absmiami

The pedals hang down from this part. The clutch and brake are made from smashed tin solder with a pliers - then I rolled a diamond pattern onto the surface and then cut and shaped and glued this onto a pedal bracket made from nickel silver

So. As long as I am breaking things .... might as well show you the broken halves of the rocker arm bulkhead ... this is a lovely kit part - I messed around with it so much that it finally broke in half ... fortuitously, the part(s) are sandwiched between two thin supports so the final installation will look fine...

And yes. There is some lovely red goop seeping out of the transaxle. Can even see it on my I phone ...

Oh no ....

Well. This is cool ... what is the length of the bluebird in 1/18 th ???

Bezel for tach made fr .015 nickel silver ... glued with Tamiya clear ... dash is almost done ...

Taking shape ... the left / right halves are glued to the brace - the instr gauge housings on the back side are then glued and will / should / probably hold everything together ... added ignition and fuel pump switches plus oil temp light and starter button. Pretty crowded. Next is the tach and the last detail on the back side ... this process reminds me why I don’t build 43rd scale kits ...

The modeling gods had some fun at my expense tonite ... not surprised ... the thin plastic panel required a lot of handling. And sure enough - it broke in two while I was installing the gauge bezels ... should have made the panel in aluminum or brass ... but I can still use this - I think - when left and right are glued to the brace and the other parts are attached - I think it will look fine ... to be continued ...

Long story short. - looks really good. And it’s 24 th scale ... at least as good as the Heller and probably better ... whose going to be the first to build one with opening doors and rear hatch ??? Might be time to splurge on that wonder cutter ?

Gauge bevels made from .013 nickel Wire bent around a file to make that curly Q. Which is cut into rings and filed flat in the bottom side . ... this should work ...

I the instr panel is fighting me ... I’m fighting it back ... the rivets were difficult to install. Would have been smarter to have used a rivet decal and picked out the silver after painting. Anyway ... punching out and installing BBK gauges after a coat of Tamiya red. With some flat additive ...

Yup. It’s a tank. Gotta revu my doug Nye stuff. The 159 added a bunch of things not used on the 158 ... I’ll figure it out ...

Not that you asked .... but a clear red vinyl LP would match the base color of the body rather nicely ...

The few contemporary photos from the Tasman campaign suggest that the tire markings were painted gold. Again not certain but taking a shot with an ink based Fine point gold sharpie. This is some hold your breath - not after a beer Modeling and yes magnified - most of this build has been done with an opti-visor. Which is now a more important tool than my Xacto knife .... the excess ink is mostly removed with the point of the xacto ...

Also did some work on the wheels and tires while waiting out our last ?? ?? Tropical storm of the season to pass ... tire valves made from RB motion fuel line connections and steel wire. And wheel balance weights Made from soft tin wire ... pondering the wheel nuts . .. not certain yet ...

The panel is exposed. So I have to show some of the detail on the back side. Making the instr housings from plastic tube and rod and straps made from .013 nickel Wire bent, sanded, and glued to the plastic housing

The panel on the Team Lotus restored 32b is here. There are no good pictures that I have seen of the panel as raced in the Tasman series. But I’m pretty sure that it was different than the restored panel. - so I’ll make some changes based upon what I have seen in contemporary shots of Lotus formula cars in ‘64 and ‘65 .

Back to the dash before making the exhaust pipes .. the instrument panel on the 32b is based upon the Lotus 32 panel. A restored one is pictured here ...

Looking forward to the exhausts ....

Thanks for viewing ... and thanks for voting ...

Gracias. And my compliments to your profile ID box Picture / thingy ...

Wheels: kit white metal parts. The 32B ran the same wheels and tires as the 33. The tires are some old stash Perry’s Resin Dunlops rubber - very nice. Inner rims are enlarged to match the Dunlops - wheels and rims are painted with Tamiya yellow. Some paint over-run on the outer rims are removed with some small grinding bits and sanding sticks while the wheels are held in a 3 jaw Chuck on the Sherline. Then the wheels and rims got a coat of Alcad semi gloss .. the wheels were also drilled for wheel nuts ....

No matter what ... there are always repairs or corrections on the body work after the first primer coat. The second coat is on now. You can see that the rivets will stand out under the paint and the carrier film for the rivet decals just sort of goes away - it is not visible ...

Yup but you finished it so fast that you couldn’t take advantage of the xtra hour of building time today .... on to the Mangusta ?