With the body painted and given a couple of coats of artists satin varnish, it was set aside to dry. The varnish not only protects the paint but also gives the decals a better surface to adhere to.
It also looks a little more realistic, as the real thing wasn’t painted in a flat colour; it had a slight sheen to its paintwork.
It was now time to fit the engine and gearbox into the chassis.
In the instructions it show the cooling fan and fan belt assembly being fitted to the engine after it has been installed into the chassis. This needs to be followed because, if you install them before, the engine simply will not fit into the chassis as there is a bracket that goes between the two; this bracket was fitted at the beginning of the chassis build up.
The engine and gearbox mounts to the chassis by a bracket towards the rear of the gearbox and a cross member that sits under the engine, a few drops of 5 minute epoxy and the engine is secured.
The propeller shaft can be installed after the engine has been fitted as there is plenty of room between the gearbox and the back axle to fit it in, this again was painted gloss black and fixed in using 5 minute epoxy.
The fan and fan belt assembly simply clips into place, probably as both parts had been painted with enamel. I was going to dry-fit the parts before gluing, but it was such a tight fit I didn’t want to remove it, fearing it would get damaged in the process.
The radiator and header tank came next which again fitted without any problem, the radiator top hose is moulded with the radiator header tank and lined up with the top of the engine where the other side of the hose has to be fitted.
The radiator had previously been painted with gloss black enamel with the bottom hose is moulded as a separate part and is fitted to the bottom of the radiator to the side of the engine block.
The exhaust system should be fitted in section 16, but again I skipped this section as I wanted to paint the exhaust in aluminium and it would have been a bit tricky to pick it out after it had been fitted. It was a tricky job to get the three pieces to line up without first fixing them to the chassis, but it looked a lot better afterwards doing it this way.
The exhaust was finally fitted onto the chassis after everything else had been fitted, there are only two points that need to be glued, the front section that fixes onto the exhaust manifold and a cut out in one of the chassis cross members.
The rear exhaust silencer simply hangs in mid air until the chassis is fixed onto the body shell, so care much be taken not to knock the silencer off, as it is pretty delicate until properly fixed.
Fitting the wheels and tyres finished off the chassis, the inner part of the wheels needed cleaning out with a small drill before they could be fitted onto the stub axles. Once they were dry-fitted and I knew they were going to fit OK, they were fixed on using 5-minute epoxy and set aside to dry.
In my previous write up, I had said that the seats should be painted flat black, however I did some more searching on the internet and found some very good photos on the real thing, showing the seats and inner door panels covered in a light grey leather.
Luckily I had only put the primer onto the seats at this stage, so a couple of coats of Tamiya XF-54 (Dark Sea Grey) followed by a coat of Winsor & Newton acrylic satin varnish completed the job.
The door panels were given the same treatment. The page I found the reference photos can be found here.
I had also written that the steering wheel should be painted gloss black, although I had found photographs to back this up, the above website shows the steering wheel rim made of wood. I thought this might bring a little bit more detail into the build and break up the sea of blacks and the greys that the build has a lot of.
The wood was replicated by painting the rim medium brown followed by a coat of clear orange, the centre of the steering wheel was picked out in flat aluminium to replicate the spokes.
Now that the body shell had been drying for the last few days, it was time to start to put the smaller detail parts onto it. Before doing any of the smaller stuff, the floor was given a coat of satin black, to replicate the black rubber mats that the real vehicle had.
This time it was done by brush, as most of it won’t be seen and it would have been a bit of a nightmare masking everything up to spray; for this job I used Revell satin black acrylic. The pedals which had previously been painted black were installed, a very easy job, although a pair of tweezers and a magnifying glass were needed.
The body and chassis were now dry-fitted together to see if everything lined up as they should, I was pleased when the two basically fell together.
Fitting the two together is a simple affair and only needs a few small amounts of glue between the mounting points, which like the real thing are 6 chassis outriggers. They will be permanently fixed after I have finished the interior, which is where the build is up to for now.
Finishing the Interior…