Nacho Z

Another beauty Tamas! Like others have said, I really like your photography and backdrops. Many of the photos could pass for a 1:1 car.

She looks great Walter! I too would love to see more pictures.

Cobraman beat me to it......very, very nice!!

Thank you all for the nice comments! I have been very busy with work and have not posted an update for awhile. Time to catch up! I will show you a little work on the interior. Using pictures in one of my reference magazines I tried to add this feature. There is a "blister" on the right hand side of the cockpit for the driver to shift. I tried to replicate the frame work around the blister. It is by no means perfect but it sure looks a lot better than nothing. I traced the opening and transferred that to a sheet of styrene. I cut out the shape and filed the inside and outside shape as close to the opening as I could. Please note that none of the ejector pin marks will be seen when the model is assembled. Masking is one of my least favorite aspects of modeling.....sigh. I taped a ruler to the cowling to try to get the rivet spacing even. The one thing about using PE is that some of the items are just sooooo small they are nearly impossible to use. Here is the final result. Of course the pictures are magnified vs. the real thing and you can see where I did not get the shape exactly right. I can assure you to the naked eye it does not look that bad. Trust me, my finger is not that big. Next up. This part I am showing is some type of either the rear wing or suspension adjustment. The kit part is just glued to the interior with nothing attached to it. I have found where the cable goes and will add it. The kit part is the black piece. Not very nice. (The other parts in the picture are just experiements). The adjuster is moved front to back and put in a "gate" much like a shifter. I made the "gate" from a left over PE runner. I also cleaned up the kit part to make it a little more presentable. The little handle was too much like a blob so I cut it off, drilled a hole and will use a straight pin instead. And this is what I ended up with.  It is not perfect but it is a much truer representation of what is in the 1:1.

Absolutely gorgeous!!

Very, very cool!! Can you give us any more info?

This is a pretty cool build. Like everyone else, I like that two-tone paint job and nose in the air stance!

I'm a sucker for these patriotic style paint jobs. Love it!

Beautiful work Sean!

This is just too cool William. I have never seen this kit before. Looks great, you did a very nice job with it. Thanks for sharing!

Time to post of few pictures of the nearly complete drivetrain. I am happy with how it all turned out.

More progress pics. The exhausts are installed as is more framework on the back end. Did a little more plumbing too. You can see one of the tanks is also installed. The "FORD" logos have been touched up since this picture was taken. Much of the body work is made up of multiple pieces. My experience is that the multi-pieces did not fit well together. On the rear wing, it was not the gap that was the problem but the thickness of the pieces. This made for a large "step" where they went together. It took a lot of putty and sanding to make it presentable. I also worked on the air intake / engine cover. A lot of hours went into this too.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to comment on work so far! I do appreciate them. Skip, I will post pictures of the completed model soon. Things don't always go as planned and I am sure we have all ran into problems with our builds. This build has had plenty of these moments. One of them for me was a broken exhaust pipe. It is a bear to try to hold and line up the four individual exhaust pipes in the collector and then in the block. It is definitely a test of patience. I always test fit everything before committing to glue. I thought I had the exhaust figured out. I glued the four pipes into the collector and then tried to line them up into the block. Guess what?? I could not get them to line up to save my life. The glue was starting to set so I decided to bail on this attempt. I ended up breaking off a locator pin in the collector as I was trying to remove the individual pipes. I decided to leave the broken piece in the collector and pin the exhaust in place. These are the wing uprights. As you can see they have some pretty wicked ejector pin marks. I use a trick that Gary Kulchock showed me. I use super glue and accelerator for filling these. It works great! The super glue puddles up in the ejector pin mark and fills it pefectly. I put on the accelerator and give it just a minute to set and sand the super glue. After a little elbow grease they came out like this.

Today's post will be called "Tanks alot" . Looking at pictures of the 1:1 car a kept on seeing the tank located just behind and underneath the roll hoop. There are two large clear hoses that run from it to the engine. These hoses can be seen in most engine photos. Oddly enough Tamiya did not include this tank in the kit. I thought I would try to scratch build one. I got all of the basic pieces ready. I made the tank, punched out a couple of discs and used various pieces of metal and plastic tubing. Sorry for the blurry pics. I assembled and painted the unit. One of the hoses that run from the tank I made runs to another tank on the engine. Of course the fitting for this is not there so I have to add it. I also cut off the molded fitting and added my own. This will allow me to add braided line. That will do it for today. Please feel free to leave any questions or comments!

Great work so far Jason!

She's a beauty Robert! I, for one, would not mind a few more pictures from different angles.

Very nice model Darryl. You really captured "the look", nice job!

They all look good Jonathan. I'm surprised with myself that I'm drawn to the Hilux!?!? Just goes to show what a nice job you did on it.

How cool is that?!?!?!?!

Wow, that is such a nice model! You really do amazingly clean work. Thanks for sharing this one with us!

Time for another post. I am putting the drive train together and getting an idea of how big this thing is. The drive train alone in nearly 1/2 foot long. Next up is a portion I will call "Fun with Radio Shack wire". The kit supplied suspension springs looked a little anemic to my eye. I made my own. Next up is the ducting. Tamiya gives you two spring like pieces that are flexible. The problem I encountered is that they are undersized, diameter wise and very unruly. Think of a Slinky. So I made my own. I selected the appropriate sized drill bit and made them long enough to have smooth curves while keeping the coils close together. After I got the duct work in place I made a mixture of white glue and water. Now here is the part that I just don't remember for sure. I know I tried to tint the mixture the shade of gray I wanted. What I don't remember is how it worked out. I am pretty sure the color took and mixed in evenly, (your results may vary.) I brushed the mixture on the duct work. Some of the wider spaces took several applications. Here is how the springs and the duct work turned out. Much better than the kit supplied parts.

Here is a look at the gauge cluster. It is close to the 1:1 but not an exact duplicate. And a picture of it mocked up.

Looks good John! I really liked the first picture. Very cool.

Very nice!

That has just the right look to it. Great color and details!