Matt Bacon

Back from holiday, so time to crack on with this... The front axle and steering components took some (very careful) straightening out and a good hard look at some reference images to get together... there are no positive locations for the parts and the instructions are pretty unclear. The steering wheel is a bit the worse for wear as a result of my first efforts to fit the driver. It's not glued in place because he has to go in first, and will be repainted where needed once that's all done (of which more later). To take the weight off the wheels/axles, I've made a little perspex pillar (a trick I learned on the Silver Ghost). I make a cylinder of Blu-Tak (Silly Putty?) about 1cm in diameter and a bit taller than needed and press the car down onto it until the wheels are sitting on the mat. Pick the car up again and the Blu-Tak has squished to exactly the height you need your pillar to be. The pillar looks chunky in the first picture, but when it's under the car it's pretty unobtrusive. I was trying to avoid having to do this, but the seating position of a 1927 driver with a wheel canted at 45 degrees is just too different from the low-seat, vertical wheel of a later race car for the Fujimi figure to fit without substantial re-animation. The elbows are cut, rounded and pinned with wire, and the shoulders are drilled. The shoulder wires are firmly fixed in the body, but the tops of the arms are free to rotate and slide in and out. The process begins. With M. Benoist gripping the wheel, I've applied gap-filling superglue to all the joints. It's not got to fill them, just hold them firmly in place when I remove the figure and the wheel. Then I can fill the gaps and re-sculpt the figure where needed using Milliput. Let's see how cleanly he emerges from the cockpit after the superglue has set really solid for 24 hours this evening... best, M.

I can’t remember where I saw it online, but the technique I use for Tamiya rattle cans was invented by a pro modeller. It uses “splatter coats”. You don’t make any attempt to get even coverage coats, light or wet. You just do pass after pass, lightly, and build up to an even dense coverage by overlaying many light speckled coats. It doesn’t give orange peel because the paint goes on wet from reasonably close but moving fast. You can apply the coats 5-10 minutes apart because there’s not much thickness of paint and the solvent goes pretty rapidly. And because it’s painted in one session, you don’t get the issues of cracking due to differential shrinkage that can occur if you do solid coats of Tamiya rattle can paint spread out over a 24-48 hours to allow the first layer to “dry” before applying the next. (Actually, in my experience Tamiya acrylic takes several days to fully cure and shrink as far as it’s going to, which is why I wait a week or so before using Novus on it. Any surface texture you can see 12 hours after painting has usually tightened up and disappeared into a glossy surface after a few days.) Painting wet coats from a Tamiya can risks not just runs, but the pigment, especially metallic flake becoming unevenly distributed… best, M.

I think if you mean TS-17 Gloss Aluminium then yes. If you’re talking about AS-12 Bare Metal Silver then no, it’s too bright. The Light Gunmetal is actually quite dark, and too dark for Silver Birch. best, M.

The interior’s basically black. Semi Gloss for the leather, Matt for the carpets and dash. If you want to add some interest you can use NATO Black and/or Rubber Black for some parts (eg dash top). The exterior is NOT silver. “Silver Birch” is actually an opalescent grey, with no visible flake. Gloss Aluminium is OK, Light Grey Fine Surface Primer or Royal Grey with Pearl Clear over the top in light coats would work… do a spoon test to check it looks as you want. When I did mine, I used a Zero Paints Pearl white with literally one drop of very dark blue in an airbrush jar of paint, and then added black a drop at a time until it looked right to me. best, M.

Spanish soccer players seem to be rather better than English ones, on the available evidence.

Vorspung Durch Technik 1938-style. Amazing… best, M.

I picked up 3 years of Scale Auto Modeller 1998-2001 for £16 from eBay a few months back. Given how many kits I have that were “new” in those years, or at least recent, it’s a real treasure trove of guidance and inspiration… as is the Bruichladdach, of course… best, M.

it’s great value for lots of quality material even WITH transatlantic postage; it’s a no-brainer for folks of our persuasion in the US (if you don’t have a stack of paper originals in the den or man-cave…) best, M.

Those Merit kits are pretty simplified, but with most of them in hand, they capture the shapes and proportions of the originals pretty well, and are consistently enough 1/24 scale to look good together and with other 1/24 period race cars like the Heller and Hasegawa kits. I just received the Model Racing Replica News Cd with all the issues in PDF (with full permission from the publisher) from Curt Raitz, and it’s telling how many have articles on detailing, correcting and improving these Merit kits as the only game in town even in the ‘90s… best, M.

I suspect where some of us saw it before was while hunting down the TVR Tina for the One Off Quiz a while back… also an Imp Special in an Italian suit, and found on the same enthusiast web pages. There are few more die-hard enthusiasts than Imp (and its sporty relatives) enthusiasts. I mean, if you want a rear engined, sharp-handling sports coupe powered by a derivative of a highly successful racing engine, what else are you going to buy…? ? best, M.

I’m sorry this is proving such a challenge, given how good the work you’ve done so far is. Just looking at one detail though… in the picture that shows the underside of the yellow roof with the upper bulkhead mounting in grey, it looks as though there are square sockets at each end and a long rectangular slot between them for the top of the window. But the top of the bulkhead has the window joined straight onto the square pegs. It looks from that one picture that if you remove the “walls” between the outer square sockets and the central slot on the roof, so you have a continuous slot shaped like this: [::========::] You might then find the top of the bulkhead will slot in to the full depth. HTH, best, M.

That’s just stunning, Fantastic build in the most iconic colours. The interior detailing is outstanding, and I know how much work and skill it takes to make the best of an MFH kit. The photography is very convincing: for once it really _could_ be a real one. The whole thing is a modelling masterpiece. Well done! best, M.

Making progress: There will now be a pause while I go away on holdiday, a reasonable way from the workbench, but... I'll need to mess with focal length for photography, and background and props, but I think there's every chance I can get this to look reasonably like the Eagle cover... best, M.

I guess it depends whether having one to hold and stash in the corner of the den is worth $10 per issue to you. I’ve recycled too many mags over the years to feel particularly attached to them (100 copies of Octane I haven’t opened for 7 years just take up space…) best, M.

If you get it electronically through PocketMags it's only £3.99 in the UK instead of the paper cover price of £6.99, so I imagine you could save a lot by doing the same in the US... best, M.

Thanks, Pierre… you and me both! The driver is from the Fujimi Drivers set (sometimes “Drivers and Mechanics”). For our purposes, there’s a guy in a racing suit, and another in shirtsleeves, with three heads with helmets of different eras and one without. Then there’s a driving girl and another one standing in a swimsuit! My Lotus XI has Stirling Moss driving (shirtsleeves and “flying helmet” style cap) and the Lola T70 has John Surtees (race suit and 1960s open helmet). Benoist here is the race suit and early helmet, and I can probably do something with shirtsleeves and the 60s helmet in one of the other builds in this series. But frankly I wish they’d just do a set with two of each of the male drivers sprues and six heads… I buy them whenever I see them on eBay. Modeler’s in Japan made some good one in the ?90s?. Immense Miniatures did some excellent figures with interchangeable identifiable heads more recently, but they are Unobtanium these days. And I have a pair of Cox 1/24 slot race car drivers. But generally they are few and far between. An opportunity for a 3D printer and some resin casting, I would say. best, M.

Got some Tamiya French Blue paint on, and couldn't resist a mock-up... I think the black wheels will help disguise the relatively sparse spoke-work. It looks pretty toy-like at the minute, but I expect some detail painting and a touch of weathering will help with that! The rod for my own back here is that for the cover image this Delage obviously needs a driver. M. Benoist is a bit of a mix and match from the Fujimi 1/24 "Drivers" set (which to my mind could do with more drivers and fewer girls in swimsuits.... I've got Master Box for the lovely ladies...). He will remain 'armless until the steering wheel is ready to be fixed permanently, but at least his legs fit underneath, which is usually the first problem to be overcome... best, M.

Slow progress, but progress... That's the first round of fill, prime and sand completed. I doubt it will be the last! best, M

As the man said, we really do! best, M.

I'm using Safari or Firefox on a Mac, Safari on my iPhone, on a Plusnet Fibre to the Home connection which gets 150 Mb/s download and 60Mb/s to the desktop I'm browsing on. I have no problem with other sites running on Invision (eg Britmodeller) with exactly the same setup... pages load almost instantly. It's only been doing this since the "upgrade" which introduced thumbnail images into post listings... best, M.

For me on phone or desktop, the whole forum is unusable today. It’s been getting worse, but now none of the pages render fully, and the thumbnail images all have to load (incredibly slowly) before the page will respond to any navigation at all. It’s not just sluggish, it feels like it’s on its last legs… Sorry, best, M.

I’m going to use Tamiya Fine Surface Primer, which worked perfectly well on the Silver Ghost. I’ll do a test and if there are any issues I’ll use Halfords (auto repair shop) Primer for real car paint. The real trick is to get the body properly clean. best, M.

You'd never know it to look at their shed or the scrapyard next door, but my new go-to guys are clearly well-trained petrolheads in their early 30s who did a good apprenticeship and took it seriously. There's a Corrado out back being fixed up, which is pretty rare groove. They know all the local specialists for things like full gearbox rebuilds, and who might have obscure parts, and there are a LOT of bits in that breaker's yard. I doubt that AMG G-Wagens are that common in main dealers, and they've had two different ones in the last couple of times I've visited (I notice these things...). Plus, very few people know enough to get excited about the little FIAT's funky 900cc TwinAir engine, but they did... best, M.

This is very much not my comfort zone. Can anyone tell me how different this: Is from the 1963 Wllard Battery model available in the AMT/Revel Indianapolis 500 Hall of Fame model set: Indycals has the '62 Leader Card decals, so if it's just a paint conversion or some minor plastic fettling, then it might be do-able... best, M.

As a counterpoint to the “couldn’t make it up thread” I just wanted to call out a couple of examples of folks who know what they’re doing… We’ve got a FIAT Panda 4x4… pretty much the only small 4x4 there is. Local shop with a shed full of AMGs and high-end Audi’s were happy to go to work on it. Long story short, the rear diff was shot, and that model only ran 3 years from 2012-2015. They looked all over Europe for a replacement without finding anything less than $1500. After a couple of weeks they sourced all the internals and rebuilt the old one completely from the ground up. Cheaper, better and guaranteed by them. Secondly, today… main dealer said I needed new tyres on the front end of my Skoda at the annual MoT test last week. Don’t like paying main dealer prices for tyres so bought and booked in replacements at my local tyre specialist. Took the car in today and they put it on the ramp. “Why are you changing these?” says the guy. “There’s a few thousand miles in them yet.” So he refunded me the money I’d paid, and I’ll go back in the autumn some time. He could have just changed them and taken my money, like the main dealer wanted to, but he didn’t… best, M.