In my previous part of this article, I had got up to building the chassis and had finished off with the front axle and steering joints. The build has now moved onto the rear axle.
The axle itself is made up of four parts:
- The axle casing, which is in two parts
- The drive shafts, which are again another two parts
- The coil springs, which are moulded as part of the driveshaft housings.
Once all parts are glued together, the axle can be fitted onto the chassis, which was the first time in the build that I ran info parts fit problems.
While the axle needed a little sanding to get the parts to fit together, the axle itself attaches to the chassis on four points. Here’s where things didn’t line up. Although the front mounting point went without a hitch, the rear just didn’t line up and neither did the point where the coil springs needed to mount on the chassis. A bit of sanding on the axle casing and a few clamps on the springs got things pretty much lined up.
A few small brackets and spring hangers plus the brake back plates meant the chassis was finished. The mounting holes in the back plates need a little bit of enlarging as they are a touch too small to go on the axle without a little easing.
Although the exhaust system and engine and a few other parts need to be fitted, I skipped a few sections here as I wanted to paint the chassis black first and attach all the other parts later in the build.
The chassis has a few mould lines and a few weird lines moulded into the plastic, I’m not sure of the cause of this, but it has to be in the moulding process. These were removed using the back of a scalpel blade and a medium sanding stick, a few quick coats of Tamiya grey fine primer, followed by a couple of coats of Revell gloss black enamel, thinned using cellulose thinners; not only does this make the paint dry much faster, I find it also gives a much better gloss.
With the chassis painted and left to dry off, work commenced on the bodywork.
Work starts with the front scuttle and windscreen surround. Although the instructions show the fuel tank being fitted at this stage, once again I deviated and left this out, as I wanted to paint it black and detail the mounting straps. The body needs to be painted in German Grey; the dashboard is a straightforward fit, this will be picked out in black after the body has been airbrushed.
The front windshield and scuttle simply mounts onto the main floor pan.
The pedals and steering column and wheel were left out until later, as, again, these needed to be painted black, flat for the pedal and gloss for the steering wheel.
The rear portion of the bodywork (Part # D2) comes next.
Before this part is mounted on the floor pan, part # C8, which is the spare wheel well, needs fitting onto the inside of part # D2, before part number D2 is fitted onto the floor pan. There are a few mould lines and flash to clean off the part; the mould line running through the wings are pretty bad, but easily cleaned off with a medium grade sanding stick.
Sections 29,30 and 31 show the seats going in at this stage, butonce again I deviated from the instructions and, although I did fix the front seat squab and backrest together, I left them out, as they will be painted separately and fixed in later in the build.
Not only will this make building and painting the body easier, it will also be a lot easier to paint the seats, which need to be painted satin black.
Moving onto section 32 shows the ‘B’ pillars being fitted, along with a grab bar that has brackets for a rifle rack, which holds the two rifles supplied in the kit.
Although there are two choices here, there is also a bar without the rifle rack, but I went with the rifle rack. This is mainly because the rifles in the car add another bit of detail to the model, although I left the rifles out of the model until later.
I skipped the next few sections, as sections 34 – 37 show the bodywork being built up. But as I wanted to paint all the parts separately, the bonnet was glued together as shown in section 35.
There are three parts that make up the bonnet, the top and two sides plus the front radiator grill. Nowhere on the instructions does it mention or show the two extra parts supplied in the kit that allow you to build the bonnet top open so you can have the engine showing. This is a very nice idea if you’re going to be putting this model into a diorama.
The doors and bonnet were temporarily fixed with masking tape onto wooden sticks. Once the headlamps had been made up and fixed onto the body, it was then airbrushed with Tamiya fine grey primer and set aside to dry. All other body parts were primed at the same time and, once dry, were airbrushed with a few coats of Tamiya XF-63.
Fitting the Engine and gearbox…