Harry P.

While all of those parts are drying, I decided to do a quick mockup of the engine installed in the chassis... just to make sure the steering box would now fit into my repositioned frame rail hole without hitting the carb. Success! But I found another problem... the radiator, if installed per the kit pieces, winds up being too far back. The front of the engine (where the hand crank would go) interferes with the radiator, and the fan would hit the radiator, too. Simple solution: re-drill the holes in that U-shaped front crossmember that the radiator sits on top of, moving them forward about 2mm. Now the radiator can be bolted down to that crossmember and there will be enough clearance between it and the engine components. BUT... remember, every time you move one thing, the fit of other things is affected. In this case, because the radiator/grille shell is now further forward, the distance between it and the leading edges of the cowl has increased... meaning the hood panels will now be too short! The solution in this case is easy. I can either move the cowl forward enough so that the hood panels fit, or I can simply add some plastic strip to the edges of the hood panels to lengthen them. Either way works. And the reason I can move the cowl forward is that, remember... I'm building the woody body from scratch, and can adjust the dimensions to whatever they need to be. If I were building this kit box stock, I would not move the cowl forward, as that would affect the fit of the doors... I would just lengthen the hood panels and leave the cowl where it's supposed to be. But a custom body gives me the option of either lengthening the hood panels or moving the cowl forward... whichever winds up bring easier.

The rear axle assembly is incredibly complex, mostly due to the complex system of levers and rods of the mechanical brake system. Many of the components are plated brass. I don't think any of these parts would have been plated in real life, so all of them will have to be painted semi-gloss black...

Who appointed you chief music critic? Ever think that maybe some other people might not like the stuff you like? Sheesh...

When you start moving things around, you can cause some problems later on. By moving the carb lower (to allow that control link to run horizontally and not crooked), I now had interference between the carb and the steering box. Uh oh... My first thought was to simply grind away some of the carb where it interferes with the steering box, but after the time I spent on this engine, that seemed kind of a crude way to "fix" the problem. So I had a better idea... simply move the location of the steering box slightly rearwards and down so it'll clear the carb. That involves nothing more than drilling a new hole in the frame rail for the steering shaft. The existing hole was plugged with a bit of styrene. Then I'll Bondo that, glue some fake boltheads made of hex-shaped styrene rod to replace the ones that had to be removed when the hole was moved, and presto! Steering box will now fit without hitting the carb...

One more thing... in the photos you see several links that are just sort of hanging there, not conected to anything. That's because those links will eventually need to be linked up to the firewall (and theoretically through the firewall to the dash and steering wheel hub controls).

One thing I need to mention... if you look closely at the photo immediately above, you can see a horizontal shaft running between the carb and the distributor mounting tower... right where the engine color changes from silver at the bottom to black at the top. If you build the kit's engine straight from the box, and try to add that link (which is the major link that ties the carb and ignition control linkages together), you'll find that the link will be very crooked. That's because the carb is too high in relation to the distributor mounting plate. You have to either lower the carb a lot, or raise the distributor platform a lot. But doing that makes things look odd, so I split the difference and lowered the carb half the amount needed, and raised the distributor platform the other half. Now that rod can run correctly (parallel to the ground). But raising the distributor platform also raises the distributor, obviously... putting the distributor up too close to that ignition wire loom and making it very hard to get the six ignition wires to make the tight bends necessary to feed into that loom. The fix was easy... I just cut down the bottom of the distributor body. Even though it's cut short, it still looks ok.

I'm finished with the engine. I added maybe 90-95% of the missing details. At some point it just gets to the point of diminishing returns... there is so much intricate detail there, that adding even more seems redundant. The biggest problem I had with all the linkages was keeping all of the various vertical and horizontal pieces parallel to each other. Being off by as little as half a millimeter in measurements or fabrication, and a link won't fit properly, or won't be straight, or parallel to the rest, etc. This is the craziest I've ever gotten on an engine. Once I started adding stuff, I couldn't stop! Anyway, there's no point in listing all of the things I added... your eyes would glaze over, there's just that much stuff! One item I will mention, though, is that "elbow" wiring loom at the front right corner of the engine, that the ignition wires are routed through. Pocher skipped this part altogether, so I scratchbuilt one using my photo references... and I think it turned out great, if I do say so myself!

I'm still building linkages! Holy krapp! There are so many mechanical linkages on this engine, it's taken me several days just to add them all. I hope to have finished engine pix up tonite or tomorrow.

Still adding linkages to the engine. There are so many of them, it's insane. A few scratchbuilt of styrene... Another way to do it... aluminum tubing. I flatten the areas where the linkage will attach with needle-nose pliers, then drill the hole in the linkage, then cut it off the rest of the tubing, and file the ends round. Paint and attach. I use both ways (styrene and aluminum), depending on the specific application...

Beautiful work! You can definitely be proud of that one, it's a beauty. And may I congratulate you on the excellent photos. It's a definite step up from your previous "on the lid of a garbage can" style of photography... (except for that one you still had to post here...

Getting all kit manufacturers worldwide to offer the same identical wheel attachment system is about as likely as getting all the world's automakers to offer the same exact dash layout. In other words... ain't gonna happen. Not no way, not no how.

Remember... if you know the answer for sure (you know the source of the photo), don't tell us! It ruins the game for everyone else. So what do you think... real or model? The answer: REAL!

Definitely the chromed wheels.

I don't think you can buy the magazine overseas. Subscription is the only option.

You can't really save old CA that's starting to thicken. Toss it and get fresh stuff.

Chris Squire, bassist and founding member of the band YES, has died of leukemia at 67. His bass was a big part of the YES sound...

Thanks, Ray. That's the beauty of working in large scale... you can do stuff that's almost impossible to do in 1/25.

My fingers are holding the camera. Not sure what you're seeing. Have you been hitting the cooking sherry again?

Back to the right side of the engine... the carburetor. First of all, the Pocher kit carb/air cleaner is incorrect for this particular model (1934 Phantom II). The carb in the kit actually depicts the model year 1932 and earlier version. RR went to a new carb/air cleaner design in January 1932. Pocher obviously cut corners here, using the carb from their 1932 Sedanca kit instead of tooling up a correct post-1932 version. But the visual differences are pretty minor, and only a mid-1930s RR expert (or a nut!) would ever spot the differences... so I'm going to use the carb as is, incorrect or not. As with the rest of the engine, pretty much all the linkages are AWOL in the kit. Here I've started to add some of the missing details... and I'm just getting started! There are still a lot more details yet to be added! Pocher did some weird things in their kits. As you can see, the top of the carb is actually a machined brass piece instead of molded plastic, like the rest of the assembly. Why? Who knows! There are other seemingly random parts that are machined brass instead of plastic. No reason I can think of for it. Just "because," I guess...

Here's something you haven't seen before... the left side of the engine. Some of the details are hard to see, like the horizontal magneto control rod (seen unpainted in the previous photo), now installed. The rear end of it is attached to a bell crank that a short vertical rod and return spring are also attached to... and those attach to the magneto. The front of the rod attaches to a crosswise control rod at the front of the engine. Ultimately there will be another set of rods and linkages that connect to this front crosswise rod on the right side of the engine, that will lead to the control lever on the steering wheel hub. That's a lot of rods and levers... and that's just one of the many mechanical control linkages on this engine (no way will I be adding them all!). Also you can see the scratchbuilt vacuum pump I showed you earlier in unpainted form, now installed at the left front corner of the engine, on top of the timing case. This pump also had a guide that accepts that crosswise control rod. I paint and foil detailed the generator and magneto. The "asbestos" insulation on the down pipe of the exhaust manifold was cut from the body of a pen, then wrapped with masking tape for texture... painted a "dirty white," then I rubbed a pencil on some sandpaper to create graphite dust. I put some of the graphite on my fingers and then rubbed the "asbestos" with the graphite to emphasize the masking tape texture. The clamps are just strips of aluminum duct tape. I also added a heat shield made of styrene sheet to the back side of the exhaust manifold... this shield was actually a thin sandwich of asbestos and sheet metal, and was meant to protect the ignition wires, which run through that wiring loom directly behind the exhaust manifold. I hit the exhaust manifold with several coats of Dullcote, but it still looks too shiny. Gonna hafta fix that...

There are a lot of levers and rods and linkages that have to be scratchbuilt... all the stuff Pocher conveniently left out of the kit. Here is how I make scale clevises for the various control rods... I start with some square styrene rod, and using a razor saw with a thick blade, I cut a slot into the end of the square rod about 3/16" or so deep. Then I drill the holes crosswise to the slot for the "bolt" that will ultimately pass through them, then I use a sanding stick to round the ends of the clevis, then cut to length, and finally drill out the hole on the cut face to accept the brass rod. It sounds harder than it is. Making one clevis takes about 5 minutes or less.

Yeah, I'm finding that building it as a "fresh from the factory" car is hard enough, let alone weathering it too! I"ll pass on the weathering...

Believe it or not, I actually thought about adding a head gasket. Then a sudden bolt of sanity hit me and I decided to forget it! BTW... as good as Haddock's superdetailing instructions are, I'm finding various mistakes–mostly dimensions that if followed cause parts to interfere with other parts. There's not much margin for error with all of those interconnected rods and levers, but some of his dimensions are definitely off. I'm working on the carb today. Whew! So many linkages and levers to add... it's crazy. Hope to have a few new photos posted by tonite...

I think I've fallen into the "Cato Zone"... Once you start adding all the various missing linkages, levers, valves, oil lines, etc... it's hard to stop. It's addictive! You add one linkage, so then you have to add the thing that linkage is linked to... and the thing that thing is linked to, etc. And since everything on this engine is controlled by mechanical linkages (no hydraulics or electronics), there is a rat's nest of levers, rods, and brackets all over the engine. I spent the day today adding various linkages... photos tomorrow.,

A nice duo. Very cool...