ShawnS

Sorry no updates yet. The whole project seems to have gone into a permanent stall. I did try to do some paint and texture work on the curbside chassis but after that failed to work out well it killed any motivation that I had. It seems that any time that I try to get momentum up something happens and I'm back to square one. At the moment I'm modifying some 1:43 cars to try and re-ignite my love for models and building that I seem to have lost over the last couple of years. So if anyone finds my Mojo please return it to me as soon as possible. Cheers ShawnS

No updates at the moment. It's winter here in Australia and it's a bit too cold where I am to paint anything and I've not been motivated to do the remaining building and modifying that I had to do. The cold weather is killing my motivation for anything model related at the moment. I'll get back on it soon enough- hopefully. CheersSS

Thanks Jim. I'd trust my gut any time My camera doesn't seem to take good pictures of beige but in the flesh it looks scale perfect.

Here's how I fixed that. I stuck some Tamiya tape underneath the tail light cut out and mixed up some talc and superglue and slapped it on to the damaged area. When the glue set I removed the tape, and shaped the area to suit. Good as gold I hit the body with Tamiya TS-46 light sand for the base coat. Mixed up some beige using Tamiya TS-7 Racing white tinted with TS-16 Yellow and AS-22 Dark earth to make a pale caramel colour. Done only by eye without taking any notes about how much of each that I used. The first coat was sprayed today. This are some samples of what the real Bahama beige looks like. So with the first colour coat on the body I will work to get it nice and smooth and hopefully the next update will include a fully painted body. Cheers ShawnS

The clear styrene window pieces shaped and ready to go. I decided to have both rear passenger windows fully wound up, the front passenger window wound down 2/3rds and the drivers window fully wound down. Even after 4 years things still turn bad. I had to strip and re-spray the primer on the body after it went soft when I had to handle the body frequently during the work on the interior. All went well until an unexpected gust of wind (on a calm day) sent the body on a 3ft downwards trip to the cement path causing damage to the rear trim around the tail lights. To be continued.........

Happy New year all. I've finally got the first coat of paint on the body but before that there was still a little more work that needed to be done here's how it went. Lets start with the interior roof. I made the sun visors, light and grab handles. It's been a long time since I showed you a how-to for anything so here's a quickie for making many of the same type of flat part. Cut the styrene pieces to slightly larger than the final size. Using small drops of super glue, glue the pieces to each other. Carve, grind and sand the block to the required shape. Separate the parts with a sharp blade then clean them up as required. I did the sun visors in the same way. The next challenge was to get the window glass to sit closer to the outside of the window frame. The only way to do this was to alter the thickness of the pillars around the inside of the frames. I also decided to add a filler piece inside to create a channel for the clear styrene sheet to sit in. Ditto for the rear windows. To be continued....

Thanks Andrew. I wish you good luck with your Caliber build. If you have any questions on how I did something please don't be afraid to ask. Cheers ShawnS

Thanks guys, thank you Bill I'm trying my best

Here's the end result. I still need to do the wiring for the tail lights to the connector but that's no biggie. I'm fairly pleased with that for a first attempt at weathering as I had no real idea about what i was doing. I think it may need a little more dust and grime underneath though. I'll think about it. Have a good Christmas guys, Cheers ShawnS

Thanks Ben. Hi guys, Final update before Xmas. Still tweaking the body so it's on to the trailer. I wanted to do it with a worn but not excessively corroded look. The 1:1 was never damaged beyond any chips and scratches so at least I didn't have to show any sheet metal damage and I could just keep it to creative paint work. Not having done any serious weathering on anything it was all uncharted territory for me but I love jumping in the deep end so here's how it went. This is where it started a long time ago. Using these, Some practice on a spoon to give me an idea of what to do. Then I got into it. I sprayed the AK worn effects fluid on the top and side surfaces and the heavy chipping fluid to the underside and after that was dry I mixed MRHobby gold acrylic with Windex window cleaner, 1 part of gold to 1 part Windex and shot it through the airbrush straight over the chipping fluid and the rust colour primer. I think it came out as a fairly accurate hammer finish gold. I used these simple tools to slowly wear away the top layer of paint. After the chipping was done it was time to hit it with several different rust colour washes and pigments. To be continued.....

The finished tub. While I had the airbrush out I did the Alclad parts for both cars. And finished the wheels. That's it for now. Cheers ShawnS

Hi guys, here's a re-post of my last update after the loss of the previous one. I wanted to get some painting done during a time of perfect painting conditions but I still needed to do some work on how the windows fit to the body so I decided to clean off one of the interior sets and do the whole interior for the curbside version. Here is what I am aiming for. The pics aren't of the actual car I am modelling but a similar one. The colour in the pics is a little washed out so I went by memory of the 1:1. I am using Vallejo paints for the first time. I bought several shades of brown/tan/beige and mixed up 3 shades of tan/beige for the interior. The tub was painted and flocked and the speakers, floor mat and pedals added. The door cards were painted and were given a light wash of light brown. The centre console. The rear seat was painted and assorted belts and buckles were added. The stripes on the seats were individually masked and brush painted. The finished dash with photo etch keys in the ignition. The front seats had all the gaps and dips filled before painting and 3 coats of off white flocking were added to replicate the sheep skin seat covers the 1:1 car had. To be continued....

I can't re-update my Falcon workbench thread. Every time I click on the Preview Post or Post buttons it takes me back to the forum main page with no update in my thread. Any advice?

Thanks for noticing John. I make a conscious effort to keep things clean and crisp as I go along as there is nothing worse than having a whole bunch of parts that need cleaning up all at once. It makes life a whole lot easier that's for sure.

The next fiddly thing to do was the handbrake mechanisms. Although I had previously done the handbrake system for the curbside version I wanted to refine what I did to get it looking a bit better. It took me a while to figure out where I was going with it but I made it in the end. Using K+S steel wire, Albion nickel silver and brass tubes, T2M 1mm springs and some evergreen this is what I came up with. In my eyes it's a lot better than the curbside version. A job for this week is to remake the curbside handbrake system to match the full detail version. Other work done recently include. Re-shaping the nose. The right rear 1/4 window frame broke off at some stage and had to be replaced. And finally I got the curbside body in primer and fixed the issues on it. It's ready for paint now. After I have re-done the curbside handbrake system it's time to move on to the fuel and brake lines, it's not something that I have been looking forward to but I'll get it done . Thanks for looking, Cheers ShawnS

Hi guys, I have finished rebuilding the top of the engine bay, It's now stronger and slightly thicker. The only areas to survive the rebuild are marked in red. I have solved the problem of having a working bonnet hinge by doing away with the hinge altogether. Let's face it you guys are only ever going to see the bonnet up or down so I figured I'll build it that way. I noticed that the front corners of the interior tub were directly under the hinge slots so I put a small box on both front corners, I also glued some styrene strips on to the hinge arms to make them thicker so they sit in the boxes nicely. The next task was to make a strut for the drivers side. Obviously on the 1:1 it's there to keep the bonnet up but here it strictly decorative. I used Albion brass tube with a length of stainless rod from Hobby Design and some styrene rod. It's mounted on a bracket under the bonnet. The strut will be permanently mounted on the bonnet when closed and I can fold it down and put it in its place on the top of the engine bay when I want the bonnet to be displayed open. To be continued....

Don't worry guys I'm not immune to cutting myself or sticking myself with sharp objects like knives or 0.3mm drill bits. Much blood has been spilled over the last few years as well as sweat and swear words. Nobody has asked me, mind you I'm not holding my breath either. Thanks guys. Cheers ShawnS

One problem that arose from cutting off the bonnet from the resin body shell was that the front 1/4 panels opened up about 1mm which meant that the resin bumper/airdam was too narrow. I remade the front bumper (a bit rounder this time) and managed to work a resin airdam with some boiling water to get it to stretch enough to fit the new wider bumper. I have been playing with the bonnet hinges recently and here's where I'm at. Thankfully Ford bonnet hinges were just one single arm on each side that went into the body so I didn't have to mess about with any convoluted design. For strength I chose brass. Without any previous experience in making bonnet hinges I managed to get some brass rod and tube to come close to what I needed it to do. but unfortunately it sat too high and too far forward. I tweaked it a little too much now the corners of the bonnet now touch the body and it still sits too far forward. but that's where the experimenting ended because- Disaster again. I went to pick up the body to re-fit the bonnet and when I looked down there was a chunk of the engine bay missing. I have no idea how it happened but it did, now I will have to rebuild that whole area because there is no way I can re-glue and reinforce the broken area. Obviously I'm not pleased with that last set back but it's only a model so it can be rebuilt. Cheers ShawnS

Hi again guys. I didn't realize it had been so long since my last update. This update is a little mix of this and that. First up some house keeping. I fitted the tail lights and the backs to the full detail version. I changed the way the front wheels mount to the brakes. They used to have the mounting pin on the wheel that went in to the brake hub, now the pin is in the hub and the centre cap on the wheel will lock the wheel in place. The new stuff. I had make new head light units. The ones that I made for the curbside version were too big (the new ones are on the left) for the full detail version so I had to gut them, cut them and shut them to fit into the front end of the model. I also added an access cap on the back of them for extra detail. To get them to sit in the right spot I had to make a shelf-like bracket to mount them on. Although they are not typical of the 1:1 they will be pretty much hidden once its all together. The grille from the curbside version was also unusable for the full detail version so I made a new one. To be continued....

Thanks for the kind words. I always try to get my models to look as close as I can to what I'm modelling so it's nice to see some VW guys giving it the thumbs up. Here's the real thing.

Hi everyone, This one has been sitting around 3/4's finished waiting for me to print out the decals and do the final details. It's a Hasegawa body over a Tamiya chassis and interior with the RHD dash from the Hasegawa kit. It was driven at Bathurst in the 1963 Armstrong 500 by Bill Ford and Barry Ferguson to victory in Class A. I removed the detail from the seats and door cards as on the 1:1 and removed the radio and cut out the glove box lid. The VW battled with the Morris 850 of Little/Holland for the lead of Class A for most of the 500 mile race with the VW coming out victorious after the Morris found itself on it's side after contact with the VW on the second to last lap. The two combatants- Pics of the Morris can be found here- http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=69120&hl=minifest I originally was just going to use all of the Hasegawa kit but after a test fit of the interior showed a fair bit of daylight coming through I ended up getting an old Tamiya VW glue bomb out of my stash and adapting it to fit. All it required was some minor trimming on the chassis sides and a little extra Evergreen behind the rear seat. The bumpers, head lights, front indicators, tail lights are Tamiya . The wheels are Hasegawa rims with modified Tamiya centres on Hasegawa tyres. (Not So) Interesting factoid-- The Tamiya VW kit is LHD only but it comes only with RHD windscreen wipers and the Hasegawa kit has a RHD dash but it only has LHD wipers. There you go. Thanks for looking, Cheers ShawnS

Thanks everyone. Over 100,000 views so far for this build has far exceeded any of my expectations. I didn't think it would grab too many peoples attention (other than Aussies and Kiwis) so I'm more than stoked to see that my fellow builders from around the world are taking an interest. It's been a long journey, longer than I expected anyway so here's a big THANK YOU to each and every one of you who have kept coming back to check it out. At the moment I am in a good build rhythm and the next update should only be a week or two away. Thanks again ShawnS.

Thanks James. The next bit of work was on the aircon plumbing. It's made up of T2M copper wire, T2M 1mm nuts, T2M hose joints, T2M heat shrink tube, Detail Master hose connectors, Crazy Modeler hose clamps, K+S aluminum 0.8mm rod and some Evergreen bits. The T2M hose joints in the back of the compressor. How things go. I had to remake the condenser because it interfered with the front bumper too much. It's slightly smaller than it used to be. The plumbing route is a bit of a compromise and isn't typical of the real thing. The important thing is that nothing touches or interferes with anything else in the engine bay. There was a few other things that I worked on that will help with future work on the build and I'll show them to you as the build progresses. That will do for now and I promise the next update won't be 5 months away like this one was. Thanks for looking, Cheers ShawnS

I also finished the exhaust system. It just needs some bolt heads on the clamps. Another problem that needed to be solved was how to install the springs and shocks after the diff was in place. Due to the high level of difficulty when it comes to getting the diff into position it isn't possible to put the springs and shocks in first so I had to devise a plan to install them from the top after the diff is in place. I put some holes in the chassis that are the same diameter of the springs. I just need to put the springs in, drop the shocks in and the put the caps on top to hold it all in place. The next issue was the rear of the chassis wasn't sitting still and flat. To solve that I drilled a hole under where the tank sits, the tank will have a rod that will reach to the bottom of the bootlid, into a bit of tube that I glued onto the underside of the bootlid. When the chassis is in it's correct position it should stay there without too much more movement. To be continued....

Hi all, It's been a long time since the last update and after some time away from the bench I am back into the swing of things. I have solved the issue of the texture for the chassis. I found a product called Black Lava made by Vallejo, It's just natural stone mixed with a black pigment. It's water based you just need to brush it on and it cleans up fairly easily if you over do it. I used it on a reject resin chassis I have put the curbside version aside and have resumed work on the full detail version. My first task was to fix an issue that I noticed during a test fit. The edge of the chassis wheel well was a bit too visible. I glued a strip of Evergreen to the top of the wheel well with a large quantity of CA glue. I used my Dremel and some sand paper on the inside of the wheel well. Problem solved. I had an issue with the chassis flexing too much causing old joins to crack so I cut a channel on the back where the chassis rails are and superglued a thick stainless steel pin on the back to give the chassis some strength. Then it was time to move on to finishing off some of the work that I haven't done. I finished off the rear sway bar the same way that I did on the curbside version. To be continued......