Hendie's 1971 VW T2 Bay Window Devon Conversion conversion

[The Spadgent]

Looking good. “Rivets” of course!!! Why didn’t I think of that. 😃

As for the orange my go to is always Tamiya X-6  it looks suitably 70s but you might have to do a bit of fiddling. They’re probably better matches out there but that’sa good start. 
 

Johnny

[giemme]

3D malarkey at full steam, alongside with some traditional sawing/cutting and Milliput-ery: top stuff!   

 

Ciao 

[hendie]

13 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Doh!

Make suitable hole in metal plate. Scribe around inside. Simples.

 

Judging by the above, the seat backs, door cards and vents should look great. The intake still looks a little large from here?

Could you print a new sliding door to make the handle recess work easier?

Have a great week. Pete

 

Intakes reduced and printing as I type Pete. It may take a few more rounds but I think I'll get there.

Rather than trying to make a template in metal it would be easier just to print one wouldn't it?   

 

12 hours ago, Brandy said:

I was just about to scream "use the sliding door as a template before you glue it in" - 'cos you hadn't mentioned opening up the other side yet. Then I looked at the piccie and saw you'd done it.

Please arrange your posts better to avoid giving those of us of a nervous disposition palpitations!

 

Coming along very nicely I must say, and your expectation of me rearranging my builds doesn't help..... 

 

Ian

 

 

12 hours ago, perdu said:

What our esteemed Imp says.

 

I think you may be being too restrained, having enjoyed the benefits (?) of scale creep on countless occasions the probably required height of the eyebrow might be even closer to no mo' than 1.25mm.

 

 

As I don't have a piece of such resin AND a smartphone handy and I have to suggest instead of demonstrating, since resin is a soft surface which seems to suck in light to prevent focussing and cause fuzzy pictures have you considered giving the phone a focus point?

 

A single line or dot of graphite from a pencil might give you the focus you need and allow nicer pictures.

 

I feel duty bound to mention that fuzzy photographs should be my domain and hope you can get over the illusion of fuzziness.

If my photos were that 'fuzzy' I guarantee I'd never receive Ian's further pictorial assistance.

 

I tried squirting Alclad primer on the parts as I have some to get rid of (had to add acetone to thin it down enough to spray).  It didn't really make any difference.  I'll try not to step on your fuzzyfoto trademark in future Bill.

 

12 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Looking good. “Rivets” of course!!! Why didn’t I think of that. 😃

As for the orange my go to is always Tamiya X-6  it looks suitably 70s but you might have to do a bit of fiddling. They’re probably better matches out there but that’sa good start. 
 

Johnny

 

It's definitely more of an orange than a yellow, but I'm hopeless as mixing colors to match samples so unless I can get an off the shelf pot of something I could be in trouble.  The X6 does look close though - as far as anyone can judge on a computer screen. I might try and lay my hands on some.

 

11 hours ago, giemme said:

3D malarkey at full steam, alongside with some traditional sawing/cutting and Milliput-ery: top stuff!   

 

Ciao 

 

I try to cater for all tastes Giorgio. Even yours. 

 

Sundays. Always a lazy day and there wasn't really much going on down in the Henderdungeon.  Yesterdays parts were cleaned up and evaluated against the kit parts to see if dimensions were correct or any other tweaks were needed.  OF course there was - who was I trying to kid?

DImensionally, the door cards worked out fine.  Here you can see  a printed door card, and on the rear face I have shelled out some areas to allow me to flex the door card when fitting so it doesn't try and pull the kit part into a flat surface.  The kit part also highlights why I chose to go down the printing route - that detail is as much as you get on the kit.  It looks like I have already filed the detail flat, but I haven't touched that door yet.

 

 

The hinges are going to have to go along with the hinges on the rear door but I haven't spent any time in my head trying to figure out how best to incorporate new hinges. Printed? Metal? I'm just not sure yet so I may pnder over that this week.

 

Cutting out the sliding door revealed an unexpected benefit - a nice gap along the opening between the cill and the floor.  In case you were wondering - I wasn't being facetious with that comment.  On the 1:1 there's a runner track in there for the bottom end of the sliding door.  The "as designed" part on the opposite side looked very toy like but now I have a surprise gap there I can fill it with something more approaching the real design.  The sills on this are very shallow whereas on the 1:1 they are quite deep. I wonder if I should try and add some depth to them? i may look into that later.

 

 

A dry fit of the front support panels looked promising but threw up the need for a few tweaks.  The diffuser vent is very close to the sidewall and there's still a trim panel to be fitted there so that would obscure part of the vent.  Other than that I am happy with how they look.

 

 

The panels have been tweaked by removing 0.5mm from the width and moving the diffuser vent inboard by another 0.5mm.  If I'm lucky those will be the last tweaks to those panels.

Still lots of tweaking elsewhere though.  I dry fitted the drivers door and door card along with the dash assembly - there is a plastic vent mounted on the door card and I needed to determine where it should be located.  You may just see a couple of pencil marks on the door card  at the front edge.  If I get things right it should all line up in the end.

 

 

Once I had those marked out it allowed me to start designing the vent housing.  The design itself was reasonably straightforward but the trick will be getting that rear end to match up with the diffuser vent on the support panels I showed earlier.  

 

 

There's still another piece to fit between the diffuser and the back end of this trunking, but until I actually get to the stage of fitting some parts in place I won't be able to get any dimensions worth using.

 

I have a bunch of stuff printing at the moment so once those are done bathing in their UV's I'll run up another batch of prints in Chitubox and try and get those printed this week.  This is very much a trial and error job, mostly with errors so far but we're edging closer to having some worthwhile prints.  I really should get back on the engine bay but the mojo isn't quite there for that just now.  

 

Happy camping folks.

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

It must be rather lovely to see your memories becoming a material reality again Alan. 

[The Spadgent]

Excellent work on the panels. 👌 This is, and will continue to be fun. 🤩

 

 good luck with that orange. 🍊

 

 Johnny

[Six97s]

22 hours ago, hendie said:

 

BTW - does anyone have any recommendations on paint for the orange on a 71 VW T2?   The Revell instructions are useless and I'm not sure which paint would be a good match for the VW orange.  I think the VW name was SIerra Yellow.  I've always thought of it as orange but apparently that is not the case.

 

 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vw+t2+sierra+yellow&t=ffsb&atb=v227-1&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

 

I would buy a can of Duplicolor (you said you were in the US?) or similar touch up paint and use that.  I often use rattle cans to paint model cars, but you can always decant it and thin for airbrushing if you want more control.

Edited September 11, 2022 by Six97s

[mark.au]

Impeccably explained such that I could follow.  No mean feat when I know nothing of vehicle modelling, VW’s in general and this in particular, 3D stuff (as already established) and conversions.  

[hendie]

On 9/11/2022 at 5:15 PM, TheBaron said:

It must be rather lovely to see your memories becoming a material reality again Alan. 

 

Tinged with a bit of sadness at the same time Tony.  I regret leaving the old bus back in the UK especially when the company was going to pay to have it shipped over, but the thought of driving a RHD vehicle on the wrong side of the road, and with manual gearchange was just too frightening to consider.  Never mind the fact that there was no such thing as air conditioning and even on a decent summers day in Scotland (yes, both of them) the heat inside was almost unbearable. I dread to think what it would have been like here in summertime.

 

On 9/11/2022 at 5:39 PM, The Spadgent said:

Excellent work on the panels. 👌 This is, and will continue to be fun. 🤩

 

 good luck with that orange. 🍊

 

 Johnny

 

I think I have the choice of fruit sorted Johnny.

 

On 9/11/2022 at 6:43 PM, Six97s said:

 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vw+t2+sierra+yellow&t=ffsb&atb=v227-1&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

 

I would buy a can of Duplicolor (you said you were in the US?) or similar touch up paint and use that.  I often use rattle cans to paint model cars, but you can always decant it and thin for airbrushing if you want more control.

 

great suggestion Six97s but when I looked at getting touch up paint the prices were shocking.  I scoured around some of the forums and found some really useful info from bus owners in the US.  It would appear that Rustoleum carry Heirloom White & School Bus Yellow which seem to be very close matches to the VW colors.  I'll check out my local hardware store and see if I can verify that.

 

On 9/12/2022 at 7:58 AM, mark.au said:

Impeccably explained such that I could follow.  No mean feat when I know nothing of vehicle modelling, VW’s in general and this in particular, 3D stuff (as already established) and conversions.  

 

Thanks Mark.

 

Not much of an update in this post, more of a drive by 'hi, I'm still working on it'.   I printed a bunch of test parts the other day and gave them a quick once over at lunchtime.  Everything looked good so I hope to have a decent update at the weekend.

Yesterday I got fed up at work and took the afternoon off to work on the engine model.  I think this is one of the biggest roadblocks to starting assembly and I had kind of pushed it onto the back burner recently so it was time to get that sorted out.

After a few hours sweating over a hot keyboard I had something resembling a 1600 flat four.

 

 

There's still quite a bit of modeling to do before I would call it complete. It is by no means accurate but more a hendie's impression of a VW 1600 flat four.  I just want something that looks the part (and fits!) adn will look busy enough once painted up and greebled with wires n stuff.  I'm printing off a rough version this afternoon which will be enough to let me evaluate where I've gone wrong, and let me know if it's going to fit into the available space.

It's so easy to get lost in the minutiae of detailing each and every little feature and I keep having to remind myself of the overall size of this thing - the distance from the top of that flat tray to the top of the cooling housing (big D thing on it's side at the back) is only 17mm. 

 

Once I have the printed parts in my hand and can try locating it in the orange plastic bus I have no doubt there will be a number of changes needing to be made. It should be interesting.

 

 

 

 

 

[giemme]

"Virtual" engine looking ace - looking forward to the printed version

 

Ciao 

[The Spadgent]

2 hours ago, hendie said:

It's so easy to get lost in the minutiae of detailing each and every little feature and I keep having to remind myself of the overall size of this thing

Exactly that. It is indeed so easy to go down that rabbit hole in 3D. A print really brings things into very sharp perspective.

Top engine work by the way. 🙌

J

[hendie]

Phew... no one has spotted my deliberate mistake on the engine. It has since been rectified.

Engine prints turned out well - for rough guides. Definitely a few tweaks needing made though.

Photos at the weekend. 

 

 

[Six97s]

8 hours ago, hendie said:

Phew... no one has spotted my deliberate mistake on the engine. It has since been rectified.

 

 

Ah, your subconscious really wanted it to have a Porsche flat six!  🙃

[Jochen Barett]

9 hours ago, hendie said:

Phew... no one has spotted my deliberate mistake on the engine. It has since been rectified.

Engine prints turned out well - for rough guides. Definitely a few tweaks needing made though.

Photos at the weekend.

You (we) would have noticed it when wiring the ignition. 😎

[TheBaron]

'Flat four facsimile a foretaste of finer fabrications.'

👏

 

 I remember seeing one of those Scottish summers you mentioned up on Iona. Emerald water under a sky so blue it vibrated - I felt like a dolphin that had died and gone to heaven.

[Pete in Lincs]

I was talking to the owner of a bay window bus last weekend. Twin exhausts. 2 Litre? Yep, he replied. Oh the power!

Nice work again on the virtual stuff. Looking forward to seeing a print soon. 

I drove RHD cars in Germany. Not too much of a problem there in the 80's. Probably not so good in the States nowadays. 

[hendie]

 

Rumbled!   Yes it was the distributor.  I had copied the distributor from the Man from Uncle Piranha and just plopped it into the VW engine without thinking and it was only later while looking at the model more closely that I spotted (and remembered) the Corvair engine was six cylinders. A couple of mouse clicks and we were back to a four cylinder distributor.  In full disclosure I should state here and not that that will not be my last mistake in this build 

 

Taking Pete's suggestion but with a twist, instead of making a scribing template out of metal I chose the easy route and just printed one for the fuel flap cover - much easier.

 

 

With some drill, file, and scribing action I had this in about half an hour. It still needs a little tidy up but so far so good.  Size wise I'm not 100% on it yet.I think I could have made it about 0.5mm larger but it's easier to remove material than it is to add it. The printed door is just a rough version at this point and by that I mean printed with a largish layer height for speed of printing. I'll drop the layer height to about 0.01 or 0.015mm for the final version. I did remember to include the little finger bump-out which looks more like a defect than a feature.

 

 

First draft of the engine came out of the VAT and already looks way better than the kit offering.

 

 

For this print out I really wasn't concerned with the actual detail as what I really needed was to confirm the overall shape and dimensions of the lump and to check if it's going to fit into the available space. It was a case of throwing it into Chitubox, picking an orientation and hit the magic auto-support button and let it rip.

You show me yours and I'll show you mine...

 

 

The largest uncertainty however, was answered.

 

 

It sort of fits.  Though not much will be seen (as always)

 

 

It does raise more questions though. Two shots above you can see that there's a substantial lump of engine hanging below the bottom of the bus.  I checked the kit version and it has around 5mm of engine below the bodyshell. My version has around 10mm.

The question is: How is that going to look once the suspension and running gear is fitted?  I'm 99% certain that my version isn't going to work but I'll test my theory out later today.

 

During the week I continued working on the flat four trying to get it to a finishing point.

 

 

I think I have managed to capture most of the detail or at least most of the major components.

 

Although I have started modeling the transmission/gearbox I may opt not to use it and salvage some of the kit offering instead as it locates the wheel axles and the heatg exchangers. I'm less than impressed with their heat exchangers though so I think this is going to be bery much of a make it up as you go along build.

 

 

I have a couple of options to get this all to fit together if there's too much engine below the bus. One option is simply to scale the entire engine down by a factor of X until it fits. Another, and probably the path I shall take if the need arises, is to slice the engine at the deck level and remove a portion at the top of the cylinders, effectively raising the bottom end of the engine closer to the body pan.  Since you will never be able to see the engine in it's entirety and only view part of it form above, or part of it from below, I think that will work

 

More printing needed I think. I'm going to slice the engine for printing in several different ways and try and test this all out this weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

Another, and probably the path I shall take if the need arises, is to slice the engine at the deck level and remove a portion at the top of the cylinders, effectively raising the bottom end of the engine closer to the body pan.

Reminds me of my first experience buying a 2nd hand car here in Ireland: I never knew Massey Ferguson did VW parts...

 

Great looking engine - can't wait to see the print!

[giemme]

Alan, that last 3D pic of yours has got that steampunk feeling.... I'd print one out and paint/weather in post modern fashion just for the sake of it! 

 

Brilliant 3D designing,  as always

 

Ciao 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

Looks great just as a test print. The new ones is going to be superb.  

17 hours ago, hendie said:

 

I can’t not see the face of a drunken robot in this pic. 😂 “can’t not” is that a double negative? You can tell I had wine last night. 🍷

 

 Johnny

[johnlambert]

2 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Looks great just as a test print. The new ones is going to be superb.  

I can’t not see the face of a drunken robot in this pic. 😂 “can’t not” is that a double negative? You can tell I had wine last night. 🍷

 

 Johnny

Damnit, now I see it too!

[HOUSTON]

Nice background to your build.Nice. 

It is coming along splendidly and you are doing a grand job on it.

You are doing a great job Hendre.

 

 

I drive to work on way to Huddersfield (when not gallivanting  in Rutland like today) and see a bright shiny Yellow  Camper van.. almost like your build. Next tine I pass it gonna have a look how old it is(registration  number).

[Pete in Lincs]

5 hours ago, HOUSTON said:

gonna have a look how old it is(registration  number).

Beware of the drunken robot though!  🤖

[Fritag]

Bloomin’ ‘eck; Alan has got me following and enjoying the build of a VW Camper.

 

I guess there’s something about hendie-handiwork that transcends the subject.

 

Probably some combination of ingenuity, skill, competence and confidence.  Summat like that anyroad…

[hendie]

On 9/17/2022 at 10:35 AM, TheBaron said:

Reminds me of my first experience buying a 2nd hand car here in Ireland: I never knew Massey Ferguson did VW parts...

 

Great looking engine - can't wait to see the print!

 

Then wait no longer Tony.

 

On 9/17/2022 at 1:40 PM, giemme said:

Alan, that last 3D pic of yours has got that steampunk feeling.... I'd print one out and paint/weather in post modern fashion just for the sake of it! 

 

Brilliant 3D designing,  as always

 

Ciao 

 

 

 

thanks Giorgio. I might even start coloring it in soon

 

14 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Looks great just as a test print. The new ones is going to be superb.  

I can’t not see the face of a drunken robot in this pic. 😂 “can’t not” is that a double negative? You can tell I had wine last night. 🍷

 

 Johnny

 

And not content with Dewey #1 you've gone and started a Laughing Robot in your Firefly build.  Is he laughing? or just very happy? I can't really tell.

 

 

11 hours ago, johnlambert said:

Damnit, now I see it too!

 

 

8 hours ago, HOUSTON said:

Nice background to your build.Nice. 

It is coming along splendidly and you are doing a grand job on it.

You are doing a great job Hendre.

 

 

I drive to work on way to Huddersfield (when not gallivanting  in Rutland like today) and see a bright shiny Yellow  Camper van.. almost like your build. Next tine I pass it gonna have a look how old it is(registration  number).

 

thanks Houston. There's still plenty of time for me to  stuff this one up though.

 

3 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Beware of the drunken robot though!  🤖

 

at least I didn't make a rude little robor like the little blighter wot was in the middle of Tony's wingfold. Family forum tsk. tsk.

 

1 hour ago, Fritag said:

Bloomin’ ‘eck; Alan has got me following and enjoying the build of a VW Camper.

 

I guess there’s something about hendie-handiwork that transcends the subject.

 

Probably some combination of ingenuity, skill, competence and confidence.  Summat like that anyroad…

 

I think it's a subconscious thing Steve - all those walks in the wilderness... I think you are secretly hankering for your own VW bus so you can drive and just lay up whenever you spy an interesting spot.  

 

 

Talking of stuffing things up.

Here's another piece of printery that was knocked out a few days ago for the sliding door handle recess.  I decided that there was no way I could reasonably attempt to carve out the required shape, with nice uniform curves, nice chamfers, and end up with something that looked half decent. Then again, I don't have to - I have a printer and for items like this it is ideal.  All I need to do is cut out a squarish hole, glue in the resin part and fettle it all back nice and smooth again.

 

 

If only I could measure properly and not cut the bloomin' hole too big the job would be a lot easier. 

 

 

No big deal as I can just modify the model to fit the hole and reprint it.  Thank heavens for modern technology.

 

As I'm working my way through this kit it seems that every time I pick up a part I see some modification or other that needs done.  In some cases, it really doesn't need doing but I just can't help myself sometimes.  Take the front panel for instance - the grill was decently molded and for a snap together kit was perfectly adequate. But...

Of course I couldn't leave it alone as I thought I could make it better so once again it was out with the scriber and razor saw and now we've gone and made another hole. It appears I am making lots of holes in this kit.

 

 

If all goes well that particular hole should be filled with one of these, if I've measured things properly this time.  I've also decided that I want to replace the headlights as the kit headlights have nice big slots in 'em for the glass to snap into.

 

 

Despite all this new fangled alchemy and technology sometimes it's good to go old school. Ergo, I stuck some bits of styrene to another bit of styrene.  I haven't lost my touch have I?   Take that Elegoo!

What you can't really see here because it's white on white is that those are strips of half round rod on a mainly flat piece that has radiused edges as well as radiused corners. 

 

 

Mainly because the kit, being essentially a toy, is missing some features that I thought should be there and will also add some visual interest.  (Why do we keep saying that when we know the parts are going to be almost certainly invisible once the thing is buttoned up?).   

Anyways, since I had discarded the kit engine and all the associated gubbinses that go along with it, namely the firewall - I needed to make a new, more accurate firewall and on that firewall is a muckle big panel that allows access to the fuel tank. (but if you ever wanted to remove it, you had to take the engine out first, so I never did).

 

 

You may have noticed my array of little rivets in that last shot.  I printed off a bunch of those during the week and the 0.8mm rivets made a fine job of looking like screws holding that panel in place. At least I hope they will after it's all colored in.

More to the point, the firewall is now located more accurately in relation to the rear wheel arches

 

 

The engine though. That's what you're all here for innit? You want to see the engine and how it turned out. So did I.

Here you go then.  An engine and a selection of engine bits and bobs.  From bottom left going across we have an alternator, coil, distributor (for a FOUR cylinder engine ),  the flat four itself, and on the right, the air filter housing.  ABove that is the engine fan housing, then above that a number of hoses, duplicate parts, and a couple of transmission housings.

 

 

What? You can't see the detail  How's this then?

 

 

Surprisingly the bits even fit together in the way they were intended.  I know I should be getting used to this by now but each time I print something I'm still impressed by the amount of detail that machine is capable of. I'm particularly fond of the carburettor though the picture really doesn't do the print justice.

 

 

Somehow I am going to have to try and add all the wiring in there.  Not a lot of space to work in but without the wiring the engine isn't going to look anywhere near as good as it potentially can.

 

 

Oops, nearly forgot the underside of the engine.

 

 

The big question hanging over my head has always been: Is the darn thing going to fit?

The transmission housing? Not so much.  That's no surprise at all though as I changed my plans between the last test print and this one.  I knew the position of the engine had to change so I had cut more out of the floor pan to allow the engine to move back, sorry, forwards.  I wasn't entirely sure of the final position as it depended upon a number of factors aligning with the planets so there was still a lot of guesswork going on at this point.  However, printing the transmission housing has allowed me to verify what the final design should look like as I can now see where I need to add cutouts, notches and so on and how it should all mate up to the kit floorpan/chassis.

 

 

Okay, that's the undersides... what about up top then?

Today is one of those days where the gods don't decide to throw a spanner in the works. It fits!  There's even a tiny little bit of room above the fan casing too. Just like the real thing.

 

 

It took a fair bit of faffing about though. The (1:1) engine sits on a carrier plate that sits just above the rear valance panel so I had to thicken up that section in the 3D model. It was a case of moving some parts up, moving some parts down, repositioning a bit here and there and just general moving things until it worked.

 

 

I'm glad that is over.  I've had two eight hour sessions concentrating on that engine and ancillaries as I felt I needed to conquer that before I could really start to progress in this build.  I surpassed my expectations on that count.

Now I just need to get my hands on the "correct" paint colors, and while I'm doing that I can make a start coloring in the engine,and start looking for really really really tiny little thin wires.

 

I hope you enjoyed your weekend folks. Toodle pip.

 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

1 hour ago, hendie said:

 

Well that’s Just gorgeous. 😍😍😍 i know what you mean about being amazed every time you print something. I always expect it not to work or not fit but of late things just seem to come good. But that thar engine is a thing of beauty for sure.

 Jont.