Got milk?

[Eivind Lunde]

13 hours ago, Spiny said:

 

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.

Thanks, I'll try that out. But to me the most disappointing thing with the camera is that it can't handle things that are even in slight motion without making it blurry, almost like the processing power can't keep up and behaves like slow shutter speed on old cameras. 

[Eivind Lunde]

With the exception of a couple of stray cat hairs, the paint job was pretty good. A slight bit of overspray on the side of the seat and in the engine side of the bulk head is easy to fix. 

I'm not too sure about the AK AIR paint. It seems to lift easier than a cheap carpet and looks to be a bit fragile on un primed surfaces, so I think I will be looking elsewhere when the time comes to replace my ageing Vallejo Model Air bottles.  Most parts will need a second pass to get complete coverage, but I think (hope) it would be OK just to touch up the missing parts with a brush. 

 

Next step should be to mask off the rubber seal around the window and paint it black (🎵"I see the rubber, and I want to paint it black"🎵), then I can give it a bit of shine with clear acrylic floor polish, add the window and the windshield vipers.

Edited July 14, 2024 by Eivind Lunde

[Jochen Barett]

It doesn't help or do any good, but I thought I'll drop these links anyway:

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Wie-und-wo-damals-bei-Tempo-gearbeitet-wird,tempowerk212.html

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Tempo-Auf-drei-Raedern-durch-die-Zeit-des-Aufbruchs,tempowerk100.html#tempowerk104

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Tempo-und-seine-Fahrzeuge,tempowerk104.html

 

NDR is Northern German Broadcasting and in a way it is connected to British history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norddeutscher_Rundfunk

 

[keefr22]

2 hours ago, Eivind Lunde said:

the paint job was pretty good.

 

Looks better than that to me, your weathering looks great and the finish on the seat looks brilliant!

 

Keith

[Eivind Lunde]

On 14/07/2024 at 20:27, Jochen Barett said:

It doesn't help or do any good, but I thought I'll drop these links anyway:

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Wie-und-wo-damals-bei-Tempo-gearbeitet-wird,tempowerk212.html

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Tempo-Auf-drei-Raedern-durch-die-Zeit-des-Aufbruchs,tempowerk100.html#tempowerk104

 

https://www.ndr.de/geschichte/chronologie/Tempo-und-seine-Fahrzeuge,tempowerk104.html

 

NDR is Northern German Broadcasting and in a way it is connected to British history

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norddeutscher_Rundfunk

 

Thanks, interesting pictures! 

 

I've found more and more pictures of these vehicles, and what I've learned is that there are a lot of differences between the models, and that MiniArts model is likely based on one of the later ones, or perhaps a compromise between variants.

Based on what I see in pictures the colour call outs looks wrong in many places. The pre-war car I'm building would likely have a natural wood interior, or at least the wall behind the driver in the cargo van version should probably be in the same colour as the exterior, not grey as listed in the instructions, a plain flat seat, pedals should be black and not steel (this I've kind of fixed), and so on. 

 

Things like this kind of triggers my modelers perfectionism and gets on my nerves, like nails on a blackboard or a spelling mistake, but it is too late to correct these mistakes now. 

Oh-well. 

[Jochen Barett]

2 hours ago, Eivind Lunde said:

Thanks, interesting pictures! 

 

I've found more and more pictures of these vehicles, and what I've learned is that there are a lot of differences between the models, and that MiniArts model is likely based on one of the later ones, or perhaps a compromise between variants.

Based on what I see in pictures the colour call outs looks wrong in many places. The pre-war car I'm building would likely have a natural wood interior, or at least the wall behind the driver in the cargo van version should probably be in the same colour as the exterior, not grey as listed in the instructions, a plain flat seat, pedals should be black and not steel (this I've kind of fixed), and so on. 

 

Things like this kind of triggers my modelers perfectionism and gets on my nerves, like nails on a blackboard or a spelling mistake, but it is too late to correct these mistakes now. 

Oh-well. 

The milk dealer purchased a used grey Tempo Dreirad and took it to a paint shop for a new exterior paint job. The rubber pads on the pedals wore off fast (and so on and so on).

 

Does it look good the way you did it? _ yes / _ no

(I think it does, so dont let people like me derail your build!)

[Spiny]

It all looks good to me.

 

Sometimes it's very easy to let the search for perfection spoil something which is shaping up to be very good as it is - you can easily make things worse, or worst of all not even complete, all in the search for a perfect ideal which probably never existed in reality anyway. One of the tricks with any model is learning to accept the imperfections, which don't usually detract from the impression of reality anyway, especially with a weathered build such as this one.

[Bengalensis]

I can only echo the vice words of Jochen and Spiny above. You are doing very nice work here, and unless you would have access to a superb set of reference photos from about 80 years ago of the specific chassis number of the vehicle you are modelling, it would be difficult to improve on accuracy.

 

I'm looking forward to more progress on this, and hoping for a 1/24 scale release from MiniArt...

[Eivind Lunde]

Thanks guys, I know you're right about this. It is just hard to accept when you spend time trying to find references and make it as close to the original vehicle as possible, only to find several features are bound to be wrong anyway. 

[Eivind Lunde]

Spent some time at my summer house, so not much having been done the last week. But the rubber seal around the window has been painted Vallejo Nato black (or Otan black, for you French guys), which took me quite a while to get right. I really hate painting soft curves like that, a small mistake and you need to touch it up since it makes the rubber seal look smeared on. 

Was thinking about using some sort of pen, maybe that would have been easier, but I kind of got there in the end. Not looking too bad. Window is glued in using a clear water soluble glue, hope it will stay in place as I don't have the nerves to risk fate using Tamiya or super glue in combination with capillary action.

 

The photoetched windshield wipers in the blue circle is the next job I'm not looking forward to at all, They're small, fragile, and are meant to be bent 270 degrees around the wiper arm, a job that can go wrong in so many ways. 

 

BUT... When that is done, or I'm done yelling and punching the sofa pillows after screwing it up, I can make a lot of visible progress in very little time as the major parts can then be joined.

And I can try out a few things I've never done before, which I'm really looking forward to.

Edited July 22, 2024 by Eivind Lunde

[Stick]

I like your colour tones and details, lovely interior 👍🏻

Stick

[Eivind Lunde]

1 hour ago, Stick said:

I like your colour tones and details, lovely interior 👍🏻

Stick

Thanks.  I do seem to be better with grey colours, so I wonder how the weathering of the beige body shell will look like in the end. I got the complete set of Flory washes though, so it all comes down to choosing the best colours for the job.

[Eivind Lunde]

Well, the actual bending of the windshield wipers was much easier than expected. Either the drawing in the instructions is confusing, or you can get away with just bending them 90 degrees. 

So they are in place now, for how long is anyone's guess, but they have been superglued in place with an extra dab of glue to secure them.

 

If I were to build another one of these, and maybe I will sometime as it has been enjoyable so far, I would have just cut off the two nubbins that are meant to be the axels for the wipers and replace them with a small disk from my punch & die set.

The axels are moulded into a point, which at least for me, makes it basically impossible to get them to sit 100% correctly with only seconds before the tiny drop of superglue has set (), so having a slightly larger, flat, surface would help immensely. 

 

The wipers are also so fragile that they can't take much handling before they get bent out of shape, so I need to carefully adjust the left one when I have built up enough courage to do so. I will also have to touch up the paint a bit and remove the finger print on the windscreen. 

 

Trust me, it's there.

Edited July 23, 2024 by Eivind Lunde

[CrazyCrank]

You did an incredible and stunning weathering 👍

[Toftdale]

1 hour ago, CrazyCrank said:

You did an incredible and stunning weathering 👍

What he said 😁

[Eivind Lunde]

20 hours ago, CrazyCrank said:

You did an incredible and stunning weathering 👍

 

18 hours ago, Toftdale said:

What he said 😁

Thanks! 

[Eivind Lunde]

Finally some parts has gotten glued together. After the wipers were done I picked out the headlight fixtures in the brown colour I chose (Vallejo Nato Brown, lightened with 20% white), glued in the steering wheel and what I have now come to understand is the gear shifter.

This dashboard push/pull shifter reminds me of the Citroen 2CV and other French cars, only here it makes sense since the engine and gearbox is kind of an motorcycle engine mounted very high with a chain drive to the front wheel.

But what didn't make sense was that the gear shifter almost touched the steering wheel, leaving little room. So I removed it, shortened it about 1 mm and glued it back in.

 

Much better, now it has ample clearance, just like in the real car.

 

The steering wheel will have to be raised up a bit so the poor driver can fit his leg under it, and at the same time I will remove a bit of the overdone Flory wash with a moist Q-tip. 

I also masked and sprayed the fenders in the same Nato brown colour mix. Always nerve wracking to remove the masks, but it went quite well with the exception of some paint seeping under the mask on the left part. But I guess I can remove that, or just make it into "weathering".  

 

Not sure what's up next... Could make the doors, paint some milk bottles or the crates they will be in, this kit has so many different things to make. Not to forget that the engine is a kit in itself. 

[Eivind Lunde]

"Up next" turned out to be the roof. The photoetched roof rack was easy to install, even if didn't look at the instructions ("Nah, it'll be fine") before bending and gluing it together, and ended up with bending the small support tabs the wrong way. 

It's very difficult to notice, so it really doesn't matter.

 

There are a few things that I don't like about this kit. Some of the interior parts have prominent injector pin marks. Even if the walls of the cargo bay is in two parts, inner and outer wall, the pin marks on the inside wall is on the inside, visible, part of the wall. 

Why? Maybe it is a technical reason for this, but other parts like the wall between the driver and the cargo bay has detail on one side and the injection pin marks on the hidden side.

 

The wheels are another thing I'm not too happy about. They are made of two parts; the rear part of the wheel with the tyre and the front part with the front part of the wheel and tyre wall. Pretty weird, as they have separate parts with and without hub caps.

The irritating part here is that it could be difficult to mask off the hub caps, and that surely it would be easier and use less plastic if you moulded the hub caps as separate parts to be used if you wanted wheels with them on? 

Could be a technical reason for this as well, I dunno. But the press fit of the two parts is outstanding, so the seam is invisible as you can ('t) see in the picture. 

 

[Eivind Lunde]

Been little time to progress on this for the last couple of weeks, but a bit of work has been done. A lot of it has been menial tasks like spraying this and that, some of it has been things I just wanted to do to not get too bored. 

So the windows have been masked and sprayed, which went pretty well all things considered. The metal parts on the inside of the doors has been picked out in Nato Black, no idea if that would have been the case, but since the rest of the metal parts on this car seems to be primed in gloss black, I just did it. 
 

I also discovered that the seam between the firewall/front window part and the floor part is not to be visible. The real A400 probably had the whole door frame stamped out in one piece, and welded to the floor and firewall. It would have been easier to build and paint if MiniArt did it the same way, because now you have to fill and sand the seam before you can mask and spray it (or as I will do; pray and spray), but this is also down to me not really thinking this through. 

 

So I filled the crack with MR. Surfacer 1500, which seems to have done the trick. I also removed an unsightly mould line going up towards the headlight mountings, did some slight weathering of the door insides and on the roof, where I also added a little bird dropping to irritate the make believe driver. 

 

I can see from the picture that I probably have to go over with a Q-tip to feather in the edges from the Flory wash, so it won't look like the remains of a puddle. So inching forward, as I always do when the first enthusiasm wears off, but still things I look forward to do.