International Scout II - 24 Hour Build - Progress!

[Tom Geiger]

Here we go... I'm participating in the 24 Hour Build. Many modelers across the country and Canada are about to start their builds at noon East Coast Time! I'm just having a quick lunch before I start.

So watch this thread, it will be updated throughout the night!

Edited January 25, 2015 by Tom Geiger

[roadhawg]

Good Luck! I'm doing it too!

[1930fordpickup]

Good luck.

[hjracing]

Good luck, and we are waithin to see this build coming!

[Tom Geiger]

4:00 PM Progress Report

Quite a bit of progress and working as fast as I can. I have all the parts off the trees and cleaned up of mold imperfections. Most of it all is either primed, and some of the flat black chassis bits went straight to paint. Engine is assembled and painted. Body is primed, but needs a bit of mold line work as soon as primer is hard enough. Above photo is my work on the chassis. This is a fairly simple kit done by Ertl, so the chassis was lacking. You could see right up inside the doors and tail gate, so I've added a bit of plastic to the chassis. I always build something for the 24 Hr Build that I have multiples of, so I did the chassis work using a second body for sizing, as the body I'm using was primed and drying.

This is a reference shot from eBay Motors, my first 'go to' source. The Scout I am doing a replica of had a bench seat, and here it is. I think it's cool that it has a 1/3 2/3 split. So we'll have to create that seat!

And here we are. I had figured out during the week that the seat in the '55 Chevy pickup had the right shape. So I had pulled three of them out of my parts box. This cost me about an hour, but I think it will make the build. The kit had bucket seats that were flat and not so realistic.

And a front view. Still a lot of putty and sanding work to do, but I needed this seat for the truck to be correct.

I didn't explain what I'm building and why. Back in the early 1990s I was looking for a little 4x4 and came across a Scout II for sale. It was black with a scallop on the door and a white roof. It had an awful green interior. It started and ran okay on my test drive, but I couldn't help but notice it had a big oil stain under it. I asked and the owner acted like he didn't know anything. The final straw for me was he said the hood latch was stuck so I couldn't investigate, so I walked away.

About a week later I notice it parked a block from my house. A guy in the neighborhood had bought it. I did want it, and here I had to look at it often just to rub my nose in it. It must've been a decent truck because I saw it for years... sitting in a big oil stain! The new owner didn't fix it so it probably was something expensive to fix.

So that's the truck I'm building. The one that got away!

And I did get my 4x4, that's when I bought my 1991 Geo Tracker. I think I made out okay since I still have it!

Anyway.. back to work! I will post again at the next milestone.

[cobraman]

Good luck Tom ! Don't glue your fingers together going at such a rapid pace. : )

[Mister 4x4]

This is cool! Good luck and have fun. Can't wait to see how it all comes out!

[jeffs396]

How's it going Tom?

[Fabrux]

Looking good so far, Tom! I really like what you did with the front seat. I only had two seats to use for mine, thus I was unable to build the correct split seat.

[Tom Geiger]

Ack! I forgot to update this thread overnight. I was updating on the 24 Hour Build FaceBook page, and I got as far as posting my 3am shots on Fotki, then forgot to post! That's middle of the night brain!

A couple of things that cost me valuable time were making the bench seat and again fixing issues with the kit. I didn't get far enough to address the lack of a radiator, and I'm sure there's a few hours of fiddling there. And here is the issue with the chassis. At 4pm I posted how far I had gotten, but above photo shows just how bad the chassis was. I just had to fix it.

And here's what it looked like at 6pm, once the glue had dried and I trimmed it to fit inside the body.

This is an 11:30pm photo. I had masked off the body to do the white roof. The masking cost me time, and I should've gone with my initial thought of spraying the entire body white, then putting the black on top of that. I feared that since I was working quickly that the white would come through. Instead, I had issues with the black over Duplicolor primer and some distorting on the body.

And by 3:45 am, I had the interior mock up done. Dash and shifters were glued in at this point. The seats and tire cover were not. I had sanded off the window cranks since they were just a slight outline on the door panel. I replaced them with resin ones from Model Cars & Replicas of MD. I just got my Model Car Garage order of seat belt buckles, so I'll be adding those. I also spent time masking here, I first masked off the doors and sprayed the black, then did the opposite. Others may have just brush painted here, but I did it the way I was comfortable. At 3:45 am, I was till wide awake and raring to go, but my neck was killing me from sitting and looking down for so long. I've made a note that I will set an hourly alarm next year for a 5 minute eye and body break!

Another view, I probably won't be using the tire cover. It is supposed to stand in the back left corner. In doing so, you can see inside the empty shell through the window! Another shortcoming of the kit. It's too small to put a tire into, and it's doubtful that the owner of this old beat up Scout would be so tidy as to cover the spare like this. I will probably add a tire and wheel standing up in the corner like it should be.

Engine was also assembled and painted at this point. You can see how simple it is, no carburetor, just a stump to hold up the air cleaner. The engine bay is also pretty stark. No radiator, no heater assembly, no overflow tank (heck why would you need that without a radiator?) and no wiper fluid container. I have all those pieces sitting ready to go in, as well as a prewired distributor.

[Tom Geiger]

Here's a photo of the finished modified chassis. It's ready for weathering, the interior on the flip side is just about done too.

And here's how we looked at the 12 noon deadline! Up on wheels. I did some of my usual little details like valve stems. Grille is blacked out with Tamiya Acrylic. I can see the Sharpie work I did around the headlights, so I'll go back and hit those areas with the Tamiya flat black.

You can see the issues I had with the Duplicolor Black paint. It just reacted with the plastic and I got this rash look. It's a bit pronounced in this photo since I sanded it a bit. I thought it was because I painted it before the primer was really dry, but it did the same thing on the hood that had sat over night. Funny thing, is that it will be in character for this build. The truck I'm modeling was old and worn, and the final finish will be a mix of dullcote and semi gloss.

The real truck had a white scallop on the doors. I actually had bought a set of scallops (K-Dog Graphics decals) and tried to put one on for the noon photo. The decal just shattered! I took the remaining part of the sheet and sprayed some Testors Decal Fixative on it, so we'll see.

So that's as far as I got during the 24 hour build. Around 4:30 am I took a couple Advil for my neck, laid down to wait for them to kick in and awoke around 8:30. My wife was up at 7 and didn't wake me up ("I thought you wanted to sleep") so I lost a few hours, but it's all good. I wouldn't have gotten much further and now I can fiddle at my convenience to complete it. I'll be able to do some things, and fix some stuff that I would've let slide by to finish by noon. And with two big storms coming my way I may have some bench time available this week!

I will continue this thread until the model is finished!