'57 Ferrari Pontoon Fender TR250

[Scale-Master]

This is an older 1/43rd scale kit from late 1980 or sometime in 1981. I know the date because I have a personal attachment to this kit for a few reasons. Primarily because I cast all the white metal parts in this kit when I was the head caster at Precision Miniatures back then. The parts were mastered and the molds were made by Lloyd Asbury. The box art was drawn by my late friend Dale King.

The decals were drawn by my father, Lloyd S. Jones of Scale-Master Decals. These look a bit rough due to their age of 42 years, but this will be built as an alternate version so I only need a few of the ones on this sheet.

This is the raw body (and chassis) casting straight out of the box. It's pretty clean even compared to more modern kits, but still requiring some clean-up.
Interestingly, to mold the front grille opening as part of the body (instead of a separate piece), they were spin cast in a unique three part mold. (Actually four parts since each mold made two bodies.) A separate plug for each body had to be sandwiched between the main halves and carefully extracted from the metal body after each cast. Lloyd was quite the innovator…


The rest of the parts include PE wire wheels, semi-soft tires, vacuum formed windshield and headlight covers, chrome parts and a good amount individual parts for decent detail of the time.

[potsie]

Looking forward to seeing this. Such a great personal connection!

[Scale-Master]

The first thing I did was to solder the rear valance onto the body. Cement would work fine, but solder makes a great truly permanent bond and fills the seam at the same time.

The same amount of work sanding as if it were cemented yields this result.

[Scale-Master]

Instead of painting the brake drums, I wire brushed the raw metal. The ones on the left are how they looked before brushing.

[Scale-Master]

The tires are injection molded and the ones in this kit had a shift that left a good sized mismatch.

Rather than totally obliterate the tread to sand out the offset, I pulled a set from my private stock and replaced them.
The PE spokes for the wire wheels are very delicate, but not really that difficult to assemble if you use a light touch.
Turns out the real car does not have tire lettering so the kit provided Englebert decals were not needed.

[Scale-Master]

The knock offs were missing from the kit, but fortunately I had a set I could donate to the project. They will be installed after the wheels are set up with the body/chassis.

[Scale-Master]

I filed the ends of the steel axles down to narrow the track. The front wheels are where I want them; the rears still have to come inward a bit more at this point by about 0.050.

[Deathtrap]

I cab see what you mean. It is sitting quite wide on its wheels indeed. I'm not into these cast metal cars, but yours is really coming to live.

[Scale-Master]

The seats were used to align the transmission tunnel and side panels but they were not cemented in at this time.

From the provided reference this car has an all black interior (except for the red seats) as opposed to the bare metal areas some had. I sprayed the chassis, tunnel and side panels satin black to start.
The floor and front section of the tunnel were brush painted flat black.

[360spider]

Looks good!

[Scale-Master]

Thanks!

The seats were primed in gray (all the metal parts that get painted are primed first), and then TS-8 Italian Red was lightly and not uniformly airbrushed. The white piping was done with Scale-Master decal stripes. (They are being produced by Warbird Decals now.) Even though the stripes are straight, a little decal solvent makes them very pliable to follow the curves. Still a few more sections to add at this point. I used the "H" size which is a size that is consistent on all the Scale-Master stripe sheets, even from the 80's.

[F1Tommy]

I remember when Gene Parrel did the review in Road Track in his scale model section when I was a kit in the late 1970's. These along with the AMR /BAM kits were leaders. I think I bought one of these from the original shop in Costa Mesa before it was sold along with a AMR Greenwood Corvette. That was what a spoiled kid I was, allowance for 6 months down the drain.

[Scale-Master]

Yep, Costa Mesa at 637 Paularino St. was where the PM shop was, right next door to Marque Products, the store you likely ordered from.
Gene Parril was the boss that wrote my paychecks. A really nice man too.
Bob Hines bought and ran Marque Products for several years while Gene moved onto Precision Miniatures.

[Scale-Master]

After the decaling was done the seats were sealed with clear flat.

[Scale-Master]

The interior features separate parts for the pedals, battery, electrical panel and shifter.