Cato

Austin Healey 3000. Uptop and down top please. 1/12 or 1/8, I'll take both.

Honestly fellas; I appreciate the encouragement but I tell you no lies: "> "> Besides, my head is totally consumed by the Rolls. I have near 600 hours in since mid February. Harry will kill me but I've gone 'all in' on engine detail using Haddock's drawings and it's all scratched and far beyond what Pocher gives you. That's why I haven't updated that thread-been working and figuring every day and don't yet have 'photographable' progress to show yet. But I will soon as I'm just completing oil and vacuum lines on the block. Besides, being a hacker with little talent always adds time to my builds...

:lol: Because every square inch of bench space plus two work tables and part of the floor is covered with 'Pocher's Revenge'...

The end...for now? Ultimately, putting so much effort into (for me) an unfixable project is sad. So I used the opportunity to improve my techniques for the looming Big Rolls build. Yes, I can build it and display it with the one door up but I did set out dreaming of operable doors. The hood and trunk operate just fine. I'm in love with the form of the design and that door askew just broke my heart. Having gone so far, I challenged myself to do the best paint I ever did since the rest of the body was perfectly prepared. The same effort and techniques will work on the Rolls, so it's not a total failure. After the guide coat was sanded, I applied medium coats of British green with plenty of dry time between. I avoided dust mites so I was lucky-I have neither spray booth nor dehydrator. Between coats, I dried it in a large plastic storage box-inverted-and elevated an inch above the table surface. That to gas out and protect from dust. After 2 weeks, I tried a light sanding with 3600 grit wet. Indeed all color sanding was wet. I let that sit another week and was satisfied that the enamel had truly dried. Then the enamel clear, just two fairly wet coats. Again 2 weeks of patient dry time. (I had begun to organize the parts of the Rolls and plan where I was going to work on that monster). I'm amazed that after all the grinding and cutting (fenders, rockers), I had no visible scratches. I took a lot of material out to get the shape right-a draw-back with this kit. Bondo made the front and rear valance seams disappear. The only places where it was needed. Oh, and I filled the antenna hole... Then I spent a day doing all the grits (wet) , 4000, 6000, 8000 and 12,000. Had to be very careful not to break those edges and corners. The Enamel Gods had smiled upon me-no catastrophes! Finally Meguiars Ultimate compound and NXT wax. I was pleased and got what I wanted, but knew it wouldn't sit on my desk to enjoy everyday. So that's the end of my tale of woe. A special thanks to Skip for his support and resources during the build. Wrapped in microfiber cloths and secured in a storage box with all its subassemblies, it sits once again in my basement. If I survive the Rolls, I may peek at it again someday... Thanks for watching.

"The carpeting was done with brown embossing powder". It is a finer material than model flocking. It is sold in craft stores for the scrapbooking hobby.

I had help from a very knowledgeable enthusiast...

You can see the complete inner door panel waiting to join the outer door skin. That's where the big trouble is. Both parts have different curved shapes, making the door sit proud of the roof or body side. No amount of warp-removal techniques worked, primarily because the A and B pillars are so thin and delicate: The hard part... As nice as many aspects of this kit are, the complexity of the tooling to get the body panels to mate causes a major problem. The doors and their separate interior panels have two different contours. When you join them together, there will inevitably be a warp causing the door assembly to not mate flush with the body work. The only solution I could see is to mount the doors in the open position. I wanted to at least have one side closed to show the beautiful lines of this classic. So I settled on that compromise after a TON of work to try to get flush fits. Here is the body work in Fine White primer, after seam filling, cutting down the front fenders and trimming the rocker panels. I joined the door outers to the body with tape and white glue and sanded like a maniac to get them flush with the roof and body sides. There are some very thin areas on those door edges. Amazingly, after taking out 3mm from the front fenders, there is still substantial plastic left there. Even after sanding, you can see the passenger side door above the roof with the door side flush to the body. And that's without the inner panel glued to the door: Seen here, the 2mm trim off the bottom of the rocker and the taper going forward to the wheel opening. This gives the model a lower, correct scale look: Having decided the passenger door must remain up, I began the paint process. When building kit #1 in the '90's, I fell in love with Testors British Green (non metallic) - unfortunately enamel. It was not available in lacquer (my preferred medium due to much shorter drying time) so I went ahead using the standard enamel caution; let it dry! Fast forward to kit #2 and I amazingly found Testors still makes the exact color today. I found that the spray can atomized the paint nearly as well as a Tamiya so I did not decant to airbrush. I have no dehydrator so again I would wait long periods between coats and further work. Seen here is a mist 'guide coat'. The primer was sanded with 1200 first and this color coat was sanded lightly also with 1200 looking for low spots. Fortunately, I had pretty flat body work after primer so no filler needed. The beautiful contours of the design are clearly evident here, faithfully reproduced by Italeri: More soon...

With doors that expose much of the cockpit when up, the glaring errors of the seats ruin an otherwise nice interior. Reference photos shows the seats as having side bolsters that wrap around the back. These are lower than the pleated leather of the seat back. To get closer to real, I sanded the seat sides flat and made new sides from .010" sheet. Also made a simple rectangular separate back: http:// The carpeting was done with brown embossing powder and the seats painted to match the original core cockpit scheme. Tiny PE rivets simulate trim screws on the side panels and door bottoms:

Hard to tell but it may be a shock reservoir for one side's coilover. It's may connect to the pullrod by a bellcrank. The kit's poor molding isn't helping you.

With the help of excellent photos and advice from Skip, I attacked the NIB virgin with Dremel and 220 grit. Using the 1st build, I tried the techniques to get the shapes right. I ground nearly 3mm from the fender tops, working hard to keep them rounded and even. The straightedge shows 3mm lower on driver side: I loved the color scheme from the first build (Testors British green ENAMEL and Sand acrylic for the cockpit) and indeed, used the interior (with the newer IP, more carefully painted and detailed) as a core for newer techniques like embossing powder and accurizing the seats. I even used the original chassis and engine (not complete or detailed yet) because I had a nice satin black finish already and the wheels and tires were done. So this saved build time which I used to correct things you shouldn't have to. More to follow.

What follows is a look at a stillborn project. Ultimately abandoned when the urge to build the Pocher Rolls Royce became too powerful. Indeed there is a long history to it but the task to 'get it right' became more tedious than fun. Back in the late '90's, I bought the Italeri 1/16 Gullwing, a kit reputed at the time to be a quality effort. As was my custom, I bought two at that time, one to build and one to back-up. I left one NIB and built the first. I did not use extensive reference then, just basically built OOB and to my taste. Never, but almost completed, it went into storage while I diverted to other projects. The design of the door inner and outer panels forced the doors to sit above the roof when closed. I only noticed after paint-you had to address that warp problem by constructing the interior beforehand. So disappointment set in. Early last year, I dug it out as Skip Jordan is most expert in classic Benz. And he has volumes on this car. He complimented my build but immediately pointed out what now are glaring errors, never noticed by me while building the first. Altough Italeri has many nice details, beautiful thin chrome moldings and engine detail, they got major stuff wrong with the coachwork. Seen here in the first build, there are enormous humps in the fenders over the front wheels. Then there are the too deep rockers under the doors, with no taper forward as the 1:1. And of course the door / roof warp issue learned from the first build. More>>>

Glad to help but you did a superb job.

Yet his cars finished in the top three spots in '66! I know John and Ralph didn't like that.

Enamel reducer is the best I've used for everything.

Those are the two photos I have and describe above.

Except for the nice instructions, it sounds just like a Pocher...................

You can retire now Pete; you will never do anything better. Smashing!

My comments here are not meant to detract from Jay's excellent build or Pete's comments about the pumps. I do offer an alternative explanation about them for the sake of accuracy. I know Pete has spent research time at Holman / Moody and viewed their car extensively. So I am not trying to cast doubt on his comments. Indeed, he has provided excellent info when I built my model. But the fact is, in the '66 LeMans race, the first three cars, 1046, 1015 (Jay's model) and 1016 were Shelby entries. The next three finishers were H / M entries. Each team had the mandate to modify the cars as they saw fit. It is certainly true about the submerged pumps being problematic. Therefore, it's my understanding that Shelby, who had used SW pumps regularly on big and small Comp Cobras, used them on his GT's. For ease of maintenance and redundancy in a 24 hour endurance race. I have 2 B & W photos, taken at Shelby's in the day of the rear bulkhead of 2 GT's with 3 SW's mounted and a single line on the driver side running from the cell into the bulkhead, as I posted earlier. I have no reference how the H / M cars ran the '66 race, pump-wise. And yes, the roll bar in Trump's kit of 1046 is 'wrong' because Stauffer installed it in the car for vintage racing, as it was set up for the Daytona 12 hour-it did not run one at LeMans. I'm sure Jay may not care about these small details because he has built a wonderful model. We all have the license to build what makes us happy. But I think the pumps he did are appropriate to the identity of the car he chose.

Transmission linkages, pedals and revised washes.

Mike said it perfectly.

Very neat and meticulous. Nice fitment. I just opened a paper twist tie and it has .018" solid wire-very in scale. It's not braided though but I don't think that's a disadvantage. It will work on parts of my Rolls.

I've been awaiting delivery of supplies and metal rods and tubes for the plumbing and linkages I hope to replicate. That will be a challenge and I'll be lucky to get even some of it right. Meantime, I'm prepping the oil pump, coil and other small bits. Have most of the transmission linkage done and am working to get the pedals mounted. I actually wanted to get the MMC transmission linkage set (beautiful and $$) but had to keep telling myself that I'm not building a chassis model. The floorboards would cover about 90% of that. So I just went with the Pocher stamped steel bits, painted black to make them less offensive. More soon...

Nice work on the tire straps. Don't forget the hold-down springs on the Lucite carb inlet tube-very visible.

That's a wise idea about short-shifting. If you have a doubtful bottom end even a 100 pill could hurt it. Kick a rod out and your budget for the season hurts big.

Very cool. Can it run 9's with a small block at 600HP?