A first update.
After sorting all the pieces I put them in a plastic box with small compartiments.
And after sanding down the baseplate and the body a first time I do a first dry-fit of the most important body parts.
That looks like this :
I notice the rollbar, of which only a small part sticks out of the cowling, and which doesn't run further down than the visible part, because the cowling is a solid cast piece of resin. By the way, that kinda puts this model in the "curbside category" I reckon... Anyway, I absolutely have to fix that problem to enhance the realism of the model.
First I drill away a part of the resin body. Since it's impossible to drill out everything without damaging the outside of the cowling, I chose to sacrifice the front part in order to reach all the corners. I'll make a new front part of plasticard later on.
So after the first drilling it looks like this :
That's a start, but it's not nearly enough : I need to drill out the opening more so I can fit the rollbar in it, and also the cowling walls have to be thin enough. Because even with the rollbar in place you'll still be able to see them. Furthermore, the engine stopping device is attached to the inside of the cowling, so that opening needs to be drilled out from the right cowling wall.
After the rough drilling has been done it looks like this :
Now I can start the finer work. I scrape away more material with a scalpel and a flat file. Once the opening looks ok I need to close down the top slot again because it has become way to wide due to the drilling. I achieve this with a piece of plasticard and some superglue :
Next I saw away the new slot with a small circular saw (is that even an existing word?):
Then I cut away the rest with a scalpel again and finally I sand the slot until it has the correct dimensions again. I also close down the front part of the cowling with another piece of plasticard and some superglue.
That looks like this :
But now I encounter a big problem. Although the opening is large enough to put the complete rollbar in, it's not nearly big enough to mount it from above. In real live they put the cowling over the rollbar of course, and not the other way around... This means I need to design my rollbar so it can be mounted in separate pieces. After some thinking I come up with this idea : I fabricate the main supports in hollow aluminium tubes, and the top arch gets two small taps that fit in the hollow tubes. Inside the cowling I drill out two holes, large enough to fix the main supports in and the third, smaller support will be superglued to the arch.
The separate pieces look like this :
And the cowling looks like this once the main supports are in place :
Finally I can fix the arch with the smaller support to the main supports (all in dry-fit of course). This is the result :
Believe me or not, but this operation took me all evening yesterday. I even didn't have time anymore to post the pictures, therefore I'm doing that now...
This model is gonna cost me heaps of time and energy, I can feel that, but I wanna get it absolutely perfect, or at least as close as I can get...