Harry P.

Very slick, Andy! A beautiful model of a very seldom-seen subject.

If people will pay real money to buy a potato chip that looks like Jay Leno, they'll pay real money to buy empty model kit boxes. Or dryer lint. Or the shavings from inside a pencil sharpener. I once saw a small vial of "Elvis sweat" on ebay. No joke. Jim Morrison was absolutely right. People are strange.

Exactly.

There really is no paint that looks like plated parts, gold or otherwise. Like Bill said, there are products that will get you close... but never that same mirror-like finish that the kit parts have. ChromeTech will do gold plating, but the price is double their price for chrome plating. A full rack of parts to be plated chrome runs about $25... so a full rack of gold parts will cost you $50 plus $10 S/H. If you are intent on keeping that mirror gold look, this is really your only option. Having the parts plated in chrome and then painting them clear Tamiya yellow, as Eric suggested, might give you the look you're after, but you'd be experimenting... and if it didn't give you the look you want, you'd have a rack of useless chrome-plated parts.

Shia Labeouf as Batman, Katy Perry as Catwoman, Ricky Gervais as Joker, Seth Rogan as Penguin, Jim Carrey as Riddler, Harrison Ford as Commissioner Gordon, Jude Law as Alfred.

Here's a tip for you guys. Most of you already know this, but you can never have too many tools. I couldn't have built the engine in the previous photos without tools... and some of my most-used tools are these little guys: I found them sold as a set in the jewelry making aisle of Hobby Lobby. They weren't expensive, maybe $10 or so for the set. The set consists of round-jawed, flat jawed and bent needle nose pliers, and a cutter. They're all spring loaded (meaning the jaws open when you release pressure on the handles), they're about half the size of "regular" tools like the full-size pliers on the left, and I couldn't get along without them. If you build without tools like these, do yourself a favor and buy a set. You will not be sorry. Once you have them you'll wonder how you ever got along without them.

I was kidding...

Ricky Gervais or Russell Brand . I think a funny British Batman would be a hoot!

A little progress on the engine. The wiring harness was scratchbuilt. The open ends are lengths of aluminum tube, while the "rubber" section is actually black sprue that I bent to shape by heating the sprue over a candle flame until it was soft enough to bend. I got lucky and got the bends correct on the first try (that does not always happen!). The various engine parts have been detail painted (like the silver bands on the magneto) and I added a black wash to all the seams and joints to give the engine some depth and a slightly dirty, used (but not abused) look. I do not want the engine to look factory fresh and as it had never even run. I might tone down the gloss on the cylinders a bit with some Dullcote... not sure yet. On the real truck, the ignition wires have that old-timey woven fabric covering, so I tried to simulate that by using thin string for the "wires" instead of smooth vinyl tubing or wire. And the intake side of things. I added a linkage to the carb which will be hooked up once the engine and firewall are installed on the chassis.

Please post questions in the question section. It's not rocket science, people.

Ok, thanks. I always thought that Hornby was only a distributor.

Ok, so Hornby now owns the "Pocher" name, but who actually tooled this kit? Hornby is a distributor, not a manufacturer, as far as I know.

The spark plugs on the real engine are very visible, but there are no plugs in the kit, just the "stick the wire into the hole" approach. That's not gonna cut it. In the photo below you can see how the spark plugs stick out vertically on top of the cylinder heads on the real deal (they're partially hidden behind the horizontal cooling pipe in this photo): I made spark plugs using three different materials. First, the insulators are just short lengths of plastic wire insulation stripped off some fine copper wire (I didn't have any white insulated wire so I used yellow and just painted it white. The electrodes are small brass nails (actually leftover planking nails from a model ship kit), and the terminal ends that the ignition wires will be glued into were made by taking some 3/64 aluminum tubing and crimping the end flat with needle nose pliers. Then I drilled a tiny hole in the flattened part with a pin vise, filed the flattened end to a rounded shape, and cut off the tube, leaving a short length of round tube to accept the ignition wires I'll glue in later. These aluminum terminal ends were then painted brass. For each spark plug I slipped a terminal end onto a brass pin, then the length of wire insulation. The ends of the brass pins will eventually be glued into the holes in the cylinder heads.

It's supposed to be used to tint windows, but I've never used it for that. I use it as sort of a spray-on black wash.

Oops. Sorry. You're right.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/10/18/is-this-2015-ford-mustang/

I agree with Bill as far as buying wire at a craft store. Aftermarket wire is ridiculously overpriced. You can get a bigger selection for a fraction of the cost in the jewelry making aisle of Hobby Lobby.

I agree with Carl... display it with the panels off so all that great detail can be seen.

So what exactly is the deal here? Is it that the actual Pocher company has been resurrected? Or is it just the Pocher name being put onto this kit? Who tooled the kit? I thought that Hornby was only the distributor; are they actually the manufacturer?

Yup.

That's a nice looking car.

Very nice! I lightened up one of your photos so we can see the details better.

Mine has a missing rear tire. The ebay seller conveniently forgot to mention that. But I got the kit for a good price, so I don't want to return it. Any chance you'd be willing to part with one of the rear tires? Or are you actually going to build that kit some day?

OK... let's start some actual building! When it comes to small parts, I have a specific way of doing things. I don't paint small parts while still attached to the sprues, for two reasons: First, almost every kit part has some sort of flaw or imperfection that should be taken care of before painting... like mold seam lines, ejector pin parks, sink marks, etc. It's virtually impossible to take care of these things and properly prep parts for paint while they're still attached to the sprue. And second, if you do paint the parts while on the sprue, you then have to clean up the attachment points on the part after you cut it away, meaning you basically have to repaint the part anyway. Better to clean up the part first, paint it, and be done with it. In the following photo you can see how I deal with all small parts. These three engine water pipes were cut from the sprue, sanded smooth to remove the mold seam lines, then attached to scrap pieces of sprue with a tiny dab of crazy glue. I attach the part to the sprues either at the point where it will eventually be attached in final assembly, or at some other point that won't be seen after final assembly. The sprue sticks are my handles while I paint the parts. These water pipes will eventually be sprayed copper: Here are the exhaust and intake manifolds after being painted and "aged." The exhaust manifold was painted with a mix of acrylic craft paint (red oxide, stell, and black) to simulate rusted iron, and the intake manifold was first sprayed steel, then sprayed with Testors Transparent Window Tint (which is a transparent smoke color) to add depth to the part. The window tint spray does two things: It darkens and "dirties" the part, and also collects in the "nooks and crannies," acting as a blackwash to bring out molded-in details: The basic engine block has the cylinders molded in place. Here the basic block has been detail painted. The cylinders and the fan support on the front gear case were brush painted Testors Red enamel (the little square bottle) per my reference photos: And here is the engine a step further down the detailing process. The molded-in details on the tops of the cylinder heads were brush painted a "dirty brass" color (brass plus black), the molded-in exhaust manifold flanges were painted to match the manifold, then the entire assembly got a coat of window tint to bring out the details. Compare this photo to the one above to see the difference the black window tint makes: More to come...