Here is a 1/43 resin kit from Provence Moulage. This is the second 1/43 kit I have ever bought. Old and oversimplified are the only two words to describe it. I got this kit off eBay for what I thought was a discounted price because it was missing the factory decal. I spent some time looking for an aftermarket decal without any luck (if you know a source, please do not tell me. You will devastate my heart). I eventually gave up searching and decided to put together this seemingly simple kit. I didn’t realize what I got myself into until I started building the kit. After all, how hard could it be to put ~20 parts together?
Let the overhaul begins. The cockpit was made of two pieces of resin which sat on top of a white-metal chassis. The dash board was not entirely correct. Some priming and sanding didn’t help to improve the look. A sudden urge kicked in. I must... I must… I must scratch build.
I separated the seats and glued the rest of cockpit onto the chassis. The dashboard was reconstructed with styrene, along with several other things: a steering wheel, a center console, a much-needed roll cage and a fire extinguisher.
The result of all the scratch builds was a better looking cockpit. Door panels were also made.
The next step was to tackle the seats. I used a PE seatbelt buckle set from Verlindem. The quality and selection of buckles are definitely worth $3. Each set is good for only one seat though. My only complaint was that the PE was made of brass and needed to be painted silver/black. I tried chemical blackening the PE parts with a mix of results and ended up painting them black.
The next things to make were a shifter and a fire extinguisher. For the shift knob, I was thinking about sanding a ball point pin down to a smaller size. But I took a different approach by "growing" the knob up. I dip the tip of a 32 gauge wire into Tamiya black acrylic paint, let it dry and repeated the process for about 15 times. The shift knob gradually became larger and increasingly spherical after each dipping and drying. I think this method will probably work with acrylic paint as the solvents in lacquer and enamel may dissolve the previous layer.
The fire extinguisher was made from styrene, aluminum foil and some metal pieces. The labelings were gibberish written with a needle.
Here is a updated look of the cockpit with seats and a few other parts in place.
The dashboard was made ready with a new steering wheel, some tuned metal switches and a battery cutoff.
Everything was in place.
I shifted attention to the body. The quality and cast of resin were alright, thus not particularly impressive. I removed the fuel caps and drilled some holes here and there. Not much change was done. Since I had no decal, the painting scheme was pretty much up to whatever I desired. The body was primed and the blue-white racing stripe was painted before clearcoat. Here are the pictures of the polished body waiting to be decorated.
The next step was to fix the front and rear lights. There was no way I would use the kit parts. Yuck. They remind me of some sorts of candy. So, individual headlights were made from clear styrene while the rear lights were modified from kit parts. To recreate the texture on the light cover, I first coated the top surface with 2-3 heavy layers of Future and then cut into the semi-dry paint with a knife. Of course in the real thing, the texture should be on the inside, not on the surface.
Here are the new parts to be installed for the front and rear lights, along with a few other things. The bonnet straps were made of real leather and leftover buckles from the PE seatbelt set. The fuel caps were also made from scratch.
Here are the pictures of the completed car. There were some parts that I wished could fit better. Still, the car looks better than I would hope for from the beginning. The whole building process had been a good learning experience for me.
Again, I used IKEA picture frame to display the car (it was on sale during xmas and I couldn't resist buying a few). I couldn't find a suitable background and therefore decided to paint something myself. The background was supposed to represent a brick road in case you haven't noticed
. Thank you for watching. As always, comments are welcome (except telling me where to score a decal
).
