it.

 

 

Time to step away from the model now.

 

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

13 minutes ago, hendie said:

back in a few...

Tower to Hendie, are you receiving? , Over.......

 

And we never heard from him again...

It was starting to look so good too. As an aside, I understand the cars used on UFO had to have the doors held up by a member of the camera crew.

In the meantime, here is some music..... Or you could search the tube for the Potters wheel.

[keefr22]

Yep, it all seemed to be going too well really....

 

But I'm sure it'll be alright on the night   

 

Probably daft question - can you 3D print clear parts?

 

Keith

[keefr22]

44 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Or you could search the tube for the Potters wheel.

 

Done....

 

 

🤣

[giemme]

Is printing a molding buck to vacform a new transparency an option, Alan?

 

It's all looking so good....

 

Ciao 

 

 

[Navy Bird]

On 30/07/2022 at 18:34, hendie said:

thanks Tony, thats about the best shot I've seen of the engine.  I toyed with the idea of adding the pulley and fan belt but there's just not enough room in the engine bay.

 

I had a '66 Corvair Corsa convertible when I was a young lad - here is what it's engine looked like (this photo is from a restoration):

 

 

I liked the four single-barrel carburettors on the x-shaped manifold (there are two on the other side as well, over by the spare tyre). My car ran pretty good if you could keep the spark plug wires on - you can see in this photo how they pop into the fan housing. Problem was that the air being pushed around by the fan to cool the engine would pop off a wire every now and then. You could instantly tell when you dropped from six cylinders to five...so you pulled over and popped it back on. The air used to cool the engine was also the air used to heat the cabin - sometimes it smelled bad, especially if you had leaky push rod tube seals (which is what caused all the oil stains typically seen on the back end of every Corvair). I had to replace mine every six months or so. Good thing my Dad was the service manager at the dealership.

 

*****

 

Now, about this kit. I had forgotten all about this car, and I used to watch the show religiously. Thanks for reminding me. Now, I have to make sure that I completely forget all about this kit. Yikes! It's a bad 'un, but you are definitely beating it into submission. Did you ever just think about printing the whole thing?

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Pete in Lincs]

5 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

 Did you ever just think about printing the whole thing?

Or possibly just putting a photograph of the real car in the trophy cabinet?

Bill, you have a poorly finger, Doctors recommend that you avoid this kit for some time. Perhaps forever.

[hendie]

23 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

And we never heard from him again...

 

wishful thinking Pete 

 

22 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Yep, it all seemed to be going too well really....

 

But I'm sure it'll be alright on the night   

 

Probably daft question - can you 3D print clear parts?

 

Keith

 

not a daft question at all keefr -yes you can, but... you get striations in the print for each layer so the technology isn't up to scratch for canopies or windscreens just yet.  Here are a couple of glasses I printed for my Pegasus build.  They're not crystal clear but would have done the job had I chosen to use them.  

 

 

If you check out Johnny's Silent Running build you'll find out a lot about printing clear resin

 

 

22 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

Done....

(snip>

 

🤣

 

exactly how I feel at the moment...wet, muddy and spinning

 

10 hours ago, giemme said:

Is printing a molding buck to vacform a new transparency an option, Alan?

 

It's all looking so good....

 

Ciao 

 

 

 

Unfortunately Giorgio, no.   It's impossible to get reliable dimensional data from a 3 dimensional object without having access to a good quality scanner

 

6 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

 

I had a '66 Corvair Corsa convertible when I was a young lad - here is what it's engine looked like (this photo is from a restoration):

 

<snip>

 

Now, about this kit. I had forgotten all about this car, and I used to watch the show religiously. Thanks for reminding me. Now, I have to make sure that I completely forget all about this kit. Yikes! It's a bad 'un, but you are definitely beating it into submission. Did you ever just think about printing the whole thing?

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

I did think about it at one point Bill but there were no drawings available

 

45 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Or possibly just putting a photograph of the real car in the trophy cabinet?

Bill, you have a poorly finger, Doctors recommend that you avoid this kit for some time. Perhaps forever.

 

Couldn't agree more Pete.

 

 

BLOOMIN 'ECK..... just pasted the first photo and the damned software went and ghost posted again.  Back in another few.

 

[Navy Bird]

14 minutes ago, hendie said:

I did think about it at one point Bill but there were no drawings available

 

Looks like the real car is still around - we could LIDAR it! (Is LIDAR a verb?)

 

http://www.c-we.com/piranha/page4.htm

 

Interesting that the car was commissioned by AMT as a model before it ended up in the TV show. I would have guessed the other way around.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[hendie]

Damned annoying when the forum goes and does that in the middle of your thought stream.

 

Anyways.  Today was a good day. Well, maybe not a good day but not a bad day and most certainly a better day than yesterday.  

The Piranha was masked up to repair the damage from yesterday and thankfully the scuffs imparted by the slipping clamp were merely superficial marks so a quick polish with micromesh and it was ready for splurging paint over.

As always the Mr Color went on like a dream and I demasked a few minutes after spraying.  All looking good now.  I also tried the closed door in position to see how dreadful a job that could potentially be and at this point it is looking promising.

 

 

The smoke generators were attached to the upper bodywork.  It's just as well these parts are going to be well hidden as the kit parts are less than stellar.

 

 

Now see that metallic blue thing poking out from under the dashboard?     Yup, that's the bullet shield that goes behind the seats.   Don't ask me how it managed to get in there. And don't ask me how long it took to get it out of there.  The location of it combined with the shape and the angle of access were all perfect to make it go 'ping' back inside the hood area every time I tried to grab it with tweezers.  In the end I impaled it with sharp tweezers and it too got a respray.

 

 

10 hours ago, giemme said:

Is printing a molding buck to vacform a new transparency an option, Alan?

No, but using the kit spare transparency as a buck most certainly is Giorgio.  If only I were better at vac-forming or plunge molding.

I had some scraps of PETG left over from the Whirlwind build and of course, none of them were big enough to fit into the vacformer (it needs 5" x 5"), but they were big enough to get a windscreen from if I just plunge molded. Out came the vacformer and although I couldn't use the vacuum as the PETG wasn't big enough, I could use the clamping mechanism to hold the PETG while I plunge molded it.  After a few failed attempts using the built in strong enough for a scorched earth policy heater, I got out the heat gun and used that instead. Armed with the heat gun in one hand, my windscreen onna stick in the other and a strip of PETG clamped precariously in the dental vac, I gently heated up the PETG and when the time seemed right I plunged.

Several times.

I dunno how Bill and Steve and company get such great results.  In theory it's a straightforward task, but I really struggle to get clear parts without bubbles and other defects in them.  In the end (i.e. running out of PETG) I chose the best plungee and started hacking at it while using my bit of a disaster from yesterday as a template.

I paid a bit more attention today trying not to rush things and after a while I had a windscreen that fitted. In fact it fitted so well that I nearly couldn't get the thing back out again and I was terrified that I was going to break the pillar joints to the body.

It's a bit gnarly looking here but that's just because of my greasy mitts handling it during fettling time.  It has since been cleaned up, polished, and dipped in no Future and is looking a lot better for it.

 

 

Buoyed up by my success with the windscreen I thought I'd have a go at the door windows.   

That was even more challenging than the windscreen. Again I had trouble getting acceptable transparencies but eventually got one for each door.  I probably spent 4 or 5 hours trimming those transparencies to get them to fit into the opening.  There are so many curves and angles going on there both on the transparency and on the door frame due to the way that AMT designed/molded it.  I did after some time get a PETG transparency that was good enough, but trying to get it to stay in the door was another fun time.

As a test, I decided to use my PETG window as a template and shaped one of the smoked transparencies based on that.  The fit is not bad at all. Now...

 

 

If only I could do the same thing with one of the clear transparencies? 

 

 

Close enough I think.   The thickness of the transparency and the way it fits into the door means that a huge chamfer is needed on most sides of the glass

- I wonder if I painted that chamfer black would it look like the rubber window seal?

 

 

 

24 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

Interesting that the car was commissioned by AMT as a model before it ended up in the TV show. I would have guessed the other way around.

 

from what I've read, both Robert V & David McC hated the real car.  I wonder if there's been anyone that actually liked it 

[Neddy]

@Navy Bird  Fascinating!  Good find Bill.  🙂

Edited August 14, 2022 by Neddy

[giemme]

8 minutes ago, hendie said:

none of them were big enough to fit into the vacformer (it needs 5" x 5"),

I tape the PET to a cardboard frame in those cases - saves a lot of clear plastic, BTW.

 

New windscrwen looking excellent, top job!

 

Ciao 

[Neddy]

Well, for all your troubles the model is really starting to look good.  The door fit looks excellent, window glass ditto - well worth the amount of time and patience you've put into it.  I absolutely love the body colour and the interior is looking great too.  Lovely bit of crafting all round, but you have to admit that kit's taken a proper dislike to you! 

[Fritag]

On 8/8/2022 at 4:46 PM, TheBaron said:

I'm sorry that I hadn't twigged this was up and running sooner Alan.

 

Umm, that’ll be me a week later and so far behind the drag curve that it’ll be full burner and jettison the stores to get back up to flying speed….

 

On 8/7/2022 at 8:35 PM, giemme said:

So I payed a visit to my LMS and followed @keefr22 advice, and bought a Tamiya kit:

 

if you wanted a Porsche G what’s wrong with a nice 997 or 991  911? 

 

Well, I’m so glad I haven’t missed the entirety of your OOB (sic) build, Alan.  What years did 28 sqn operate the Piranha? I’m not getting any hits on google?  Or is that still me behind the drag curve….

 

Whatever.  Don’t matter what you’re building it’s more than worth one’s while to tune in, sit back and admire the skill…. 

 

[giemme]

1 hour ago, Fritag said:

if you wanted a Porsche G what’s wrong with a nice 997 or 991  911? 

Nothing wrong with them, obvs  - but for my first venture into car modelling,  I was looking for a bargain rather than a specific model...

 

Ciao 

[keefr22]

3 hours ago, giemme said:

I was looking for a bargain rather than a specific model...

 

Good plan G, you'll be on a slippery slope if you start looking for the late model Porkers - think VERY expensive resin, or a now almost nearly as expensive discontinued Fujimi 997 GT3R. Buy a few of them and you could almost afford a real one - like @Fritag .... 🤣

 

Keith

[TheBaron]

Despite your deprecatory remarks about plunge moulding Alan, that is some damn fine transparency work and no mistake. Bob's yer UNCLE !

 

On 14/08/2022 at 22:15, hendie said:

Buoyed up by my success with the windscreen I thought I'd have a go at the door windows.   

Oddly enough, this was also the inhouse motto of the team responsible for designing the Morris Marina...