167 replies to this topic

[Harry P.]

Hello, It's a 34 RR torpedo.

Tom

Is it for sale?

[Harry P.]

Man, what a frustrating day!

I mounted the body to the chassis, now I'm trying to hang the doors. Well, wouldn't you know, the doors don't fit. And I mean, it's not even close! If I line up the door to the body at the rear of the door, the front is way off, and if I line up the front of the door to the body, the rear is totally out of whack.

There's no way to fix this now. The body is attached at six points, there's no way to alter that. The door openings are what they are, and the doors are what they are... and the doors don't fit! I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe the best bet is to split the difference, and have the doors misaligned a little in front and a little in back... but no matter how I try to fake it, the doors flat out don't fit, and it looks pretty bad.

Sigh...

[Zoom Zoom]

Yikes. And I get annoyed when that kind of stuff happens on dead-simple models. That is probably reason #8,792 why I didn't let myself get sucked into the trap of building Pocher models

I'm sure you'll obsess over it for a few days and figure something out. Photos of the problem areas??? I know it would drive me completely bonkers until I figured it out...or shoved the project aside to work on something else.

[Harry P.]

It is driving me bonkers.

I can deal with misaligned engine and chassis parts... after all, you don't really see that once the model is done. But the painfully obvious misaligned doors? There's no way to hide that.

What kills me is that there's no way to foresee this. You can't line up the doors to the body until the body is attached to the chassis... because the final shape and angles of the door openings aren't "final" until the body is screwed down to all the mounting points and all the flex and twist of the body is finalized. At that point, there's really no way to align the doors into the opening. I can't change the door openings, I can't change the doors, and I can't change the hinge locations.

I think I'll try scrapbooking!

[arick]

Do you have the PK video Harry? If not, I can look at mine and see what it says.

[arick]

I'm building the same MB so spoke to a friend who has built several. He suggests that the body be fully attached to the chassis before fitting the doors. Secondly, he says to check the position of the hinges. MB door hinges have an offset and its possible to install them wrong. He says not to permanently attach the hinges but tape them in place using packing tape. At this point, we can sand the contact points until the door closes and opens smoothly.

You're probably aware of the above, but it may help someone else (like me) who is building the same car.

[vizio93]

That sounds horrible Harry . There is absolutely no way to fix it ?

[MrObsessive]

Yikes! Maybe it was just as well I sold it to you Harry!

I'm so used to test fitting everything along the way-------but the way you explained it, I can see where it wouldn't be possible to do so until you're at that particular step.

If the doors aren't painted Harry, is there a way to shave the trailing edge of the door and then polish 'er up?? You could protect everything around it with Parafilm perhaps so that nothing gets scraped or nicked.

Just a thought!

[Harry P.]

I have the Paul Koo CD. But that doesn't help change the shape of the doors!

The problem is that the doors (or the body?) are warped somehow. The doors fit into the opening as far as filling the opening, but they don't line up along the surface of the body. If the hinges are installed into the body like they're supposed to fit, and the doors are lined up with the body along their rear edge, the upper front corner sticks out away from the body. And if I line up the front edge of the doors with the body, the lower rear door corner sticks out. I can't heat the door skins and reshape them to fit the body because then the inner panels wouldn't fit right (they fit correctly to the door skins as is). Like I said before, I think I'll just try and split the difference between the lower back and upper front corners when I glue the hinges to the doors and body.

The right side door is worse than the left, the left one is actually not horrible. I think that the problem is that the cowl area of the body is warped. In fact I'm pretty sure the body is warped, because it was WAY out of whack before I mounted it to the chassis. Years of sitting in the box and probably having pressure on it from some of the other parts trees warped the body. Screwing it down pulled things into place a little, but there's still some warp left in the cowl area, the whole thing slants left... which explains why the right door "sticks out" at the front. Maybe I can use little wedges of plastic between the cowl and the firewall on the right side of the body to try and make the body and the door line up better. It'll never be perfect, but maybe I can make it look at least halfway decent.

Then there are the door latches. The pieces are tiny, the tolerances are sloppy, and I'd be willing to bet that no matter how carefully I build them, after a few times they break or jam or otherwise stop working. I can see it already...

Man, I've having fun now!!!

[Harry P.]

Here's what I'm talking about. It actually looks worse in real life, the photo doesn't really show how bad the misalignment is.



I'll figure it out...

[Harry P.]

Another problem. There are two pieces of metal trim for each side window, the "glass" has a rabbeted edge that the window frame is supposed to fit over. Obviously the left and right hand sides of glass and frame are mirror images... the "finished" side of the frame is supposed to be on the outside.

The problem? I didn't get a matching left/right set. I got 2 left sides!

[Harry P.]

More crying and moaning...

The body parts are connected to the sprues with HUGE stubs. I mean, they're like tree trunks. You can't just snip the doors, hood panels and fenders off the trees with standard-issue sprue cutters... you need something more like a chainsaw.

The resulting problem is that once you free the parts from their parts tree prison, there are monster-sized nubs that have to be filed/sanded/smoothed. And the attachment points have not always been necessarily engineered to be in an inconspicuous place. Or to put it another way... they are at the most highly visible areas of the part.

For instance, the fenders are attached at the front, right smack dab in the middle of the arch of the fender on the leading edge, and along the side, right about at the midpoint of the door. In both cases, once you trim and sand the attachment nubs smooth, you have to go through a whole elaborate sanding/polishing operation to try and make everything look smooth. Same with the doors. And since I'm not painting the body (just polishing the plastic), it's a pain to try and make these attachment points disappear and the surface as smooth and shiny as the rest of the part (which is actually very shiny indeed. Pocher spent some serious time polishing the molds for the body parts). Check out the photo above of the misaligned door. That's the bare plastic surface right out of the box. So at least they got that right!

[sjordan2]

This makes my head hurt. How's the Rolls coming?

[Michigan Madman]

I think I'd go for the '30's Bugatti kit... and leave myself a good decade or two timeline in which to finish it! Yeah, I think I could build a Pocher Bugatti to a somewhat mediocre outcome in ten or twenty years!

[sjordan2]

Have you conferred with the guys at modelmotorcars.com about your door problem? Marvin Meit has been responsive to my inquiries in the past.

[Harry P.]

This makes my head hurt. How's the Rolls coming?

The Rolls is in "suspended animation" because this kit got my interest instead. The Rolls is a finished chassis at this point. I'll get back to it once I figure out this one!

[Harry P.]

Have you conferred with the guys at modelmotorcars.com about your door problem? Marvin Meit has been responsive to my inquiries in the past.

I've talked to Marvin several times. He's a very nice guy. I bought a whole boatload of his aftermarket stuff for this kit. He even called me to personally thank me for the order (plus he knew me beforehand from the photos of my Alfa and Fiat that I had submitted to his online gallery).

I also have the supplementary instructional CD from Paul Koo, so I know all about the problems... I just have to figure out how to solve them!

I've decided that the door problem is caused by a warped cowl on the body. I'm going to shim out the cowl a little bit to try and make the door gap smaller (and hope that I don't cause the other door's alignment to go out of whack!) And rely on the door latch to hold the door in place, more or less. And also, I've decided to accept the fact that the doors will never line up perfectly, because it's a Pocher, and Pochers are what they are.

[sjordan2]

Hang in there. The first time I ever saw a Pocher model was a display version of this same Mercedes, under glass, at F.A.O. Schwartz in New York about 30 years ago (black and tan like yours). It literally blew me away. I must have spent half an hour looking it over and I've never forgotten it. This one's worth the effort.

PS: I saw in your door shot that you have a can of Model Master transparent black tint. How did you use this?

Edited by sjordan2, 19 January 2010 - 12:50 PM.

[Harry P.]

PS: I saw in your door shot that you have a can of Model Master transparent black tint. How did you use this?

I used the can to hold the door in place for the photo! No kidding!

(Although I did use it earlier on some of the silver-painted engine parts and the transmission.)

[sjordan2]

Have you checked out Gunther Schlegelmilch's awesome photography of this car (and others)?

http://www.schlegelm...hp?automobile=1

Click on picture archive and select make & model.

Edited by sjordan2, 21 January 2010 - 06:39 AM.