mercedes E320

[appleseed]

my brother is happy with his new desktop toy so now it's on to my sister's 30th b-day present... she's been wanting me to build one of these for her for a while now. i finally found a kit just in time for her birthday. she wants the kit in black... first the cobra in black and now this kit in black... kinda wanted a change but oh well...

i haven't done much yet... only started sanding down the mold lines and test fitting the windows and clear parts so far. i hope this one comes out the way i envison it.

the plan is to add working headlights and tail lights on this kit per her request. we'll see how this one turns out

a.

[CamaroSSBoy346]

Is the chrome grille on a seperate chrome parts tree? Or is it molded on the body (have to paint it chrome or use BMF?)

[themodelkid]

Sounds like a good project, and a good gift! Dont forget to post progress pics!

[Nrbumgard]

It looks like a good project I hope you have fun.

[Valentino]

I bet this one also gonna be amazingas always Appleseed, can't wait

[Midnight Racer]

Can't wait to see some progress pics.

[hobbes874]

Originally posted by themodelkid
Sounds like a good project, and a good gift! Dont forget to post progress pics!

[appleseed]

here's a pic of the car so far. i've sanded down the mold lines and glued on the bumpers.

the stock ride height looks a bit embarassing for being labed as the AMG sports version so the car was lowered about 1mm at the rear and 2mm up in front.

the headlight housings were drilled out to accomodate the LED's and plastic tubing was used for spacers/mouting brackets.

it's now ready for the primer.



a.

[Nrbumgard]

It looks good so far.

And uhh an E320 is not an amg to the best of my knowledge. The AMG version of a W-210 is the E50 or E-55. My C32AMG(car I drive) has a supercharged 320 motor in it. And even my super charged 320 motor would seem slugish in a W-210 class car.

[oblaise]

I cant wait to see this one done, your sis is gonna have to pry this thing from your hands.

[appleseed]

Nrbumgard,

you're right that the e320 is not an amg car but the kit does come with the amg parts... the front/rear bumpers, sideskirts, wheels, as well as the e50 an amg decals for the rear badges.

i know the kit cover is misleading but according to web references, i hope i'm right thanks for pointing it out none the less. here's a reference site which i hope is accurate: http://www.rakuten.co.jp/garagecurrent/465585/487949 since my sister won't really appreciate any added details into the kit, i'm planning on building this one pretty much box stock except for the lowering of the car and the working lights. i'm sure she's bound to break the kit once she tries to pull the body apart to turn the lights on but... eh... it's her perrogative.

anyway, onto a question about the car itself... i don't know if the inner two lights on the front are only daytime running lights or if they come on with the headlights. does anyone know? i'm thinking of either putting yellow leds in there or incandescent bulbs if they do indeed light up. i've seen pictures with them off with the headlight so i'm not too sure now. can anyone help?

a.

[nornicle]

cool who makes the kit?

[Rtuned]

Is by Fujimi.

Rtuned

[bigfrit]

Hm, looking very cool already...

Oh, I 've got a little request, if you have the time, and you want to, could you put some in detail progress pics of the light-building-in-part?

This onl of you feel like it , right!

Thanks
Olivier

[appleseed]

just for you Olivier

using a breadboard, i devised the following circuit for the LEDs and the incandescent bulbs for the mercedes:





this time, you'll need a 12v source as the parallel incandescent bulbs would draw more current than what a GP25A (9v) battery would be able to supply. this battery is quite compact, not as small as the 9v one but it will do as this kit has quite a bit of room under the body and a long hood area for the switch and wiring. the only thing you would really need to worry about is making the battery casing which would take up most of the space. on some kits, you'll have to resort to the 9v battery as it is shorter and necessary as the kit width may not be enough to accomodate the casing and wiring.



here's a pic of the incandescent bulbs that i'll be using. they're the same ones i used for the clk gtr. the thread is around here somewhere so i'll leave it at that. they run at 1.5v.



i drilled out the headlight housings so that the LEDs can fit in there. however, it looks really bad if you have an LED sticking out far into the headlight housing... just plain ugly so i made spacers out of styrene tubing so that just the crown of the LED sticks out into the housing. this way it just looks that much better. it may not make a difference with the clear lenses on but knowing that there is a bracket there gives me peace of mind that the LED is firmly set in place in the form of styrene reinforcement. i did this for all the lights. the body has had two coats of paint on at the time of this post so it's a bit hard to tell where the bracket ends and where the body begins.





since i want the kit to light up without an external source with an additional constraint of hiding all wiring and hardware, the body has to be removed to turn the lights on and off. the only thing you have to worry about with this is that you're going to risk pulling the wires each time you try to turn the lights on and off. what i've done to prevent this is to use small styrene tubing as conduits on the sides of the body to guide the wires and to protect them from being caught on anything. just make sure to place the tubing in an area that has enough clearance between the interior tub and the body. otherwise you'll have an ugly gap there.



all that remains is to mount the LEDs and creating the battery housing. to be honest, the hardest part about this is creating the battery housing and figuring out how to create the circuit given the available battery size/voltage combinations.

a.