Got milk?

[Eivind Lunde]

Having spent basically my whole life building airplane models I thought it was time to venture off the beaten path and build something totally different.
And "different" was the first thing that struck me when I saw MiniArt's Tempo A400 series. They got a whole range of these, covering most if not all of the guises and roles this cheap and cheerful little utility vehicle came in.

My choice is the milk delivery van version, because... why not?:

 

It's a high quality kit with good detail and a lot of parts, including some photoetched for the radiator grille and bonnet clasps and other minor details. Even if the different boxings of these Tempo A400 kits are very similar, they come with some added parts that fits the purpose of the van, like produce, furniture, barrels, coke bottles and so on. 
This kit comes with milk churns and wooden crates to be filled with milk bottles. Lots and lots of milk bottles in clear sprue, should be enough to last me through many dairy related builds to come. 

Not sure which of the 4 decal versions I will choose, but likely the one on the box cover which belonged to the Reich Milch Ausschuss, which I have never heard about and which seems to have left very little information behind since a Google search only brings up a book about milk propaganda in the Third Reich (!), and of course lots of information about Erhard Milch, which as far as I know was not involved in the dairy business at all.

Or, the  MILCH one from the early 60's, since I like the colours and the two tone paint. Well, I think this could be a fun project, so time to get started!

 

 

[keefr22]

Looking forward to this, interesting little thing!

 

Keith

[Eivind Lunde]

Trying to find pictures of the interior of this thing is nigh on impossible, especially unrestored period ones.  

MiniArt lists the interior as "grey", and I did find a couple of pictures of ones with a pretty dark grey cabin, so I just mixed 50/50 black and white and got on with it. 

 

Of course, not later than I had finished spraying the interior parts dark grey and black did I find a picture of an unrestored one with a light grey interior, which I think looks a lot more appealing.
These little workhorses, or rather donkeys, were in use for many years so I guess a lot was resprayed with different colours. Could be there was quite a lot of interior colours to choose from too, as these were very much an advertisement for the business that owned them. And since there are at least 50 shades of grey it is difficult to pick the correct one, so I'll just let it stay this way. 

 

I sprayed the pedals with MIG Ammo Metal Steel, which is way too bright for my liking, but looks a lot better after being toned down and weathered with a dark grey Floory wash. I have, depending on season, up to 3 motorcycles in my living room at any one time so I always check the metal colours against the 83 Yamaha XV 1000 TR1, and the bright metal/grey wash method always compares well  . Guess I could have sprayed the Floory wash to get a more uniform look, but I also wanted the pedals and metal to look dirty and used. 

Gear selector should be black, and pictures show that the pedals may have been black too, but I'm following MiniArt's instructions here:

 

[Eivind Lunde]

Got some detail work done on the floor and battery. Floor has gotten some washes with Flory grey, grime and brown colours, I really love this stuff and use it more and more. It is water based with a very small pigment size and is extremely easy and forgiving to work with. When I mess up and overdo things, I can just moisten a Q-Tip and remove the excess. Lovely stuff .

Pedals, the gear shifter and the central "spine" (this unusual vehicle is front wheel drive so it's not the transmission tunnel, but it could contain the gear selector linkage) has been glued in place.

 

It took a bit of fiddlin' to get the pedals lined up correctly, but once in place I made sure they'd stay there with some superglue underneath the floor. I added a painted metal rod which could be for the rear brakes, and secured it in place with a small piece of plastic and a drop of superglue at the back. This is so far under the seat that it won't be seen.

 

Speaking of things that won't be seen, I had a go at the battery to add some detail and visual interest to the otherwise plain looking battery. I used a Hamilton Standard propeller logo from an old Tamiya Thunderbolt decal sheet to add something that I thought looked like a battery manufacturers logo, cut it in half and added it to each side of the molded strap. I painted the battery poles in gunmetal, the strap rubber grey with a metal buckle (could have been leather I guess) and weathered it with some grime from a bottle of you know what.

Happy with the result, even if part of the decal disintegrated. 

 

I read somewhere that you would actually be able to see the battery underneath the seat on the finished model, so I added black and red battery cables to it after gluing it in place. No idea where the cables would be routed, so I just tucked it underneath the metal tube spine.

 

Adding the seat shows that the battery is very difficult to see, so I guess it was kind of pointless in the end. But I enjoyed doing it, so it was not a waste of time. 

Guess the seats and the rest of the interior is next, got some thinking to do there.

Edited June 7, 2024 by Eivind Lunde

[Eivind Lunde]

I started the very simple dashboard which consists of a speedometer and a few switches. The switches were picked out in very light grey, as white is just too stark the same way black is often just too black when dealing with scale models. 

The speedometer decal was also toned down a bit with a highly diluted Flory grey wash, before getting a clear gloss Vallejo glass. I think I need to buy a bigger punch and die set so I can punch out clear plastic discs to use as glass for instruments, using clear gloss rarely looks good IMO.

 

 

The rear view mirror stalks are part of the firewall/instrument panel piece which is an accident waiting to happen. There's no way one, or both, of these stalks won't break off before this build is finished. 

Guess I better wait to add the steering wheel with column and the rest until the very last minute, as there is a lot of stuff about to happen on the other side of this panel before joining the parts the make up the cabin.

 

[Josep]

Congratulations Eivind!

The floor and battery loks really nice.

 

Waiting for more...

[JeroenS]

That's a nice little vehicle, good start!

[Eivind Lunde]

Simulating leather is an art that takes practise, and I'm just starting out. So being a noob at this I just sprayed the seat and backrest Vallejo leather brown, used a sponge to dab some MIG New Wood colour on them to simulate scuffing, overdid it , resprayed it to have another go and then gave it a thin wash with W&N Burnt Sienna oil colour to blend it in. 

Sealed it with some clear semi gloss acrylic, did some experimenting with pastels and Flory to make it look worn the way a picture of a Morris car seat I found on the web looked, and glued them in place. 

 

The battery is basically invisible now, but it is possible to pick out the cables and the logo so it was not all in vain. Guess I need to find out how to paint the very few chrome parts like the door handles, inside of the headlamps and the Tempo logos in the grille, wheel caps and the steering wheel now, since the next step will be to close up the interior.

 

[Eivind Lunde]

On 13/06/2024 at 19:28, Josep said:

Congratulations Eivind!

The floor and battery loks really nice.

 

Waiting for more...

 

On 16/06/2024 at 10:18, JeroenS said:

That's a nice little vehicle, good start!

Thanks guys. The kit is really nice overall, only criticism I have so far is that the plastic may be a bit soft and the sprue gates a bit thick, so you need to be very careful when cleaning the parts up.

I think MiniArt has made some money on this kit, seeing that it has been released in so many different variants, so hopefully other kits of unusual subjects will follow.  

[Shagohod]

Looking good so far! It's indeed a nice little kit. 🙂

 

I have this one in my stash:

 Your thread makes me to want building it now. 🙃

Edited June 18, 2024 by Shagohod

[Eivind Lunde]

Just been on holiday so little work has been done for the last week, but I finished the rear subframe since I'm kind of building this in sub assemblies to be glued together in the end.

 

I did go the "advanced" route and added some stretched sprue as brake lines, painted them steel before I found out that they were of course not hydraulic brake lines but just cables, and re-painted them black. 
The kit supplies two photo etched clamps to bend and glue to the "V" to keep the cables attached to the frames, but I couldn't be bothered since this will be invisible underneath the car anyway and just superglued them to the frame to keep them in place. Wish I had spent a bit of time to get the two brake cables closer in thickness since one is slightly thicker than the other and it is driving me nuts, but they say perfection is the enemy of barely acceptable. 

 

Aligning the brake hubs to the subframe wasn't much fun, as there is a lot of adjustments to the parts to make sure the hubs are aligned in all three dimensions so you won't end up with the real wheels having all sorts of weird angles. When they looked pretty good, I strengthened the bond with superglue to make sure the wheels won't bend under the weight of all the milk bottles. 
 

Everything got the usual grey, brown and grime Flory washes, and I also added some metal scuffs and scratches with a pencil:

 

 

Guess I need to start gluing the cargo compartment together soon, and there's some interesting things I want to try out there. This kit is really great as a testing ground for new techniques and ideas as they were utility vehicles that  were often in use for many years, so if you like to mess around with weathering you better get yourself a Tempo kit!   

[Eivind Lunde]

One thing I want to try out is to use chipping fluid to make the wooden floor of the cargo compartment look worn. According to the instructions the cargo floor was painted in the car's main colour, so my goal is to have parts of the paint being worn off to show the wooden floor underneath. 

I used some coarse sandpaper and the back of a knife to add scratches and wear to the floor, hoping without really believing, that it won't disappear during the next painting steps. Then I sprayed it Vallejo Natural Wood.

 

So far so good, but I kind of messed up the next step when I, against my better judgement, just sprayed it with a coat of Vallejo Woodgrain instead of using a brush to create the woodgrain effect. This just made it look dull and lifeless, real wood has both varying colours and textures after all. 

 

While mentally preparing to strip off the paint and do it over, I thought I could try to scrub it lightly with a sponge dipped in thinner to bring back some life to it. And it worked out pretty well. 

 

I wouldn't leave it like this if the floor would have just been natural wood, but with a clear coat of some kind and chipping fluid and a dark grey top coat, I should  be able to use a brush and/or sandpaper to create a few scuffs and worn places showing the wooden floor underneath the paint. 

 

This is one of the things I love about this hobby, you may and will mess up, but there's usually a way to fix it. 🧡
 

[Eivind Lunde]

Spent a bit of time reading up on how to use chipping fluid properly, as my previous attempts have not been successful and left a sort of crackled paint behind on the top layer. But then I found out that this is not uncommon on gloss paints like metal colours, as the chipping fluid needs something to grab onto. 

So this being a wooden floor I covered it in ultra matte AK, sprayed a layer of diluted chipping fluid and a top layer of dark grey, like in the rest of the interior. 

Which gave me this:

 

Just like I suspected, all the minor scratches got filled and disappeared, but that's OK. 

I then started to remove the paint with a moist brush, but that was WAY too effective so I had to settle for scrubbing and using a coarse sandpaper. I only have water based acrylics, but if I'm to do this again I will use a lacquer based clear matt paint, as it way to easy to remove the woodgrain paint as well as the top layer of grey. 

 

The result was... Okay.

 

Not quite the effect I'd hoped for as the woodgrain paint was mostly gone as well, but some parts (especially along the edges) looks quite good. 

And, hey! I got quite a few milk pails and wooden boxes with milk bottles to cover up the worst parts! 

[Eivind Lunde]

Have been working to finish the engine "bay" wall, as when that is done I can add the wheel and gear shifter to the other side and glue it together with the cabin part and start to get the bigger pieces together. 

Looking at pictures I can see there are quite a lot of cables going here and there, so I wanted to add that to the best of my ability. I got a piece of multi strand wire which I stripped bare, fanned out and sprayed with MR. Surfacer 1500 in a vain attempt to get my Vallejo paint to stick to it. When it had dried I painted the strands in different colours typical of electrical wires, like green, brown, red, blue, yellow, and so on.

 

 

Then I bundled it up and glued it in place hidden behind the fuel (?) tank, to fan out into the engine bay. Of course, the paint didn't stick that well so I need to touch up some places with paint, but it is good enough.

I had planned to make every cable go to a switch or maybe add some fuse boxes, but that went out the window pretty quickly. So some cables run to a couple of switches, the rest are just looping around and pretending to go places. I'll add something to make sure they stay put, maybe a pieces of photoetch to hold them in place.

[Toftdale]

I do admire your weathering skill, everything has just the right amount of wear and degradation - Andy 

[Eivind Lunde]

20 hours ago, Toftdale said:

I do admire your weathering skill, everything has just the right amount of wear and degradation - Andy 

Thanks! I wish it was more skill on my part than the fact that the Flory washes and pastels are so easy to work with, but my main goal is always to break up the monotony of the colours to add some life.  

[Eivind Lunde]

Studying photos of the engine room and surroundings I noticed a thing this kit lacks... A signal horn.

I spent some time rummaging through my spares, which mainly consists of leftover part and photoetch from 1/48 WWI airplanes, and found some bits I could use. 

So I made a signal horn out of three photoetched parts and a punched out sprue disc. The result was not great, it did lose some detail when it got glued together and painted, but you can see the screws around the perimeter if you squint and it can pass for a rusty old signal horn.

 

An added bonus is that now two more electrical cables will have a destination. 

[Eivind Lunde]

Engine room, or I guess firewall is a better word, is now mostly ready to accept the engine. I used a piece of photoetch to route the cables along the right hand side so it won't look too random, even if I've seen pictures of A400 cabling that looks like bird nests. 
A technical plate originally meant for an Fokker Dr.I Oberursel engine was added, but I won't add the signal horn until the last minute since I just know I'm going to break it off if I do. 

 

And that brings me to my greatest annoyance with this kit, the mirror stalks being moulded into the bulkhead.  

There's just no way I will finish this kit without breaking at least one of them off, the left one is hanging by a thread already, and I wish they had been added as separate pieces to be added in the last stages instead. 

That is the biggest problem, but there are a surprising amount of protrusions that could easily be mistaken for sprue gates on this car, so you better check the instructions before you  remove anything.

 

Ask me how I know. 

[Toftdale]

The firewall looks great, even better when you consider its 1/35 - Andy 

[Eivind Lunde]

On 11/07/2024 at 23:11, Toftdale said:

The firewall looks great, even better when you consider its 1/35 - Andy 

Thanks. I've never got the hang of adding realistic looking cables, it is much harder than one would think, so I satisfied with this.

These are just strands of an electrical cable, but the problem (at least for me) when using copper, lead or other metals for cabling is that it is very easy for them to bend in sharp, unnatural ways, and not that easy to correct it again. Stretched sprue keeps it's shape more naturally but has other drawbacks. 

But I see others do it to great effect, so I guess it is just something you need to practise.  

[Mike]

You're doing a fine job there.  It's nice to see one being built, as I've reviewed tons of the E400 and A400 derivatives over the last year or two.

 

I see you've put some wires in, so that makes you an Advanced Modeller, according to the instructions

[Eivind Lunde]

When I bought this kit on a whim, it was the box art livery that drew my attention. When I open the box to look at the other versions, I really wanted to make the two tone "Milch" one at the bottom right, since I love two tone paint and even want to do my own car in two tone. 

The problem I discovered is that the colour of the corresponding decals is not the same blue-grey as stated in the instructions, but more of a greyish green hue, and matching up paint to decal colour is just not fun. 

So instead I've chosen to go with the middle left beige and brown one. Picture courtesy of this site:

 

I briefly contemplated doing the middle right Dutch "MELK" one, but the snotty kid just freaks me out.  

 

But I am not convinced these liveries are all based on real cars. Searching for "Tempo A400 milk van" returns no period photos, and while these pictures might be found in some archives or have been provided by collectors, I'm just not sure if MiniArt would spend much time and money on digging up 6 different milk van liveries for such an unusual vehicle. 

Really hope I'm wrong here, though.

Anyhow, I went ahead and sprayed most part in AK AIR Clear Doped Linen, a pleasing light beige colour. I've never sprayed AK AIR before, and didn't really enjoy it at first. Based on tips I found on the net I diluted it with 1/3 of Vallejo Flow Improver, and while it was OK it seemed to take many passes to build up the colour. It also weirdly seemed to change in viscosity after a while, becoming much thinner. 

But after some choice words I decided to just try to use it straight from the bottle, and that worked pretty well. It is not as forgiving as Vallejo, seemingly eager to clog your airbrush at any time, but it does give a good result.

 

The colour in the picture is not correct, the disappointing camera in my Samsung S-22 Ultra made the part look light grey, so I had to use a filter to get them looking more like they really are. 

Guess I need to wait 24 hours for the AK AIR to dry before I can clear coat the parts, remove the masks, punch the wall a couple of times when I see the inevitable overspray, touch it up, and then start joining the big parts together..

Edited July 13, 2024 by Eivind Lunde

[Eivind Lunde]

1 hour ago, Mike said:

You're doing a fine job there.  It's nice to see one being built, as I've reviewed tons of the E400 and A400 derivatives over the last year or two.

 

I see you've put some wires in, so that makes you an Advanced Modeller, according to the instructions

It seems like it is a success for Miniart since they have released so many different versions, and it really is a nice kit. Fit is overall good, well detailed if a bit overengineered in places, and just a fun build so far. 

 

[Mike]

14 minutes ago, Eivind Lunde said:

It seems like it is a success for Miniart since they have released so many different versions, and it really is a nice kit. Fit is overall good, well detailed if a bit overengineered in places, and just a fun build so far. 

 

What I like about it is the fact that you're pretty much building it as they probably did back in the days of yore.  It's all there

[Spiny]

6 hours ago, Eivind Lunde said:

The colour in the picture is not correct, the disappointing camera in my Samsung S-22 Ultra made the part look light grey, so I had to use a filter to get them looking more like they really are. 

Guess I need to wait 24 hours for the AK AIR to dry before I can clear coat the parts, remove the masks, punch the wall a couple of times when I see the inevitable overspray, touch it up, and then start joining the big parts together..

 

Looking good so far.

 

As a normal S-22 owner I know exactly what you mean about the camera being disappointing, but I think most of it is to do with the photo processing in the phone - it's just so intrusive it ruins your photos (or at least I think it does). Go into Settings, then Intelligent Optimisation, and set it to minimum. If you're like me, you'll prefer the results as it looks much less overprocessed than with it set to medium or maximum.