GeeBee

Superb build of a great F1 car, love it .....

I simply burning the BMF down into what ever I want to trim upto, and use a brand new #11 blade, and don't put any pressue on the blade, let the blade do the work, it you put pressue on the knife, it will wonder off line, apart from that, I don't do anything special.

For the time I have spent in the hobby room today, it really doesn't seems like I achieved a lot ... got the steering wheel and the column fitted, painted the rear view mirror flat white, the instructions say to paint it satin black, but BMC changed them to white plastic in the autumn of 1964, also masked the body up to paint the interior matt white, took longer to do the masking that it did to actually paint it ...

Just this minute bought this off ebay, used the 'Buy it Now' option of £9.99, that's around $15.00, i already had this one on the stash, but at that price i would have been rude not to buy it ....

It's been a few years since I've built any of these 1:32nd Airfix models, my first ever car model was the Airfix Vauxhall Viva, some of the other Airfix kits are worth a few pounds, the Morris Marina and Bond Bug go for silly money on eBay ....

Good question, and I'm not sure if there is anything that the Tamiya kit offers over the newer Revell offering, apart from being a Cooper S, I suppose if I was being a rivet counter, I would say the Tamiya version has more prototypical front and rear brake hubs and discs, but there really not seen once the model is put together, the Revell version is a little bit more sturdy in that direction, the hubs are slightly out of scale, but will hold the wheels a lot better once there glued on. I have a further 7 Tamiya Mini kits to build, plus a further 2 of the Revell one's, you may have worked out that I like Mini's .....

There are indeed from the Original book, I have 4 of them, Mini Cooper, Jag' MK2, VW Beetle and MGB, there great books, I bought them before the age of the internet ... The master cylinder was a typo' I should have said, "Clutch Slave Cylinder", as your right, the Tamiya kit does indeed have the brake and clutch master cylinders in the kit

I've just finished my first Fujimi enthusiast kit, the Porsche 911 Carrera Cabriolet, and everything went well until I came to put the chassis to the body, they just didn't line up without leaving a huge gap between the panels, and the ride height was awful, but will a little fettling, it was sorted, it was possibly one of the trickiest kits I've built, but I did enjoy it, would I build another ?? oh yes, I have a stack of these kits to get through, they just need a little planning and dry fitting before you put glue anywhere near to parts ....

Got the dash fitted, a simple job, it's fits into tabs located at the top of the side panels, almost didn't need any glue, the fit was that good, also got the BMf applied on the wheel arch trim and sill trim ...

Today I decided that it was about time that the interior was built up, the cubby boxes were fixed to the side panels, the front door boxes have a couple of locating points for the boxes to fix into, the rear one's don't, but it's a simply job to fix them on, as they follow the shape molded into the side panels, a few drops of 5 minute epoxy along the sides and bottom and clamped into place and left to dry. Once they had dried, the side panels could be fixed to the floorpan, they fix along the front edge, along the bottom of the floorpan and at the rear around the wheel arch trim and a small tab at the side of the rear seat backrest, 5 minute epoxy and a few clamps held all the parts together while the glue dried, once the clamps were removed the seat belts were fixed in, there is a small locating point at the bottom of the seat belt and also at the top of the side panel, a few drops of Cyano' glue at both points and the seat belt was simply put into place, there are some black decals to go over the decals, but looking at my reference material and my memory of the Mini back in the 60's, at least in the U.k, the seat belts fitted at the time would have been a silvery grey material, and not grey, so they were airbrushed with a mix of matt aluminium and grey, the mounting points were picked out using chrome silver fast drying enamel. The next small item that needed detailing were the window locks, they were simply picked out with Revell semi gloss black enamel, the only thing to fix into place now was the dashboard, but this still needed finishing off, the clocks were fixed into place, the chrome trim that goes above the dash padding was picked out using chrome BMF, the switch panel was picked out in flat grey and a decal fitted that replicates the heater controls.

Should be o.k to watch now ....

Luckily we don't have it as bad as you guy's, but today have been really strange, nice blue sky and sunny one minute, and then grey sky and snow blizzards, luckily I'm having a day in the hobby room today .... http://youtu.be/1vXk4Wmkk3c

I've seen this built up a few times, and have a couple on the stash, but I'll be following this one, can't have too many London buses ....there's a couple of Heritage routes that the Routemaster is still used in London, the number 9 & 15

Seeing the red one bought back a few memories, an Aunt of mine, who, how do I say this .... was a lady of slightly larger bodied than the average person, had a red 500 back in the 70's, it was a sight to see her squeeze herself in it .... poor litlle Fiat Talking of the 500, I just won one off eBay, it will be done in Positano yellow, which was the colour of my first Fiat, not a 500, but a 128 1100 c.c, which i managed to get a Lancia 1500 twin cam engine in there .....

Your doing some fine work on this build, and it shows, beautiful work ...

Looking good, I'll be following this one, as I have this to build one day, hopefully I'll pick up some tips ....

You'll be fine to go straight away, no need to thin it out ....

Bought this today, should have it next week, it's the Fujimi enthusiast kit in a different box, but cheaper ...

The 1500 had a slightly taller block, but in 1/24th scale your not going to notice the difference, the Cosworth 1340 was a short sroke version of the Ford 997 c.c engine

The original Prisoner car was black with a yellow nose, the wheels are correct out of the Gunze Elan, but use the hubcaps from the Tamiya version,

The Tamiya version is the 1275c.c Cooper S and that did have a servo fitted to the brake system, but it also had a fresh air ducting to the heater, which is missing from the Tamiya kit, also the hydraulic clutch master cylinder is also missing from the kit. Cooper S 1275 engine bay Cooper 998 Engine bay The Revell version is the 998 c.c Cooper, which the real thing, although still had the 7" discs fitted to the front didn't have a servo fitted to the brake system, so the Revell kit is correct, also, as you have mentioned it does have the fresh air ducting for the heater, it also has the voltage regulator fitted to the inner wing and the clutch master cylinder, and the crackcase breather, inlet manifold and air cleaner is also better than the Tamiya offering, so the Revell has to get my vote for the more detailed and more prototypical kit ....

I'd cover tham in BMf and then go over the top with Tamiya clear acrylic's

Nice Mini kit, you'll enjoy putting that one together, just a few mold lines on the body to remove, but the rest of the kit just falls together

Superb work, keep it going, I really like the work your doing, and a fine British car as well .....

Superb job, and a very reaIistic model, I sometime's struggle with 1:24th scale, I really wouldn't want to work in the smaller scale of 1:43rd