Bugatti EB110, Revell, 1/24

[da_ashman]

Looking Good!!!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, mate!




I have been hard at work with the cigarette foil (after a wander round the neighbourhood with eyes peeled to find some last night -- if you build cars, any time you see a discarded packet, grab it, take out the foil and bin the packet like the previous owner should have but you're glad they didn't...)




I put the rear suspension bits in now -- the instructions would have you wait until all the engine pipework and cabin interior are in place, which to my mind is a recipe for undoing lots of hard work as you wrestle the upper wishbones into place! A triple whammy from Revell to watch out for here...

1) The instructions are badly drawn, and miss out that big ridge running fore and aft that you can see at the outboard edge of the opening in the wishbone
2) The parts have their numbers reversed on the instructions -- that ridge needs to go underneath, other wise it interferes with the springs which need to come out at an angle to reach their sockets in the wisbone
3) The pins that mount the wishbone are too long, so they don't fit horizontally out of the box

As always, trial fit and adjust is the answer. The springs fit into sockets in the bottom side of those two blue and silver parts you can see on the pillars outboard of the rear of the engine (that's not clear on the instructions either). If you trim the pin on the wishbone that goes into the open slot towards the front of the car rather than the socketed one at the back, you can achieve a firm press fit by shaving a bit at a time until it slots in place. It's very hard to see whether you've got the wishbone horizontal in both planes. Bizarrely, Revell have moulded two fine lines on the interior surface of the wheel well, which are almost but not quite where you'd want them to be to line up the wishbone in two axes against them. Unless of course the instructions are wrong again and the wishbone SHOULD be angled...



Getting started with the pipework. Owing to snappage as I was finely adjusting the relative positions of the pipes, I had to pin the outer pipes with to the inners with wire. This turned out to be a great idea, and I'd advise doing it from the beginning! I superglued the pin at one end, and used "Serious Glue" at the outer pipe end, so the pipe was free to rotate a bit for a few minutes. I also left the connection to the silencer as a press fit, so I had a bit of "wiggle room", but otherwise firm support. It's a testament to whoever designed this kit that with the mounting points held firmly, and that small amount of freedom of movement, the pipes dropped into their sockets on the turbos with minimal wiggling required. Four down, 12 to go... (there are two thinner exhaust pipes that thread between these, two intake boxes to the sides which connect to the front of the turbos, and two "overhead" air pipes which go on last, inboard of the turbos, and each one has to connect to two turbos...)

Now I'm going to leave those pipe to set firmly for a few hours, and take a good look at the body for any polishing out of dust specks that's needed...

bestest,
M.

[mattbacon]

The next pair of pipes is these thinner ones that thread between the paired main exhaust pipes. The engine bay is not symmetric, so keeping track of what's what is really important, especially since the left hand one of these is made of two pieces. Don't assume that the routing on one side is just a mirror image of the other. At the turbo end, the pins locating these pipes face forwards horizontally. I decided to get them fixed at that end first. Since the pinning had worked pretty well for the other pipes, I drilled for wire pins at the rear end -- I figured that with the turbo end fixed firmly and set, the thin pipe would give enough to allow me to flex the pinned ends into place, and the pins would hold them instantly while the glue set. Thank goodness, that worked! Another 4 down...

Meanwhile....




The usual hour of masking for ten minutes spraying. These are the areas that will be black on the final car. Though the A pillars of the body are thin, the surround on the windscreen part is quite chunky -- as it is on the real thing.




Two more sets of pipes in place. The next pair are the four air intakes that come from the boxes at the sides by the firewall. I drilled out the mounting points slightly to give a little wiggle room but, amazingly, these actually press-fited into place and adjusted themselves. In the end I decided to take advantage of the serendipitous trial fit, and dropped a little super glue onto the pipe end and mountings rather than taking them off and gluing again. Then came the two fore-and aft tubes just outboard of the engine. These are the only ones that have really positive locating pins, and I'd already drilled out the holes in the turbos to fit properly (Thanks Mr Alan Sidney for a set of many sizes of tungsten carbide PCB drills which cut superbly with minimal torque on the part...) The dropped into place, and the final cross brace over the top at the back completes the plumbing!



Tricky and step by step it may have been, and the fixing points could be better engineered, but full marks to Revell's designer for getting this spaghetti junction of pipes so that it does all fit in place. And I think we can all agree that it's a pretty good attempt at the complexity of the real thing. If I was Mr Tamiya making a state of the art kit, I'd find a way of engineering the four exhaust header bundles that exit the block as one single piece that locate the turbos precisely in space around the block, and make the turbo mountings to the headers equally a lock fit which holds their orientation precisely in 3 axes.




Just a little more to do now around the engine bay -- notably the shields that will cover up most of that pipework ;-)

And finally...



...I think I'm starting to regret locking the engine cover down! Still, it's been a learning experience, however much you can see at the end!

bestest,
M

[mattbacon]

I couldn't resist a little test mock-up to find out what you WILL be able to see...





Not too bad, I reckon, especially if I make sure the windows are as transparent as possible!

bestest,
M.

[joelwideqvist]

Love to read your in depth process/review of the kit. Both engine and body color looks top notch!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, Joel...

The chassis is now complete, and ready to squeeze into the body:







...the body, however is not yet ready!

bestest,
M.

[Miklaren]

Love the seats! Were they molded with that leather look or is that all paint work?

[mattbacon]

Thanks, Mike -- they were moulded with the detailed texture, so it seemed a bit of a shame to waste it!

all the best,
M.

[das_auto]

Wow! Nearly there now!
Looks fantastic!

Emil

[mattbacon]

Thanks, Emil...



The inside's inside the outside. As you can tell from the tape, there's a lot of inside to get inside... Interesting popping and clicking noises as it flexes into place, but I don't think anything critical has fallen off.

One important point: if you do as I did and fix the front bonnet into place to beef up the structure, before you glue it, tape the body shell down on a tile or glass sheet to ensure the base is completely flat. On mine, the "nose" ahead of the front wheel arches droops slightly, which makes it harder to get the front of the undertray in place. I don't know if this is a result of gluing in the bonnet panel, or just another example of the potential for warping this fragile bodyshell in the box.

Now to leave this to set very solid for a good 12 hours.

bestest,
M.

[corvettekid_7684]

Looks fantastic so far!

[mattbacon]

Thanks, CK






Because I had two kits (one bought very cheap for spares to get some tyres) I could use the two headlight covers that fitted best, by flipping one over. I also noticed that all the photos I have show the EB110 with funky split side windows. These are made from electrician's insulating tape, using a single card template flipped over to ensure that they are identical one side and the other...

Proper photos to come in CP/G in the next few days.

bestest,
M.

[MidMazar]

Beautiful work, I would've yellowed the heat shielding. Im glad I didn't sell this kit, started it but I fear im going to break the fragile pillars. Hopefully I will get back into the hobby soon. I've been gone for too long. Seeing a great thread like this is inspiring. Progress looks awesome.

[generationx]

Excellent stuff and a pleasure to follow your WIP!

[tonioseven]

Terrific progress!!!