Mitsubishi Delica: Body and interior

I while back I looked at the stash, including all the boxes of incomplete projects. My bank account and I agreed that there is plenty to build, and I don't need to buy anymore kits, for now anyway. So I dug out this pair of Mitsubishi Delica Star Wagon 4WD Super Exceed 7-seater microvans from Aoshima, converted into a single 5-seater 8X8 race car transporter and a bunch of residual body parts. Initial body and chassis work dates to January 2017 (click here). 



After some putty and sanding, the Testor's yellow went on well. There are a couple of runs to sand down, then I think it needs a stripe of some sort, at least along the waistline if not over the roof. Red, or maybe blue would be proper match with the bold yellow.  



A decision was made to use the rearmost engine, so there is a big hump in the rear compartment between the two rear-facing seats.



The three-seat bench got cut up and put in front over where the forward engine would have resided. The middle passenger interferes significantly with the gear shift and 4WD lever; in retrospect it would have been smarter to use the forward engine, and go to 2 + 3 seating. 



Sadly the Testor's yellow is not the same as the Tamiya yellow on the Honda, so I may need to build up a different race car. 



One option is this Honda N360 which has a moderately well detailed 360 cc aircooled twin. I've also got a small turbocharger kit with intercooler, and some fat little Minilites ... could be interesting. 





Final assembly beckons. Stay tuned!

1956 Lincoln Futura: Complete (#9 for 2019)

What a blast from the past! And a real quick build, too.



Lots of Zoom here.



I love the antenna, straight out of Dock Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century.



All that is left is to paint the figures, which need to go in before the steering wheel.



Some details of the build follow. The chassis was lowered by gluing in a pair of 3 mm brass rods on top of the existing structure where the axles would snap in.



The wheels are Chrysler 300 units, and the tires are from the parts bin. They are reduced in diameter compared to the big fat wide walls I had on it in the last post, which was needed to allow it to sit this low.



Looking good -- the wheels disappear up under the fenders this way.



Stay tuned! I'll get back to more conventional stuff soon enough.

1956 Lincoln Futura: An el blasto from the el pasto, baby

This predecessor to the original Batmobile was designed by Ford and built by Ghia, for the equivalent of $2.3M in today's dollars. After touring the car shows for a year, it sat out back of George Barris' shop rusting away for a decade before the call from the studios for a Batmobile turned up in the mid-'60s. Fender flares and a jet engine did the trick.



The kit is simplicity itself, with no motor, drivetrain or any chassis bits. It's a perfect candidate for a qiuck build, thus rapidly reducing the stash.



Fortunately I had a can of Tamiya Coral Blue just sitting around, and this provided the perfect '50s pastel colour.



Ride height with wide whites from the parts bin is a little high, because the tires are taller than the unpainted styrene bits in the kit, and can't be jammed up inside the body too much further.



Eagle eyes will recognise '68 Chrysler 300 wheels from the JoHan kit, because the Futura items are small for the whites. I may need to look for smaller tires to get the ride height down, and to allow the neat original wheels to be used.



The couple in the car are a hoot. I'll have to learn about painting flesh tones. The black stripe below the beltline is a mirror of the white line (on a red body) found on Interweb pictures of a recent copy; there will be a chrome strip separating this from the upper body and joining the bumpers.



A tribute to the optimistic '50s! stay tuned. 

Mini Sprint: Initial planning

So I picked up a partially built Mini at a meet recently. I already have a Mini, in Monte Carlo trim; now it occurs to me that a Mini Sprint would be a cool addition.



The Sprint was built in some relatively large numbers in the mid-60's, and involved both chopping the roof and sectioning the body. Total height reduction was somewhere around 5 inches; many were raced as aerodynamically the Mini is somewhat akin to a shoebox. Rob Walker famously had one, and there is a great picture (click here) of Stirling Moss and two other blokes pondering getting in and out of it.

Fortunately there is a photo showing one just about dead square from the side. It was easy enough to find a picture of a standard Mini and to use the wheelbase to scale them to the same size. From the wheelbase of 80 5/32", I was further able to scale the whole picture to 1:24 when printed on my ink jet.


This clearly shows that the roof was retained, and that the rear roof pillar was tilted forward, possibly with a cut going as low as the bumper. The A-pillars would also have been tilted back, by a small amount. Period references say the chop and the section were of equal depth (about 2 1/2 inches each) but this comparison implies a deeper section and a shallower chop; there were also a number of Minis that were chopped but not sectioned.



There is also a website (click here) documenting a recent build of a Mini Sprint by a fellow in the States. Very cool stuff, and one photo shows the cutlines just above the floor pan. I may have to cut a little higher in order to maintain some semblance of structural integrity. Working around the headlights may be the trickiest part. Finally there is a French chat site documenting building of one of these from the Revell kit; apparently Neville Trickett was making furniture in France in 2015. So lots of documentation.

Get out the saw!

Ford Fairlane: Complete (#8 for 2019)

I don't build a lot of Yank Tanks, but this one was meant to serve as a guinea pig in a rattle can paint tutorial posted on the Model Car How-To group on Facebook. The rest of it was done up in relatively straight-forward fashion, with minor deviations from Out-Of-Box.



The 390 got plug wires from one of the aftermarket people, and a fuel line made of 0.020" brass rod. Wires look fat at 0.018", almost half an inch at full scale. There are thinner wires out there but as you get into 0.012" or 0.014" wires, the drill becomes increasingly fragile, and the wires lack stiffness to be able to poke them through into cylinder heads or coils.Plug Wires: The Final Frontier?



The 390 sure is a tight fit in the Fairlane bay. The coil springs, located above the upper A-arms, intrude into the bay the way a MacPherson strut would. A better fit in the Galaxie, perhaps?



The interior is pretty basic. I painted according to colour schemes found in some pictures from the Interweb. The kit included no decals for dials. The molded-in door handles and window winders were left alone. 



The chassis has been lowered by about 3 scale inches, by putting blocks under the rear leaf springs and by putting the uprights in upside down. At 1:1, these mods would both require a lot of inner fender work as the tires are jammed in there pretty tight, but at 1:25, hey it's a model. No problemo.



The only other major change was to swap in a set of Cragars from the parts box.The proper Fairlane mags are distinctive but not really that good looking, in my view. Black backing plates make the Cragars stand out nicely.



Overall it looks good. The kit had a few places where you needed to simultaneously glue three or four parts together in order to be sure it all lined up (two inner fenders, firewall and radiator, for example), but it's nothing a relatively practiced builder of AMT annuals can't handle. The lack of a functional tie rod means the two front wheels steer independently of each other.



There are a couple of scratches in the hood that are deep enough to require striping and repainting, not just sanding and polishing, so I am going to let it be. Another one done! Onwards.

Ford Fairlane: Rattle can paint tutorial (Part 2)

After fixing a few little blemishes, I gave the Fairlane a few mist coats of Tamiya TS-71 Smoke, followed by a flood coat, all at the usual 20 minute intervals. This gave it a nice dark gray appearance. I also scraped paint off the Ford and Fairlane lettering. While not as effective as Bare Metal Foil or other approaches to highlighting emblems and lettering, it looks good, and an eventual coat of clear will highlight it further. So it is back to the drying stage for a few days before emblems and decals get put on.



The shine and mirror image is entirely without any polishing, just the paint straight out of the can. I am pretty happy with this. (Yes, there are still a few specks of dust in the roof, but I am betting they won't show without a spotlight shining on it at a sharp angle).



Meanwhile I painted and prepped the chassis, engine and other drivetrain bits. A lot of this is rattle cans, too, but small pieces like belts and pulleys get done by hand.

Subaru BRZ: Polish and clear coat (Tutorial Part 2)

As I am treating this as a bit of a learning experience, I went over the BRZ with the Tamiya compounds. They are indeed coarser than the LMG Micro Polish, leaving a fine network of scratches, so I repeated the LMG treatment which worked well. There are no photos as I couldn't get it to show up with the little point-and-shoot Canon.



Again in the context of a learning experience, I followed this with several mist coats of Tamiya TS-65 Pearl Clear at 20 minute intervals, followed by a flood coat. This variant on the standard gloss clear provides lots of sparkle, and would not be my first choice for more subtle builds.



One potential issue with the Pearl is that the nozzle, which was brand new, sounded like it was occasionally plugging, perhaps due to the flakes that give it the sparkle. So the message is to be careful to keep the nozzle clean, and don't get too close with the can.



Next is to assemble the chassis and interior. Stay tuned!

Subaru BRZ: Paint or polish? Another tutorial

The Tamiya BRZ is molded in blue which is pretty close to the classic Subaru Blue found on the rally cars.



Usually this bothers me, especially when the colour is fairly dark, as painting it requires putting on enough primer to completely hide the underlying plastic colour. This is especially true when going for a significantly lighter colour. However, there is an option when the colour is a desirable one, and where the quality of the colour embedded in the styrene is consistent across the model.



The flaw you need to watch for arises when the specific assortment of colored styrene pellets which were mixed in the extruder to form the part didn't quite mix, and came into the part in streaks of lighter and darker colours. This set of streaks originates at one of the injection points, usually but not always a sprue connection. This is particularly visible in the trunk and roof of the Tamiya body for the Skyline 2000 GTR, on the right below. (I painted this one gunmetal grey, so there wasn't much of a colour change to worry about).

 

However, sometimes you get lucky. Two recent examples were both from the Fujimi Enthusiast series: the Alfa Giulia GTA, and the Porsche 356 C. Here the bodies were so clean that really all they needed was polishing. The Alfa was a gorgeous red, and the Porsche a very nice white with just a touch of cream. Putting on primer, then topcoat and clear, is always a bit risky and there are always touch-ups required along the way.



Plan B, if the styrene is nice, is to give it a good polish, clean it up properly, then apply clear as in a top coat: light mist coats, followed by a heavier flood coat. An additional polishing step may be needed if the clear tries to form orange peel. The Alfa sure looks good after this treatment, and so does the Porsche, even if the pictures don't show the shine on the white paint quite so effectively.



A lovely trio of '60s icons ... the Europa, a victim of my learning curve, suffers from plenty of orange peel.



So what has this got to do with the Subaru? A quick first pass has hidden what looked to be embedded flaws, so we are off to the races as it seems the body responds well to polishing. This will save me a lot of work. A coat of clear will come after any decals or photoetch.



So what is the technique? I'm still developing it, and will post more as I go along; but I have come across two systems. The first is LMG Micro-Polish, sold in a kit with another bottle of something called Micro-Swirl Remover, various grits of fine sandpaper, and a small piece of polishing cloth. The trick is to work this light cream into the body with a cloth, then remove excess cream with a clean cloth. The Micro-Swirl Remover, which appears to be more liquid and perhaps less abrasive, works the same way.



The other is the well-known set of Tamiya polishing creams in toothpaste tubes, in coarse and fine formulations. These are more aggressive and cut faster than the LMG product, especially the coarse one. I used the LMG on all three of the bodies shown, and so far I am happy. Stay tuned!

Ford Fairlane: Rattle can paint tutorial

I have been coaching another builder as part of the mentorship program run by the Model Car How-To Facebook Group. The focus has been paint on styrene, so I thought I would document my approach, which works for me but is certainly not the only approach, so that it is out there for posterity. (Separately I will describe resin and metal, which differ from styrene mainly in the preparation stage.)

The guinea pig is AMT's 1966 Fairlane, and it will be done in black with rattle cans as I am too cheap to buy an airbrush, and too impatient to learn to use a whole new tool, especially when the rattle can works quite well. Black is supposed to be tricky, and airbrushes can generate better finishes than rattle cans; but you be the judge.



First step is to remove mold seams and flash, and fill and sinkholes or mold ejection pin marks. The Fairlane came from a relatively nice mold and is pretty clean to start with.



The main seam runs along the drip rail, then along the fender tops. There are two little mold seam joins on each side on the rear quarter panel, and the fender tops are very sharp; paint won't stick well here.



A new #11 blade dragged across the fender tops works well.



Flash is also minor on this kit. A little bit on one inner fender, and a bit around the headlights.





I have decided to keep the molded-in wipers, but now would be the time to cut them off if you chose to do so.



The door handles are pretty thick, so I carefully drilled a couple of holes, then hogged it all out. This is tricky and you may wind up making new ones if you dig too deep.










With all the prep done, time to move on to primer. First step is to wash it carefully in warm, not hot water, using dish soap, not detergent. Dawn is the preferred brand in this part of the world. Rinse well and dry it carefully with a lint-free cloth or paper towel, then with a hair dryer on low or medium. Keep your greasy mitts off it from here on; lift by the window frames or support on a stand.

Check the height of raised lettering; you don't want to put paint on too heavy and smother it. The Fairlane is pretty delicate.



I feel that sticking to supplies made for styrene is smart, and furthermore that sticking to one supplier, who probably has gotten his products to work together, is also smart. For example, I know from bitter experience that Tamiya rattle can paints include a solvent which will strip Testor’s enamel rattle can paints. So pick a brand and stick with it. I have migrated over the years from Testor's enamel to Tamiya TS paints. So I put on a couple of light coats of Tamiya primer, at 20 minute intervals. This will show up any rough spots, sinkholes or mold seams you may have missed. If it shows up here, it will show up in the final paint. Go back to the beginning if needed.





If the primer looks good, put the can of top coat in a basin of domestic hot water. Hot, not boiling! And no open flames or hot plates please. It's a pressure vessel and can explode, which will be painful. I like to use a new can for top coats, setting half-filled cans aside for engines, interiors and chassis which don't quite leap out at you like a badly painted roof due to splatter from a dirty nozzle.



Dry the can off before using, to keep water drops off the model. The next step is the key to a shiny job right out of the can, so sit up and pay attention: spray into your booth to be sure the nozzle is clear, then apply three to four VERY LIGHT coats, at 20 minute intervals. DO NOT try to cover the model in the first or second coat. The photos show what I am talking about. First coat looks like you missed the model entirely, but wait 20 minutes anyway:



Second coat covers a little more, but still misses lots of it. Don't worry about the areas that have not been touched; wait another 20 minutes.



Third coat is getting full coverage, sort of, in some areas.Wait another 20 minutes.



Fourth coat is a 'flood' coat. This is meant to soak it enough to avoid orange peel with out it dripping or running. If you see signs of orange peel, keep spraying.



Of course I got a couple of dirt specs smack in the middle of the roof... I will report on my adventures dealing with this later. Anyway the mist layers tend to provide something to anchor the flood coat, so it won't run, while allowing individual blobs emitted by the can and onto the model to run together just enough to minimise or, ideally, eliminate orange peel.



It all looks nice and shiny here because it is wet; stand it up so the roof, hood and trunk are horizontal and paint won't run there; people see these first and a good roof sets a good first impression.

The next step is also ABSOLUTELY CRITICAL: LEAVE IT ALONE for at least 3-4 days, and ideally as much as a week. I know, not easy, but letting it harden properly before embedding your greasy thumbprint in the roof is well worth it. Also the sanding needed to get those dust specks out requires that the paint be good and hard.



One interesting note is that the paint didn't flow into the door or trunk panel gaps. I'll have to look into this; this is paint pulling away from sharp corners and illustrates what would have happened if the seam lines on the fender tops had not been sanded down. Another flood coat may be needed.

So patience! And tune in later for the next steps.