917 K Gulf Oil: Paint, Part 2

OK, so I have been through this before, with the 908/03 and the 956 pickup truck. The Tamiya light blue (TS-23) is just too dark while the Testor's light blue (1208C) is pretty close to the classic Gulf Oil blue. You'd think I would have learned by now... The difference between paints is much greater than might be guessed from the difference in the colours of the caps.



The pale lime green that the kit is molded in is nowhere near the correct colour, see the air cleaner housing at bottom right in the photo below.



So the body went in for a respray and it will be a week or more before I can get back to the polishing that will be needed given the orange peel that came from using a dirty nozzle. (My excuse: there are no sources of Testor's paint within easy walking or public transit distance; the closest is a minimum 30 minute drive through the ongoing construction nightmare.) So here is the Tamiya paint in a picture from the last post:



Yes, yes, I should get an air brush and mix my own Gulf Oil blue. Here is the Testor's:



Meanwhile engine and chassis are progressing well and will be reported separately. Never a dull moment here at the Hobby Nook & Cranny.

917 K Gulf Oil: paint

So I decided that what the shelf really needs is a 917. I've got five kits of this iconic racer; three are resin or multimedia, of which one is of the 1969 LH and another of the later 917 PA that looks so much like the 908/03. I decided to stick to styrene, and to the short tail 917 K. I have two copies of the Fujimi kit on the shelf, so out came the Gulf Oil version as raced in the 1971 Monza 1000.



The box doesn't list the drivers, but my good buddy Rick E. Pedia tells me the winning car, entered by John Wyer, was driven Pedro Rodriguez and Jackie Oliver. Rodriguez was known to be completely fearless, and especially quick in the rain as a result; he was also one of the few drivers who managed to completely tame the 917.

The kit comes molded in a horrible shade of pale green, see below; this is quite a long way from the pale blue associated with the Gulf Oil cars. I went for Tamiya light blue, TS 23, rather than the Testor's pale blue I picked for the MFH 908/03. The Tamiya is perhaps a bit dark, darker than the cap on the can might indicate, but it is pretty close and will do.



When I got the kit, I ordered the more detailed engine from Historic Racing Miniatures, so this will be part of the adventure. I will be away for 10 days so the paint will have plenty of time to harden. Stay tuned!

BRM H16: final assembly

So I let this sit for a week or two, so the paint would set good and hard and I could try something new for me, namely polishing with the Detail Master set of 3,200 to 12,000 grit cloths. I will leave it to you to distinguish between the parts I polished, and those I didn't... I think it only works if you are prepared to obsessively polish every square millimeter repeatedly, multiple times with each level of grit, while avoiding edges and high points where it is too easy to buff down to to the underlying styrene or resin. Boring in other words.



In a fit of pigheadedness I decided to paint the leading edge of the nose cone orange instead of using the series of little decals that are provided with the kit. This however proved ineffective and I will have to strip and repaint the cone. Other than this the model is pretty much ready for display.



Below is the view they hoped the competition would see. Unfortunately this was not the case, generally speaking; the Cosworth DFV was simpler, more reliable and lots faster, so that was that.



First observation: what a tiny little thing. Every step required my 4X desk magnifier, and even then it was a challenge.



Second observation: The little spun-cast bits are easily bent, and fits between dowels and sockets are critical. A bent lower A-arm, combined with a poorly cleaned-up dowel and socket joint where it meets the chassis, will lead to a lot of camber on the associated wheel.

Third observation: tools are critical. I've listed a few as I've gone along, but the following are absolutely critical:

• High quality tweezers, both conventional and cross-locking;
• Digital caliper (my old analog device works fine, upper right in the photo above)
• Drill bits #78 to #55 
• Stash of brass rod in 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 mm diameters for pinning things together
• Desk magnifier of 4X power or equivalent glasses
• I'll think of other stuff and will update this post as I do so

Finally, this is an extraordinarily well detailed kit. I have done a decent job but I can see where I could have improved. Brownie points if you can spot the sloppy bits. 

Next in this scale: the Ferrari 312, which finished third in Belgium in 1967, and the Gurney Weslake, which actually won the race. End result will be the three podium finishers from this race. Stay tuned!

MFH's 908: engine complete, mostly, finally

I spent another hour on the left side throttle return spring today before finally giving up. The PE sheet provides excess trunnions so if you lose a couple, there are more, but after losing two with no progress or obvious approach to avoid losing more, I decided enough was enough.

So on to the air cleaners and the fitting of the engine to the rear subframe. The tie-down straps for the air cleaners were a bit of work, involving threading 1 mm wide sticky tape through PE buckles, but the result is very nice, More drama arose when fitting the engine into the tube frame as nothing lined up, and the little pins provided were too short to join the engine mounts to the chassis. Some fabrication with 1.0 mm brass tube saved the day.



Below you can see the two coil wires pointing forward to the coils, located in the cockpit just under the drivers' seat. One is completely hidden but the other will be visible so the wiring will need to be done right.



I next posed the engine and rear subframe up against the tub. The fit is poor and there will need to be filing, especially since this is the primary point where the chassis is joined together -- a flaw here will mean a sag in the chassis.





But what a well detailed kit! The shot below is particularly good, showing the little sockets at intersections of tubes in the frame where rear suspension components will hopefully fit. Besides a 4X desk magnifier, a full set of number drills, from about #78 (0.4 mm) up to #53 (1.5 mm) is absolutely essential for this sort of work.



Of course the 12-plug distributor is a surprise, and it is possible that this came from the 917 kit which had a pair of these. I attach a photo from a couple of years ago showing the problem, which I obviously missed at the time even as I was drilling out the distributor to take plug wires.



So all this to say that progress remains positive but excruciatingly slow. I don't understand how 'professional model builders' can make a buck at this. At this point I think I'll park it again for a while, although hopefully not for two and a half years like last time! There are Fujimi kits of the 917 ready to go on the shelf, and I even have one of HRM's detailed 917 motors. Time to see some progress again.

Oh, and the trunnions that got fired off into space? Both reappeared in the little pile of scarf and shavings as I cleaned up my cutting mat. So I have saved them, stuck to a piece of tape inside a baggie, in case I ever get the urge to try again.



Never a dull moment. Stay tuned!

MFH's 908/03: exorcising the demons

Have I gotten over my irrational fear of this kit? Maybe. I got stalled in November 2014, over a throttle return spring and a few other issues. Since then I've completed another MFH kit (the much simpler Abarth OT 1300) as well as the Profil 24 kit of the Aston Martin DBR1. I've also wired up a bunch of distributors for both multi-media and styrene kits, including manufacturing distributors from scratch for the DBR1. So my skills are getting there. With that in mind I dug it all out and refreshed my memory as to where everything goes. Fortunately I put it all away neatly in little plastic bags, so this wasn't too difficult.



I started by completing the tub. The previously assembled dashboard and rear bulkhead went in along with seats and a few other little bits. So far so good, although the steering wheel sits a little low, and the front suspension looks to be a bit of a bear to assemble. One little quibble is that the driver's seat obscures one of the two ignition coils; the wires will probably just get pushed down under the seat and left there.

 

I had assembled the plug wiring harness for the left side before putting it all away over two years ago, so I put that on. Each cylinder has two plugs, one with a black wire and the other a red wire. I arbitrarily put the red one on the forward plug of each cylinder.



I also put in the injector tubing for the right side cylinder head, which is the yellow tubing visible in the picture above. At least one tube is a little short, but it will all be hidden by the lovely little orange air filter housings. And I will skip installing the spun-cast injectors, choosing instead to jam the tube into the holes that I drilled in the sides of the intake horns back in 2014.



The throttle return spring is still dangling there, as you can see in the photo above, but I can see an approach going forward to fix the problem. When I bailed in frustration, I was smart enough to save the teensy-weensy little trunnion that goes on the throttle slide control rod.

A bit more work under the 4X desk magnifier got the second bank of injectors hooked up, and a second plug wire harness ready to go. This is when I discovered that the distributor only has room for 12 plug wires! I carefully wedged the four extra wires down in behind the distributor next to the cooling fan where no one will see them.



Here you can see the bracket for the right-side throttle return spring, attached to the throttle slide body between cylinders 3 and 4. Once I sort out these springs, all that is left to complete the engine is the two air filters with their little tie-down straps.



So all in all it is moving again. Again, though, if I were to choose a multi-media kit to start off with as a first attempt, it would not be this one, or MFH's similarly challenging 917K. Looking through the stash last night, MFH's Ferrari 250 GT SWB looks to be a lot easier, mainly due to fewer chassis tubes made of bendable white metal. The Profil 24 kits are also simpler, as well as significantly cheaper, but more filing and test fitting is needed to get them right.

On a separate note, if you are interested in the MFH kits at 1:24, you should make a beeline for the MFH website (here) because they are moving to 1:12 scale in a big way, and the 1:24 kits are going fast. With 1:24 kits running 25,000 to 35,000 yen (probably $350+ US), they are pricey, but the 1:12 kits are pushing 80,000 yen -- figure $1000 per kit after shipping and, maybe, duties. And any OOP stuff on eBay is getting completely out of hand. Buy it now and stash it if you think you might want it someday. The 1970 908/03 described here has just been reissued (here), and the 1971 version is still available here,

So progress has been made, and who knows where this will lead. Stay tuned!

Previous post: 2014-11-02. Continued 2017-04-11 and 2018-12-26.

Blog organisation

A while back I decided to split out the 1:43 and aircraft posts into separate blogs. The reason was to keep things manageable in the absence of any obvious way to sort things by anything but post date.

I have now brought these two blogs, including all past posts, into this one. This is because I have discovered that I can apply labels to posts, and put a bar at the top of the page listing the labels. Clicking on the appropriate label ('Aircraft', for instance) will show all posts with the label Aircraft. I think this will be an easier way of allowing readers to quickly zoom into specific content.

So there are a few labels that are either-or propositions (1:24 or 1:43) while others may apply to several blogs (1:24 hot rods, for instance). Perhaps the only either-or proposition that I did not implement is resin versus styrene; I have not labelled the styrene kits and won't unless there is an uproar.

As always, comments are most welcome.

Porsche 907: Complete

This turned out to be a very quick and simple build, which is just what was needed as a break after working through some of the more complex kits on the bench.

It's very similar to the Heller model of the Alpine A210 in more ways than one. As a kit, there are fit issues in a couple of places, in particular the rear tires not really fitting inside the rear bodywork all that well. This was a problem with the Alpine as well, and in neither case is there too much camber or track due to an assembly or fit issue -- the rear track is simply too wide, or the tires too big for the scale.



There are also issues around lack of detail. The gas caps, for instance, are molded in the forward body section, but there is nothing in the chassis below them. As well the engine is very short of detail, only partly alleviated by my addition of plug wires. Some scratch building would have fixed these problems, but then it wouldn't have been a quick build. Unfortunately there aren't a lot of underhood shots online to start from.



As race cars, the two are very similar in concept: a relatively small mid-mounted engine which still manages decent top speed due to a low, aerodynamic profile and a long tapered tail. While Ford was running 7-litre Galaxie motors, with buckets of torque and ~450 hp from 427 cubic inches (say 65 hp per litre), these little tiddlers were making well over 100 hp per litre -- 123 in the case of the flat 8 in the Porsche, giving 270 hp from the 2.2 litre. I am not sure what the A210 had available, but given the biggest motor was a 1.3 litre outfit, I am guessing 130 to 140 hp is probably not too far off the mark.



From an aesthetic point of view, the 907 is probably one of the least appealing of the Porsches from this era. The little upswept side windows, combined with the overall profile that rises in the front to a peak then drops slowly to the rear, do not scream speed. The Alpine, while featuring a greenhouse that is taller and wider than the prototype-inspired 907, is remarkably attractive in this context.

Aesthetically, the view from the forward three-quarters is probably the best angle. (Obviously I missed a couple of sinkholes in the sides of the front fenders just behind the headlights). I think I'll live with it.



Overall, this a useful addition to the Le Mans shelf which now includes 12 cars, ranging from the 1959 Aston Martin to the 2006 Audi R10, and including cars from the slower classes. Only 20 more Le Mans cars in the stash, ranging from a 1930 Blower Bentley to a 1997 McLaren F1 GTR.

So what's next? Well, the weather is improving so I may be out more. Starting with right now!