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Hendie's 1971 VW T2 Bay Window Devon Conversion conversion


hendie

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18 hours ago, hendie said:

+++ damn... forgot the starter motor

thankfully Jochen reminded me (if my google translation is up to scratch)

P9240024.jpg

+++

 

Yes, it was the starter I was talking about. In case you have real life trouble with it the first time in your VW-owner's life, you will stare at the engine bay with an empty face.

 

When checking "the book" ("Jetzt helfe ich mir selbst", popular German DIY help) it will tell you (roughly translated) "by the remote and hidden location of the starter you may already tell the starter will rarely be the cause of any trouble" (don't ask me how I know!).

 

That engine is a stunner, I can smell the oil and my fingers itch to tweak the Solex's idle screw!

 

In case you add the wire for the oil pressure switch, you may "abuse" (temporarily repurpose) the oil pressure warning lamp to get the distributor's static timing right without further tools (just unhook the wire from the Öldruckgeber (oil pressure sensor) and hook it up to to Klemme 1 of the Zündspule (ignition coil) just where the green wire arrives from the Verteiler (distributor), yes, dynamic adjustment is better, but in case it hits you in the wilderness and you had to clean the Unterbrecherkontakt (breaker point) to get the car going it will save your day).

 

(hope the Keilriemen (v-belt) will not rub the Ansaugluftschlauch and hope you printed enough shims so you can adjust the v-belt's tension just right) 😇

 

Gorgeous engine.

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22 hours ago, hendie said:

The hole needs a little tweaking

Fnaar, snurf...

 

Well someone had to!

Lovely engine though, what an improvement. The hoses are well worth the effort, they really bring it to life.

 

Ian

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Some lovely work there - I'm almost tempted to have a go at this model myself as a T2 was the family transport back when I was a teenager. 

 

Although to make it truly accurate I'd have to model a con rod poking through the top of the crankcase.

 

Happened more than once....

 

IanJ

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On 9/24/2022 at 11:27 PM, mark.au said:

 

How do the Olympic gymnastics judges handle a situation where they have already awarded a 10 and then see something better?

 

 

12

 

Thanks Mark - the gymnastics will come later as I attempt the wiring

 

On 9/25/2022 at 3:02 AM, The Spadgent said:

By gum!!!! That’s looking rather smart. 😀

I saw the hose and thought. Ohh the crafty so & so he’s wrapped wire around it. Then not being sure scrolled through previous pages to see that the pipe indeed was smooth, must be wire. To then continue down just one picture to get the answer or how the magic was created. 
Lovely print and brilliant paint too.

👏👏👏👏

 

 Johnny

 

Magic?  It's the Devils helix I tell you. Or is that Hellix?

 

On 9/25/2022 at 3:52 AM, TheBaron said:

I think the corrugated hose is my favourite bit so far Alan - though the whole engine looks fantastic in colour now.

It seems to go with the territory of moving between the design and to printing environments: Tuesdays are usually fine for exporting stls as a rule but complex assemblies won't mirror in Fusion of a Friday evening.

 

consensus so far seems to be on the hose.  Dunno why I bothered with the rest of the engine to be honest.  I should have just have filled the engine bay with lots of

c47b83a097361eed03dbf16eb3b0873a.jpg

 

On 9/25/2022 at 3:59 AM, JeroenS said:

That's on its way to become a rather lovely engine!

 

thanks Jeroen

 

On 9/25/2022 at 4:51 AM, perdu said:

VW engines for sale...

 

Blimey Alan that set of air pipes is beyond amazing, beyond even Thunderdome.

 

And we've got another hero.

 

Bravo sir, bravo.

 

Are you going to add the starter behind the fan housing or will it stay invisible on the model?

 

I still own the scars earned from removing a camper van starter in the dark under a T2.

 

I was lucky in that the man who owned it was having it refurbished and didn't need me to help him refit it when it came back from 'Lectroparts Handsworth.*

 

 

*Name 'imagined' to protect the guilty, their idea of refurbishment oftentimes consisted of a flash over with a gloss black aerosol and a squish of WD...

 

The way the kit is designed there's no room for any of the fancy gubbinses forward of the firewall.

 

I'm sticking to that excuse.

 

On 9/25/2022 at 5:55 AM, giemme said:

:wow:That engine is nothing short of spectacular! The single bits and the whole!  :worthy:  :worthy:

 

BTW, I think you should stick with your phone for pics :winkgrin:

 

Ciao 

 

I just knew you were going to say that Giorgio.   First you want paint, then when you get paint you're still not satisfied. Now you want in-focus photos?   Demanding... have I said that about you?

 

well you are.

 

On 9/25/2022 at 6:27 AM, Pete in Lincs said:

As they all said. Great looking engine. 

For added realism, I looked at the pictures through our letterbox....

 

:rofl2:

 

On 9/25/2022 at 3:50 PM, Pouln said:

That engine already looks great. The corrugated hoses, create a lot of reality

 

thanks Pouln.  The hoses make a nice distraction from the shades of dark black and dark grey don't they?

 

On 9/25/2022 at 4:09 PM, Jochen Barett said:

 

Yes, it was the starter I was talking about. In case you have real life trouble with it the first time in your VW-owner's life, you will stare at the engine bay with an empty face.

 

When checking "the book" ("Jetzt helfe ich mir selbst", popular German DIY help) it will tell you (roughly translated) "by the remote and hidden location of the starter you may already tell the starter will rarely be the cause of any trouble" (don't ask me how I know!).

 

That engine is a stunner, I can smell the oil and my fingers itch to tweak the Solex's idle screw!

 

In case you add the wire for the oil pressure switch, you may "abuse" (temporarily repurpose) the oil pressure warning lamp to get the distributor's static timing right without further tools (just unhook the wire from the Öldruckgeber (oil pressure sensor) and hook it up to to Klemme 1 of the Zündspule (ignition coil) just where the green wire arrives from the Verteiler (distributor), yes, dynamic adjustment is better, but in case it hits you in the wilderness and you had to clean the Unterbrecherkontakt (breaker point) to get the car going it will save your day).

 

(hope the Keilriemen (v-belt) will not rub the Ansaugluftschlauch and hope you printed enough shims so you can adjust the v-belt's tension just right) 😇

 

Gorgeous engine.

 

Thanks Jochen.  Luckily I never had to venture into the engine bay too many times on mine other than for standard servicing like changing the points and cleaning out the air filter.  The worst job was replacing the spring tubes for the tappets - without removing the cylinder heads.

 

21 hours ago, Brandy said:

Fnaar, snurf...

 

Well someone had to!

Lovely engine though, what an improvement. The hoses are well worth the effort, they really bring it to life.

 

Ian

 

you too huh?

 

squirrel-huh.gif

 

9 hours ago, Bonhoff said:

Some lovely work there - I'm almost tempted to have a go at this model myself as a T2 was the family transport back when I was a teenager. 

 

Although to make it truly accurate I'd have to model a con rod poking through the top of the crankcase.

 

Happened more than once....

 

IanJ

 

thanks Ian.  That doesn't sound like fun... on any occasion.

 

I've managed an hour or two on the bus since my last update so thought I would share.

 

My long awaited paint supply from Amazon arrived only for me to discover I had ordered the wrong darn color.  I'm thought they switched the order on me after I placed the order but unless Amazon is lying, I ordered what I ordered.  Being the positive sort of chap I am I looked at it and said... well it's close enough.  Close enough at least to let me get on with the engine bay.  While it may not be the exact color I should have ordered it was close enough considering that the engine bay gets all grotty and since it's closed up 99.9% of the time, it's a slightly different shade of orangey yellow from the outside of the bus which has experienced UK weather for 25+ years.

That allowed me to get the engine deck painted.  My masking was a bit sloppy but since there's a big rubber seal in there I'm pretending the seal isn't 100% aligned with the closure.

 

P9250001.jpg

 

and now that I've seen the quality of the photos falling out of my old camera compared to the shot I took on my phone the other day, that last shot looks terrible, but not quite as terrible as this one coming up.

The front wheel arches in the 1:1 are covered in a textured vinyl ehhrrrr... cover.  The kit plastic is very smooth so I went with my old fallback here to provide some texture - the cigarette packet liner.  The embossing on the liner is so fine it's almost unnoticeable - but just enough to add a visual wotsit without actually drawing the eye.   The texture is the same both sides so I went with gluing the tinfoil side to the plastic as the paper takes paint really well. As paper normally does 'doh!...so it should service my rough handling later

 

P9250002.jpg

 

Once I had papered the wheel arches, it all got a coat of white primer from SMS.  I figured it's going to take a lot to cover that orange plastic and what better than white primer under white paint to give me half a chance of covering the dayglo orange plastic

 

P9250003.jpg

 

I then had a wonderful time trying to mix up a suitable grey for the vinyl covers on the back of the support panels.  I'm bad enough at picking the right color straight out of the pot - if it doesn't come already color matched and I have to slosh stuff around to make a custom color, I'm hopeless.  I think I might have got away with it this time, tho' whether I'll be able to match that color again when the time comes for the rest of the interior panels is another story.

 

P9250005.jpg

 

Black is the color of my wheel arches.

 

P9250007.jpg

 

They, along with the grey panels on the reverse need a coat of shiny satin  and maybe a (very) light dusting of matt to make it look more vinyl'ish.  Then it all needs dirtied up with accumulated grimes and droppings.

On their own they all look a bit sparse, and even false to some extent, but in context i.e. actually inside the bus, things start to look more convincing

 

20220926-160829.jpg

 

After that it was time to get back to the engine.  After it had received the gloss coat to seal in the "rust", which it did, then made the rust completely invisible, it got a flat coat to tone things down.  It seems I shall have to re-add all the rusting and weathering once I've finished manhandling the engine and it's greeblies.  Assembling the engine was easy.  The wiring - not so much.

 

P9260008.jpg

 

When I was doing the wiring, I used the thinnest wires I had.  I found the red wire from the distributor to the coil in a drawer, and I only had a short length of it.  The black spark plug wires looked fine when I was using the almost obsolete MkI eyeball, but now I see them in this shot I realise they look way out of scale.  I was hoping not to have to purchase some of those extortionately priced 1/24 scale auto accessories but looking at this I don't think I have an option.

 

This is the effect I'll be going after.  See!  I did have shiny hoses.  

 

VW-Refurb-005.jpg

 

I think that photo was taken not long after I got the bus and before I'd put any time or effort into cleaning up the engine bay.  It did clean up some but as you can imagine, there's only so much you can do with nearly 30 years worth of accumulated oil and grime.

 

Surprisingly it still all fits together, but overall way too clean.  Lots of grim to be added to that later.

 

20220926-160352.jpg

 

and another shot just because.

 

20220926-160535.jpg

 

The real bonus of course is that it all fits within the Revell shell and should look reasonably convincing once all the grime and greeblies are added

 

20220926-160754.jpg

 

 

My modeling is probably going to be curtailed somewhat due to factors outside my control so this will probably be my last update for several weeks. I shall still pop into the forum and be rude to people as time allows but modeling isn't going to be happening for a few weeks at least.  

You'll all need to go and find some other shiny objects for a while :D

 

oh, here you go then...

 

1*0GDGd2k0DiJ-4UQWR8YaLQ.jpeg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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For what it’s worth, the air filter was my pick for the hi light in the engine - that was the 12, the rest was 11.99.

 

11 minutes ago, hendie said:

My modeling is probably going to be curtailed somewhat due to factors outside my control so this will probably be my last update for several weeks. I shall still pop into the forum and be rude to people as time allows but modeling isn't going to be happening for a few weeks at least. 


That’s too bad, but we can stare at the squirrel so we’ll get by, thanks for that.

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37 minutes ago, hendie said:

They, along with the grey panels on the reverse need a coat of shiny satin  and maybe a (very) light dusting of matt to make it look more vinyl'ish.  Then it all needs dirtied up with accumulated grimes and droppings.

On their own they all look a bit sparse, and even false to some extent, but in context i.e. actually inside the bus, things start to look more convincing

If the paint is matt, I've done this in the past (turn away if you're squeamish). Wipe the tip of you finger on your forehead (or down the side of your nose) and gently rub it into the paint. It gives it a slightly shiny and grubby look....

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3 hours ago, Jo NZ said:

If the paint is matt, I've done this in the past (turn away if you're squeamish). Wipe the tip of you finger on your forehead (or down the side of your nose) and gently rub it into the paint. It gives it a slightly shiny and grubby look....

I am REALLY hoping you don't do muddy tanks!

 

Ian

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9 hours ago, hendie said:

Black is the color of my wheel arches.

Keef to Mick: ' Naaaah...that don't work with the rest of the song...what about something more in yer face about painting a whole line of cars black?'

Mick (coughing): ' -ck this stuff's strong..'

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9 hours ago, hendie said:

The way the kit is designed there's no room for any of the fancy gubbinses forward of the firewall.

 

I'm sticking to that excuse.

Yes I can buy that as an excureason.

 

Have you looked in on Tamiya X-6 for your orange topcoat yet?

Looks a very close match to the VW hue.

 

I have discovered that fisherfolk who do odd things in little back rooms with hooks and feathers have various sizes of lead wire which make lovely cables in models.

 

So far my collection includes a very handy 0.2mm lead wire which does not fight poking round into the sort of places which copper hates to dive into and stay looking realistic.

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12 hours ago, hendie said:

 First you want paint, then when you get paint you're still not satisfied. Now you want in-focus photos?   Demanding... have I said that about you?

 

well you are.

Actually, I'm now eager to see some proper weathering on that fabulous engine :winkgrin: :D  

 

Great progress on the rest too :clap: :clap: 


Ciao

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Add me to the happy viewers list. And you fitted it into the shell so I don't have to go out into the hall & peer through the letterbox. Thanks.

It gets chilly out there! It does look rather good though. I think I used stretched sprue for plugleads in the past.

19 hours ago, hendie said:

 I shall still pop into the forum and be rude to people as time allows

Thank Heaven for small mercies. I look forward to that, and to your return to the basement and more modelling.

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I'd say that the engine looks pretty well convincing now, even without the grime in. Although what I really want to see now you've shown it is an armoured squirrel somewhere on the model :)

 

As for colour, just remember the saying that most men see about 8 different colours (9 if you count grey) while women see the full 16-bit colour palette. And seeing as probably 90+% of the people here are men I doubt an exact match is required ;)

 

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11 hours ago, Spiny said:

As for colour, just remember the saying that most men see about 8 different colours (9 if you count grey) while women see the full 16-bit colour palette.

We probably can see all the colours, but don't know what they're called and don't care 🙂 

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Another of Alan's masterclass builds. I've only just found the build  and chomped my way through all four pages.

I do like the door cards and of course the engine with the return spring on the carb (did you spot that Mark?). The 3D printer has been busy.

I have two  van/bus models, a T2 from Hasegawa I've been turning into a hot rod, chopped roof etc. Also a T3 into a Luftwaffe runabout. 

As an aside. I fondly remember my T3, which only had 40k on the clock when I purchased her an 1/4m k when I sold her, all for the cost of a clutch ( normal expenses) a fuel pump, cheap Italian piece. The front breaks wee the best at 183k I had ground the pads to the disks and the squeal was getting a little too loud, so yes, I replaced them. A great vehicle.

Popcorn already half finished...

 

Colin

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thanks for all the replies folks.  This is just going to be a quick update as I'm sitting waiting for my flight.

During the week while modeling was not really a top priority I did spend some time in the basement to while away an hour or two and take my mind off things. A welcome little diversion.

 

The brain hasn't been functioning a full capacity these last few days so I wasn't about to start anything complex or with a difficulty level of greater than hmmnnnnn.

The roof seemed like a good candidate. It needed a hole.  As long as I managed to put it in the right place with the right dimensions it was just a case of scribing lines until the roof fell out - or at least the part I didn't want, to fall out.

 

P9290002.jpg

 

10 minutes later with a little help from the scribing tool and we have a hole.  It even looks to be in the right spot.

 

P9290003.jpg

 

Step n+1:  Cut a piece of plasticard as the starting point for the pop top roof.  For the radiused corners I simply help a metal washer against the card as I filed away material as that gave me a reasonable change of having the 4 corners the same.

 

P9290004.jpg

 

Next was to add the side drops. More plasticard (I'm going old school on this one) with some small fillets to keep everything square

 

P9290005.jpg

 

Everything went according to plan and the base of the pop top sits evenly on the roof. So far so good.

 

P9290006.jpg

 

For rigidity I used 0.75mm card stock.  It was great for the purpose of keeping everything square and not flopping about but it did have one downside.  Due to the thickness of the card, the outer face stands off from the roof my a significant amount, even after chamfering the inside edge as you can see here.

 

P9300008.jpg

 

The answer was to laminate a sheet of 0.2mm card on the outer face. The thinner card could slip further down the outer face and make a nice neat seam against the roof.

 

P9300012.jpg

 

Once the glue set, the excess was trimmed off nice and flush.

For the top of the pop top, another piece of plasticard came into play. I formed a lip on the underside by laminating strips of 0.75 x Something or other to the main part leaving gaps at each corner. That allowed me to fit small squares of card that could be marked up and trimmed to shape leaving a nice even(ish) lip all around.

 

P9300007.jpg

 

Then came another hole.  This one took a lot longer to figure out as I replaced the original roof vent with a larger screened version and I only had a few reference shots from various angles to try and work out it's size and location, so this is pretty much guesswork.

 

P9300014.jpg

 

The next part was a lot trickier than I anticipated... until I had one of those 'doh! moments.

Originally I tried using plasticard to form the front and rear of the pop top, but after several attempts I gave up that idea - there were too many curves in curves going on and my effort just looked downright shoddy to be honest.

I then thought about using Milliput - just blob it all on, get a rough shape and when cured just file it all to shape.  The downside to that method is that I'd have to wait overnight until the milliput cured.  However, that set off a chain of thought electrons bumping around inside my head and some evolutionary thought process eventually made it's way from milliput to resin.  I have bottles of the stuff.  Well, one bottle and it's got a litre of resin in it, and I also have a light saber.

That lead to hendies experimental pop top forming process.

I covered the roof in BMF and simply painted in layers of resin hitting it with the light saber after each pass. I've never seen smoke come off resin like that before!

 

P9300019.jpg

 

Like this.  This one looks fairly neat but that's because this is a second pass - I had already filed down the excess and had a few small gaps that needed taken care of.

 

P9300016.jpg

 

Before I got past the first filing stage it looked like this. Not pretty but functional. Hey, I'll take what I can get here.

 

P9300015.jpg

 

The reason for the second pass was: if you look closely at the shot above, on that lower right corner you will see the BMF lifting from the bodyshell.  As the resin was curing, it was shrinking, and that shrinking causes the resin to pull the BMF from the plastic body.   That meant I had a small gap under each corner when it was all filled and cured.  The fix was easy - just prise the pop top from the roof, paint on some more resin on both the top of the roof and on the underside of my resin carbuncle. Press the two together and zap it with the lightsaber again.

 

Once filed to shape it fitted very nicely.

 

P9300018.jpg

 

I'll finish up with this terrible out of focus photo but I hope you can see that the pop top now follows the roof contour very closely indeed.  Just resting as it is, there is the slightest of gaps but that disappears with the lightest of pressure.

 

P9300017.jpg

 

Another task completed.  Certainly not as sexy as the engine but arguably much more important as the pop top will be a focus point of the finished build whereas the engine will be tucked away where no one but the most inquisitive will ever see it, or even know it's there.

 

Well that's it I'm afraid, this will definitely be the last update for a few weeks now. I have an airport to catch.

 

 

 

 

 

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