UPDATE: Jean Paul creeps forward.
Last couple of months have been bad for modeling (no time except to buy more kits). However, last couple of weekends have been a bit more forgiving and I have managed to actually do something instead of just thinking about it!
First thing has been to really finish all the parts for the roll cage. Here it is, and next stage will be to prime and paint it. I’ve decided that I want to try and make this build look as if it has been well used so I’ll be looking at chipping, rusting and bending it all (True story is that my painting sucks and it would look like that anyway
)
Since I had finished the roll bars, it was time to address the issue of the spare wheel that’s supposed to hang there. I couldn’t find a suitable part anywhere so I bit the bullet, bought some RTV silicone and resin and made a mold and cast my own.
Not bad results for my first try (disasters along the way of course). Will use the separate tyre and rim to make painting easier. Will use surplus casts as “luggage” for the trunk.
I’m trying to prepare all the parts before I start painting anything, so next up for no particular reason was the headlight guards. I scratchbuilt these out of wire, nail and spare P/E sprue and parts.
First, to make the rings, I wrapped some wire around a nail to make a series of coils:
I then removed two of the coils, flattened them and used CA glue to close the gap. I then took thin wire and glued it in place to make the mesh.
This didn’t work too well for me, so in the end I used some scrap P/E mesh cut to size and glued in place. The fixing bars were made out of P/E sprue ben and gled into place.
After my reasonably successful attempts at “metal work” with the dampers and seat, I decided that I wanted to try making a metal exhaust as well. In the picture below, you can see the kit part next to my 90% finished metal one made out of brass and aluminium tubing. The fixings are lollypop stick drilled out and a piece of brass wire.
First attempts at bending the alu tube was disaster as it “kinked” all the time then I remembered reading about putting wire inside plastic tube to ease bending so I put some solder inside the alu tube and…MAGIC!!! Virtually no kinking!. Here’s the exhaust dry-fitted in place.
Now for something you youngsters have probably never seen in 1/1 - A crank handle!!
The 2CV can actually be started by manually cranking the engine and it doubles as a wheel spanner. I scratch built it out of some brass wire and a styrene rod which I carved to shape and drilled out.
The radiator was drilled in the middle to allow the crank handle to be inserted.
One of the last things for the interior (I hope) was the non-slip flooring to cover all the mold holes. Since I can’t get hold of styrene diamond plate and it is damned expensive anyway, I decide to try and make my own. Here’s how:
Make a pattern of the floor with masking tape.
Transfered this to plain styrene sheet, cut it out and covered this with some plastic netting I found in my workshop.
I then covered this with some Belgian chocolate wrapping foil (yum, yum). This is excellent material BTW – thin but very strong.
After the foil was glued on, I rubbed it down all over with a cotton bud to get the embossed effect of the netting.
This method worked very well – but now for the catch....
Don’t use styrene cement to fix the netting to the styrene sheet
!!! The next day the whole thing distorted and curled up like a pancake. Next time I would use white glue and CA the foil to the back.
Luckily I didn’t throw my template away and was given some PE diamond plate that AMV modellers use. I cut this out to shape (hard to do well) and this will be my real metal floor (painted, of course)
Here are some shots of a test fit to see how it’s working and to catch any bif problems:
Sorry for the long post all in one go.
Next steps are to start putting the engine together and then painting – arrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhh – I guess I can’t keep putting it off
Hope you like some of the above and thanks for looking. Comments/suggestions always welcome
Stevenski