Harry P.

Pocher supplies a thick nylon cord to use as the "steel" brake cables. But the cord is white! Duh! I thought about painting the cord steel gray, but no matter what paint i used, I was afraid that the cord would wind up too stiff after the paint dried to be able to easily thread it through the various pulleys (and tight-radius turns) in the braking system. So I went to Hobby Lobby and found a suitable gray cord in the jewelry aisle. Not sure why, but the cable looks much lighter in this photo than in real life. For all you old guys (like me) who remember film photography, the cord is about 50% gray... looks just like "steel" cable.

I used white acrylic craft paint on these wws... easy to use, water cleanup. No muss, no fuss. Why mess with gesso or other exotic "solutions" when plain old white acrylic craft paint (I buy mine at Hobby Lobby for around a buck per 2 oz. squeeze bottle) does the job perfectly well?

I'm using an iMac desktop too. That's where the image is squished.

I added these diagonal firewall braces made of bits of styrene tube and rod...

Wow... that's a lot of piping in there!

Beautifully done! Dr. Cranky would approve!

Check what's keeping the rear hood from closing. Air cleaner sticking out too far?

And the finished wheel... Pocher tires are super stiff and almost impossible to slip over the wheel. I have found a simple solution... I put the tire into a small bowl of water and microwave the water for a minute or so. That softens up the tire and makes it very flaxible and easy to slip over the wheel.

The last step in wheel construction is to add the machined center hubs...

Even though the screws used to attach the metal rims are flathead screws, the head sometimes still sticks up a bit. Since the tire sidewalls have to snug down to these rims, a protruding screw head would result in a visible "bump" on the tire sidewall... so I used my Dremel to grind any protruding screw heads flush with the surface of the rims...

Next, you attach a machined brass valve stem to the plated outer rim... ...and you screw the outer rim into place... Then the inner rim gets screwed into place the same way. Notice the integral brake drum cast into the wheel..

Compared to a Pocher wire wheel (like in the MB, Alfa, and RR kits) that have literally more than a hundred parts each, the wheels on the Bugatti are child's play... no spokes! The wheels on this car were castings with the brake drum being cast integrally into the wheel, and a ring of short unidirectional fins on each wheel between the wheel center and the rim, to throw cool air at the brake drums. Pretty slick design, especially when you consider this car is from the early '30s... more than 80 years ago! Each entire wheel assembly consists of just a handful of parts... the center section, inner and outer rims that include the unidirectional fins, a chrome center cap, and a chrome outer and inner rim (plus the hubs, knockoffs, and screws used to assemble everything). The first Pocher wire wheel I ever built took me about four hours. Eventually I knocked that time down to about an hour per wheel after I got the hang of it and got good at it. These Bugatti wheels are much more simple... just a few minutes per wheel. Even though the plastic parts are molded in a nice metallic gray plastic, I gave all the plastic parts a quick shot of Testors "Aluminum" metalizer to get rid of the plasticky look. First step is to screw the plastic outer rim to the wheel center. The plated center cap gets "trapped" in place by the angled tips of the fins on the outer rim.. Notice the two little cutouts on the rim? That's how Pocher cleverly designed the wheels... the left side wheel parts have one cutout, the right side wheels have two. All you have to do to keep the unidirectional spokes "correct" is match up the "one cutout" parts to each other and the "two cutout" parts to each other. Pretty clever engineering.

Pocher supplies the parts for the throttle linkage on the firewall... they even include the throttle return spring! But what they don't include are the linkages that connect the firewall linkage to the carbs and supercharger! I scratchbuilt those per my reference photos and added them to the existing kit throttle linkage...

It's always nice to see another Pocher project! I have built two Pocher M-Bs in the past... looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

Because when you put a photo on Photobucket (or any other photo hosting site) and then post the link to that photo here, we see the photo here because you have posted the link to it. If you delete the photo, obviously the link will no longer work because you deleted the photo, and the "missing photo" icon appears. The link can only work if it links to the photo! If you delete the photo, the link you have put into any post you make here becomes useless, because it's "linking" to a photo that isn't there!

I see the image squished left to right. I think that if you copy/paste an image that's bigger than a certain size, there's a limit here as to how big a photo will be allowed, and any photo larger will be "squished" into the max. allowed size.

"Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962 when I last saw you alive"...

There has always been a bandwidth limit here for posting images directly from your computer. This forum gives you only a small amount of photo storage space, because it's not meant to act as a photo hosting site. The right way to post photos here is to open a photo hosting account, like Photobucket, upload all your photos there, then just post the link to the photo here in your post. That way we can see the image here in your post, but the actual image file sits on the photo hosting site's server taking up space on their server, not on our server. You can post as many photos here as you want that way and avoid this site's storage space restriction, because you're not "parking" the posted photos here, you're just posting a link to them.

I've never seen this kit done in yellow. I like it!

But why? To what end? To me, model building, like any activity, is about getting better at it. Progression, not regression. I don't see any reason why I would want to go back to a level of building that I was at when I was an 8-year old. To me, if you get burned out or bored or frustrated with model building, the obvious solution is to simply put it away. Do something else. Or don't do anything. Don't worry about it. Don't try to return to your childhood... just stop doing it and do something else! If you have an interest in model building (as we all here do), eventually the urge to build will strike again... and when it does, you build! Until then, don't worry about it. Don't give it a second thought. Like I said, the "build a model as fast as you can" thing makes absolutely no sense to me. But that's just my opinion... you obviously think differently. But you know... different strokes...

I notice that you guys who want more winter all live in the desert. Ask anyone in my neck of the woods if they want more winter and you'll get a look that says "are you nuts?"

I have never gotten the "build a model as fast as you can" thing. Just doesn't make any sense to me. My advice: Stop worrying! It's a hobby, not your job. Lose interest in a project? Put it away until you get the urge to work on it. Can't seem to finish a project? So what? Nobody is judging you or grading your performance. Stop worrying about stuff that isn't worth worrying about. Put the model building aside and do other things. When the mood strikes you, build again. When you don't feel like building, don't build. But for crying out loud, don't worry about it! It's supposed to be fun, not a chore. Enjoy it when you're in the mood, forget about it when you're not.

Didn't we finally get the whole "donk" nonsense out of our systems a couple years ago?

Because Pocher didn't do the body. I did.

A stock Willys? That's about as rare as catching a glimpse of Bigfoot!