Anglia105E

I think your figures look just right David, and any further detail might have comprised their period correct features . . . Well done Sir ! David W.

The rear seat was glued back in place, having become detached during the problematic body fitting. Then styrene glue was applied to the location slots for the front forks of the upper body, as well as the undersides of the wheel arches at the rear . . . Very carefully, the upper body was lowered into place, while keeping all four doors in the open position, also both bonnet panels were in the open position, and the boot lid was in the fully closed position . . . Following a period of nearly two hours to allow the glue to set, each of the four doors were carefully closed. Both of the front doors closed well, and there was hardly any gap between the top edge of those doors and the roof . . . However, the rear doors are only almost closed, and they have a slightly larger gap visible, I had avoided using excessive force up to this point, but when I attempted to close the rear doors more fully, the glue joints on both sides of the upper body broke away from the lower body at the arches . . . Several of the component parts of the body are in tension, so they are springing apart, even after glue is applied. I don't think that I can improve the fit of this Phantom III body any further . . . This is a most unfortunate conclusion to reach, at 25 weeks into the build. David

Having detached the front forks of the upper body, by breaking the super glue bond where the forks join the lower body, I sat down to examine the rear of the car where the luggage compartment bay meets the rear seat parcel shelf . . . The only option for removing plastic was the two upper corners of the luggage bay itself. This was done using the mini drill and grind stone attachment, and I then proceeded to test fit the upper body . . . While I have noticed a slight improvement with the closing of the four doors, the overall fit of the body is still not satisfactory . . . The rear arches of the upper body are almost making contact with the rear wings, but the gaps above the doors remain clearly visible. The boot lid is now closing fully, after I had cut off a small amount of the steel rod that forms one of the two boot lid hinges . . . I am absolutely certain that the division at the centre of the car, along with the precise positioning of the inner and outer door posts, is perfectly correct . . . Of course, if these were too high they would account for the rear end of the upper body not being to lower sufficiently. I can only assume that the roof panel might be warped in some way, and it would only need to be out by one millimetre in order to create this problem. I find myself almost there, but there doesn't seem to be much more that can be done . . . I may be forced to throw in the towel, which goes against my natural inclination ! David

I forgot to mention Noel . . . the maroon Anglia is a resin cast body, whereas the blue Anglia is a 3D resin printed body . . . The problem with the 3D resin printed version was that there is a nasty circular swirl mark in the centre of the roof. Despite a great deal of sanding and priming, the swirl mark still showed through the Imperial Maroon paint after it was applied in two coats . . . This might have been why I put the build to one side and did not get it completed ! David

Those flaws on the hood scoop and at the front of the hood are giving you a hard time David . . . If the Purple Pond can't sort it, nothing can ! David W.

The more that I think about your ' size distortion cascade ' effect, the more it does actually make sense to me . . . Given that this Phantom III kit is 40 years old, it is quite conceivable that several areas of those parts under the rear window of the upper body could be oversized by as much as one mm. Then, as you say David, these errors in size when stacked up will be enough to put everything out, resulting in serious misalignment . . . Having removed some material from the package shelf using a mini drill and grind stone attachment, I would probably do well to examine othe parts in that same area . . . This is just a little more difficult, now that I have super glued those front forks of the upper body in place, and also the division glass frame at the top edge has to slot into the channel of the roof underside, although I haven't glued that in place yet . . . This will be a process of trial and error, so taking a small amount of plastic off here and there, until hopefully something drops into a better fit . . . Thanks for your helpful suggestions, and this has inspired me to investigate further. Certainly, your VW Love Bug build appears to be a similar set of problems. David W.

Yes Noel, the maroon resin bodied Anglia is the 1:24 scale one, and sorry about the misleading photo, which makes it look as though the blue resin bodied one at the front is larger than the maroon version . . . In fact the two resin bodied ones are the same dimensions. I purchased the blue resin body Anglia 105E from an Ebay seller, ' sparkyfxdx ' who is based in Gravesend, and it was £30.00 plus postage. As you can see in the following photo, the blue resin body fits onto my scratch built chassis that was made for the maroon resin body . . . The Harry Potter diecast version is indeed a good model, and I purchased this one from an Ebay seller, ' buygoneworldlimited ' at £29.95, free postage. David

Thank you Noel, and I do have the diecast version of the Ford Anglia 105E, as well as two resin cast bodies for this car . . . The Harry Potter diecast is actually quite a nice model, but the scale is incorrect. The manufacturer states that their model is 1:24 scale and I seem to remember the diecast car being too large, by quite a lot . . . It is more like 1:22 or 1:20 scale, although I would have to measure the car to be sure . . . Here are a couple of photos, showing the comparison . . . I never did get the second Anglia built for some reason, which would have been the blue one, so only the maroon red one got built. David

The remaining two bonnet panel chrome handles have now been fitted on the passenger side . . . During further investigation into the body fitting issues, it was noticed that the width of the rear parcel shelf appears to be wider than the space into which the parcel shelf has to fit. Some of the following photos show the width of the parcel shelf, as indicated by the piece of string, and the string was laid across the space just above the luggage compartment bay. I proceeded to remove 4 mm of material from both sides of the parcel shelf, and then test fitted the upper body . . . Although there appeared to be a significant improvement, we are not there yet . . . It was decided to super glue the two front forks of the upper body in place, once they were correctly aligned with their slots in the sides of the lower body, and clicked into those slots. Then I made sure that the top edge of the division glass frame was properly inserted into the underside of the roof channel, and this enabled me to deal with the rear end of the upper body . . . By applying some pressure to the upper edge of the luggage compartment bay, and also squeezing together the upper body and the lower body at the point where the upper body makes contact with the rear wing (fender), a reasonably good fit was arrived at. All four doors close, but the passenger side rear door springs open when released . . . There might be some distortion going on, that is not obvious to the naked eye. More fine tuning is required ! The pair of chrome horns have been fitted under the headlamps at the front of the car, and these turned out to be extremely difficult to glue in place. This was due to the fragile attachment points . . . To overcome the problem I cut out two small squares of card, and using these as spacers, the horns were super glued to the mountings . . . David

Absolutely David, and I try to keep busy on a daily basis . . . because basically we don't know for sure how many days we have remaining. Since I retired five years ago, I would say that the hobby of scale model car building has been my favourite daytime pastime by far. My wife does not see things that way, sadly . . . ( understandably though I must admit ). David W.

Your flat black steel wheel for the spare in the trunk is much better than the spare wheel supplied in the kit box David . . . I hadn't noticed that you were building this 1965 Ford Galaxie 500 . . . You are certainly a busy builder ! David W.

Okay Bob, I shall see what I can do . . . There are a couple of black straight covers on the ends of the two wires, where they go into the back of the headlamps, but I should be able to cut through those carefully with a scalpel knife . . . David

Okay Bob thanks . . . I was worried that the wires might break and lose contact if I bent them at a 90° angle ? David

These are the photos to show the work mentioned in my previous post, which is the application of the black acrylic paint to the headlamp wiring . . . David

Well Dennis . . . This evening I applied some Vallejo black acrylic paint to where the wiring goes into the back of the headlamps, which is to blank out the omitted light from that area. Also, I applied the black acrylic to the red sections of the wiring, which does help to draw attention away those pesky wires, but of course it does not make them invisible . . . David

Here are a few photographs of the Rolls-Royce, some of which are in sepia . . . Arthur J. Webb has asked to be kept informed of the oustanding issues . . . David

Consider the matter cleared up, Jim . . . I guessed you must be clowning, so it's all part of the good fun on here ! David Watson

Sorry for the confusion Jim . . . I do try to sign off my posts with ' David W. ', so that I am not confused with ' David G. ' David W.

Thanks for the suggestion to search for previous builds of this kit David G., but there are none at all unfortunately. One other member on MCM has built one before, and having discovered the model in his basement but in many pieces. I believe he is trying to restore the badly damaged model car. The member in question very kindly sent me lots of useful reference material for the Phantom III . . . I have drilled a hole in the side edge of the boot lid on my build, and after a length of steel rod was super glued into the hole the rod was cut off at 3 mm. This hinges perfectly at the rear of the upper body once more . . . Then I decided to bite the bullet and cut off the lugs at the top of both outer door posts. I had checked the distance between the centres of these two lugs, which was 76 mm . . . I then checked the measurement between the two holes in the interior roof sockets, and this was 77 mm, which explains why I cannot get the tops of the door posts to line up with the sockets, Then followed a great deal of squeezing, pushing and levering of various parts, including the doors and the front ' forks ' of the upper body, and eventually I was able to persuade the top edge of the division glass frame to fit into the channel inside the roof . . . There were still issues with doors not closing, and gaps between the upper and lower body components, so I then raised the bonnet panels on each side into the open position. This allowed the front forks to click into their slots in the lower body . . . With the front forks engaged, the overall alignment of the body seems to be more favourable . . . I am not there yet, but maybe something can be done with this . . . I might need to glue those forks in place, at the front of the upper body, and then deal with each component part of the body, perhaps applying glue as I go ? David

All attempts to mount the Phantom III upper body onto the lower body failed yesterday, during several sessions of two to three hours each . . . I made the decision to insert the outer door pillars of the two door assemblies into the inner door posts, and once these were carefully aligned, they were super glued in place . . . This was a completely different approach to having the upper body already mounted on the lower body. All four doors are now in position, and I was able to tackle the upper body engagement with the top lugs of the outer door posts . . . The trouble is, the rear luggage compartment has to clear the rear parcel shelf behind the rear seat, while at the same time the two front forks of the upper body have to align with the firewall and the floorboard at the front end . . . Some considerable force was applied at one point, as I attempted to line up the interior roof sockets using a mirror. The same operation was attempted with the model car upside down on it's roof . . . All this pushing and shoving resulted in a pin breaking off that allows the boot lid to hinge, also the luggage compartment broke away from the upper body rear, so I stopped the process well after midnight . . . It is really not at all clear what is obstructing the fitting together of these two body parts, other than something being distorted or misaligned. I am beginning to dislike the design of this body, although to be fair, I don't see how Gunze Sangyo could have designed the structure any other way . . . David

Figure painting is such a specialised area of scale model building, and there are many skills required to achieve a convincing result . . . I can see that you are fully aware of what you are doing David . . . The black wash approach is a great idea ! Those two figures can be made into nicely realistic additions to your Lincoln Futura, using your expert techniques . . . David W.

Thanks Dennis, and that is exactly what I am aiming for . . . Something special ! David

Yes David, those are the sill plates . . . " Fisher Body was an automobile coachbuilder founded by the Fisher brothers in 1908 in Detroit, Michigan. In 1984, General Motors dissolved its Fisher Body Division " ( quote ) Your comments regarding dimensional changes are most interesting, and that is quite possible in this case . . . The critical point with this assembly of upper body to lower body is centred on those interior roof sockets, which is where the inner and outer door posts converge at the top. Today I am in the process of removing the upper body, and having a close look at this area of importance, so in my next post this evening I shall add some photos that show what is going on . . . David W.

Both front sidelights and their lenses have been fitted on the tops of the front wings, along with the central fog lamp . . . While working on this frontal area of the car, I added the ' RR ' plaque at the centre of the front bumper. There are two horns still to be fitted, but the attachment points immediately below the headlamps are far too fragile as far as I am concerned. I am in the process of seeking an alternative method of attachment . . . Moving round to the rear of the car, the petrol filler cap has been fitted, and also the two rear quarter pillar chrome mouldings. The ' RR ' plaque has been added to the centre of the rear bumper . . . The upper body needs to be lifted clear of the lower body at some point, so that the rear seat can be glued back in place, which became detached during the struggle with the door assemblies. My intention is to turn the model over onto it's roof and examine closely the fitting of the inner and outer door pillars, as they connect to the interior roof sockets . . . Maybe I could even contemplate fitting the doors while in the upside down inverted position ? David

All of the famous coachbuilders. such as Freestone and Webb, Hooper & Co., Barker's, Park Ward, Gurney Nutting, Mulliner's, James Young and Thrupp & Maberly would always mount a steel plate on all four sills of a finished motor car body. This was to declare that the design and production of each coachbuilt body had been completed to an extremely high standard . . . David W.