WIP: 2CV “Rock and Roll-Bar”

[klutz_100]

UPDATE:

Hard to believe, but I’ve managed to get something done this weekend

Once again I’d like o thank you all for your kind words for Alex. She’s doing well, started going back to school and has basically forgotten the fact that her left leg is in plaster . We hope that the cast will be removed for Christmas.

Back to Jean-Paul.

I have cunningly managed to keep on finding ways to postpone totally ruining this build with my bad painting skills and have found some more things to try and re-create.

On a side note, I have to say that I’m really enjoying doing this even though I am very objective about the end results of my first foray into scratch building. However, my respect just keeps growing for the master builders on this forum who do just amazing things with their scratch building. How the HECK do you guys make such small things so cleanly and with such detail!?!?!??! :


First up the dashboard. About 6 months ago I cut up the door panels to rescue the part that is used as the support for the dashboard and under tray.

When I started actually test fitting them it turned out that the under dash tray is too short and needs to be extended in order to get a nice close fit between the body and the door panels. (Maybe this modification needs to be made also when building a standard version? Or maybe with the doors still in place the gap doesn’t show)

I sanded of the placement tags on the original part and glued some thin styrene strips to the end of the tray.





This fixed the problem perfectly and now when the body is put into place there is no glaring gap.







Next the lights.

AF member 2CV who has been really helpful with resource info and answering my dumb questions mentioned that the lights are “wrong”. I’m not sure what he meant but I decided that the light support bar/thing is a very characteristic element of the 2CV engine bay and is very visible when the hood is off.

The kit part looks like this:



The “blob” in the middle is a distributor/coil that has leads the go off to the spark plugs. It looks like this in the original:




I started off by trying to make the part out of various pieces of different styrene rods cut, shaped and glued together. This is what I came up with:






Then I drilled out placement holes for some hand shaped brass rod which will hold the headlights. Just to show off a bit I added a trial HT cable to see how it looks. I have also made some wire fixing hoops that you can see in the original but these will be added after painting.





I haven’t figured out yet how I’m going to fix the headlights to this though LOL!!!




Gear stick.

It had always been my plan to replace the kit gear knob with a scratchbuilt one made out of a round headed pin. But in the true tradition of over-confidence and "pride before the fall", I decided that I wanted to try and make a “working” gear change mechanism.

This is the kit part:





I broke this down into 2/3 stages.
1. The gear lever
2. The bulk head tunnel bit
3. The engine bay parts

First I started with the bulkhead fixing. I traced through the hole in the bulkhead onto piece of thick styrene sheet which was then cut out and sanded into shape to make a “plug”. I then glued the plug onto a sheet of thinner styrene and traced around it with a thick pointed marker to get a lip. This was then also cut and sanded to shape. Finally I drilled out some styrene rod and glued it to the “plug”. This is what I got:







This passes through the bulkhead and under the dash like this






Next job was to cut up some wire for the push rods. I also made a “working” linkage out of carved styrene rod. As you can also see, I’ve covered my bases colorwise and have gear knobs in an assortment of colours (could this be a new 2CV tuning trend? )







Here it is in place:








Next up was some interesting “thingies” on the engine block. They also look like coils and generators to me but hey, who knows?





The kit bits were sawn off leaving a flat surface and then I uses again various sizes of styrene rod to make the parts.



I wasn’t too sure about the size of the bigger part so I made 2 versions just in case. When the are put together, they look like this. Once they have been painted, they will be wired up.




There are a couple more parts that I want to add to the engine bay (working dipstick, oil filter) and then I’ll call it a day. Otherwise this car will forever remain a testing ground and never get built.

Thanks for looking and any comments/suggestions are welcome.

[KTem]

That looks really good there, nice scratchbuilding!

[MPWR]

Nice job Stevenski! Beautiful work. Glad to hear Alex is doing well, and glad to see you updating!

Ah, so that's where the distributer is on the 2CV- was wondering about that.



The horizontal cylander in the center of the frame is the starter motor, with the solenoid molded to it. The more vertical cylander in front of it as best as I can tell is an oil reservoir- this is where the oil fill seems to be.



And the alternator is the bump beside it on the fan housing.

Looking forward to seeing you do the engine!

[quadzero]

wow, Klutz. what a terrific thread! i love the subject of this project and what you are doing with it only makes it all the more interesting and better. really refreshing seeing something so original and i love how you describe your progress. ya outta be a writer when you aint building cool models. keep up the great work and keep those those pics coming. cant wait to see more of this and i can see i sure can learn alot from your scratch building skills.
cheers!
Les

[blubaja]

Is that a horizontally opposed engine? Keep upthe awsome progress!

[proosen]

Terrific job!
I heard that Citroën tried out a BMW motorcycle engine when developing this car. They thought it was to strong so they made their own boxer instead.
Think of a 900-1000cc BMW engine, would have made wonders in the aspect of speed and acceleration!

Anyway, keep up the hard and good work!
Niclas

[KTem]

Originally Posted by blubaja

Is that a horizontally opposed engine? Keep upthe awsome progress!

Yes, as far as I know it's a 2 cylinder boxer engine.

[klutz_100]

OMG I am can’t believe what I am about to post – I am so happy!!

Don’t get your hopes up too much though, this definitely falls into the category of “One HUGE step for Klutz but two steps backwards for the modelling world”


A few months ago I picked up a Unimat1 lathe for about 50$. It’s worth noting here that I have never seen a lathe in my life before never mind used one!





Yesterday for the first time ever , I set it up and tried it out on some pieces of aluminium and styrene rod.

This is what I can’t believe – after 30 minutes playing with it, I have made myself 3 (well 2, really ) very respectable attempts at the oil filter I wanted to add to the engine!!!

Here they are – what do you think?








I think that with some practice, the Unimat can turn out to be a useful although limited tool. It definitely works fine with styrene (and, I suspect, resin). I could tell though that aluminium was approaching its limits. I wouldn’t pay full price for one of these, but a good 2nd mand one with some extra attachments is probably a useful acquisition.


Since I’m on a roll, I’m going to try and do the dipstick tonight

blubaja Yes, this is 2 cylined flat engine. IIRC, the name "2CV" orginated from the orginal power of the engine - 2HP (cheveaux or CV in French).


Thanks for the kind comments gentlemen and please stay tuned!

[mickbench]

Klutz,

Cool to see you working on this. If I remember what I watched once on Discovery the 2CV was a joint venture between the declining Citroën and their new owners Michelin. I think the idea was to create an affordable 2 cylinder car that you could rag all day long and not worry about fuel economy or bumps in the road. Amazingly I think the car was produced right into the 90’s..!! I mean we all remember the 2CV in the Bond Movie for your eye’s only.. The car was made even more famous as it went down a flight of steps without any special tricks, pull ropes or nothing really and still drove away unharmed (I read that somewhere, or was it in a movie trivia quiz – anyhow I know it was superb in that movie for stunts). For a car designed pre war, to appeal to the masses and farmers alike, you have to admit, the marmite car (you either love it or hate it) has done well..

Just like your model klutz, just amazing.. Keep this up, it’s coming along nicely.. You’ll not trash it with the paint, you do good paintwork at times..

[ASTON_2005]

Just want to say that I can see you have a very special attitude to all those tiny things... I really love what you are doing!!!

Aston

[klutz_100]

Well, my 2CV has be "dipsticked" - whatever that means...



I posted a blow-by-blow account as a "How to" so if you are interested in how I did it, you can find it there.

I’m sure that you guys can think of many different and better ways to do this but I hope that this will maybe give the general idea.

Now, what else can I come up with to delay painting.....?

Next post in about 2 years!

[quadzero]

2 years?? but i want to see the engine painted now nice dipstick tip, Klutz. i think i'm gonna try that out. thanks for the how to.

[klutz_100]

UPDATE 27.12.2005

Hope everyone had/is having a great Christmas!

I’ve been using the three days off work, to sneak into my modelling room at silly hours of the night and start getting Jean Paul ready for the road.

I hope you like what I have done. My Mum, who is staying with us for Christmas, thinks it’s great but she is the lady that thought my dirty diapers were works of art so she’s not really objective and I’m more interested in your opinion.


First of all, I finished off a final detail from my “working dipstick" episode - the filler cap.

The kit part is a plastic blob on top of the filler tube and since it’s so close to other parts that I have detailed quite carefully, I wanted to keep up appearances (also, reference photos show this to be quite an interesting part in its own right).

I cut of the kit part and then made a disc and ring out of styrene sheet using my belt hole puncher. I glued together to get a 3-dimensional cap and then “painted” it with a sharpie pen. (in the photo it is just stuck to a piece rod for handling)




Reference photos show a closing mechanism made out of spring wire – a bit like the lids on jars that your Grandma used to make jam in! I recreated this using thin wire filaments and bending them to shape.



I think the final result is quite a good representation but not very cleanly built – maybe I’ll do it again later.




To get on the road JP needs some wheels!!

I want this whole build to look a bit “used” but not "junked" so to recreate a chipped paint effect I decided to use the salt masking technique (don’t ask me why i decided to do it that way!! )

First I painted the primed rims with Alclad2 steel, then wet the odd place or two and sprinkled with large-grain sea salt
(my wife was finally convinced that I have fully flipped my lid when I smuggled a pot of SALT!!!! into my modelling room – I don’t thing anything will surprise her now LOL)



This was then sprayed with my colour (dupicolor auto acrylic) and let dry. You can see the salt still under the paint.



After the paint dried I brushed off the salt and the steel paint showed through. The wheels were then detailed, filler valves added, washed and weathered. Here’s the final result:



Also, I painted the resin tires I cast. I am really pleased with how they came out (unfortunately, I have no idea how I did it LOL). The resin tire is on the left and the kit tire is on the right. I painted the resin with a custom mix of X18 and XF24 (dark grey) and it’s really hard to tell them apart.





I’ve also started on the dreaded painting I have begun with the chassis and will work my way up from there.

Again I used the salt masking technique for paint chips.

The whole frame was primed and then pained with Alclad2 Steel and then hit with the same mix that I used on the tyres.

I did this to a) get scale colour effect and b) to provide a better contrast to the floor pan which will be a darker black.

The frame was then dry brushed (badly) and I also scrapped away some more of the black paint to reveal the steel colour underneath.

Also I recreated rusted patches in a couple of places (before priming) using CA glue and baking powder.





The rusted areas were lightly brushed with Pactra rust color and some MIG rust pigment.
The bits that the wheels are attached to (sorry, don’t know the name) were painted in A2 steel and then liberally washed with MPWRs secret wash recipies

I think that the muffler (?) came out really well. Baking powder rust, A2 steel, pactra rust, oil wash and MIG pigment while it was still wet.



I also attached the suspension dampers I made out of aluminium, steel and brass tube ages ago.

These should really have been painted black and then weathered but I just couldn’t bring myself to cover it with paint (sorry 2CV for lack of accuracy ). I think it looks cool and that’s what counts the most













I’ve also started trying to “weather up” some other bits ‘n pieces. This a side by side of weathered and un-weathered bit of French engineering




Thanks for looking and I hope you are enjoying this.

Please share with me all the weathering experiences you can!!

Have a great time on New Year's Eve

[gionc]

fantastic stuff, steve: awesome
but you joke us: you open an help request thread concerning wheatering since you're a master
I hope you rush a little with your workbemch to see a lot of updates..
bye

[arknok784]

This is absolutely amazing.You're gonna have a working engine by the time you done with this Great job man!