1937 RR woody... I mean, "shooting brake"...

[sjordan2]

Judging by the way my suggestions are going, I'll say flat roof because I really think it should be a curved roof.

[Harry P.]

Judging by the way my suggestions are going, I'll say flat roof because I really think it should be a curved roof.

Flat roof it is!

[blunc]

well played sir.

[Harry P.]

So I went to the lumber yard today... ok, the "lumber yard" I went to was the local Hobby Lobby...

Now if I can get my pesky clients and their rush jobs out of the way, I can start some serious building this weekend.

[Twokidsnosleep]

The lumber yard, that is funny

I love the real one...sights and smells of cut wood

I am the absolute worst shopper with my wife, but get me in a guy place: wood store, hobby shop, leather store, sports store and I can spend all day

[Harry P.]

I love woodworking, but can't do it as a hobby because I don't have the space to set up a proper shop. One of my dreams was to be a builder of custom furniture... custom designed, custom built. If I could make a living doing that, I'd drop all this other stuff I do to pay the bills in a heartbeat. But when I think of the cost to equip a woodworking shop, never mind the actual space needed... well, let's say my dream remains just that.

[Twokidsnosleep]

I love woodworking, but can't do it as a hobby because I don't have the space to set up a proper shop. One of my dreams was to be a builder of custom furniture... custom designed, custom built. If I could make a living doing that, I'd drop all this other stuff I do to pay the bills in a heartbeat. But when I think of the cost to equip a woodworking shop, never mind the actual space needed... well, let's say my dream remains just that.

Oh boy, that is exactly where I am, smack dab in the middle of it

I stopped making stuff when I kept tripping breakers in the house while working with power tools in the garage and needed a planer etc with 220 power

I have plans for a little 13x16 designated hobby/workspace attached on the main level of our house...220, soundproofed, all mine

Not for a second job, just for fun and relaxation making stuff for family and friends. I love the smell of cut maple ahhhh

We shall see how it pans out

Enough of my babble....Onward with this great build!!!

[Cato]

I have plans for a little 13x16 designated hobby/workspace attached on the main level of our house...220, soundproofed, all mine

Try to get outside light from at least two sides. Your eyes don't last forever - trust me...

[Harry P.]

The engine on this car is a V12... but there are two plugs per cylinder, a distributor for each bank of cylinders, and dual coils... so adding ignition wiring is going to be a challenge. Two distributors with 13 leads each (two plugs per cylinder plus coil). To make things even harder, on each cylinder head the plugs are located six on the outside of the cylinder head, six on the inside (in the "valley" of the engine). And worse yet, the ignition wires run through wiring looms that are not included in the kit.

First step was to scratchbuild all of the components needed... individual plug wires with boots, bundles of ignition wire to represent those coming out of looms located behind and below the distributors, the long looms that are located parallel to the cylinder heads, etc...

Both distributors needed to be wired up, along with individual boots for each connection. the distributor on the right has the boots installed...

Then 13 wires for each distributor...

[Harry P.]

The twin distributors and twin coils are mounted at the front of the engine, but the wires from the distributors run through twin tubes located between them. The problem is that there is very little room for this, and the distributor wires have to make a very sharp, tight turn into these tubes. I made the wire looms out of styrene tubing...

[Harry P.]

Getting the distributors attached, while forcing the ignition wires to make that sharp, tight turn into the looms, wasn't easy. And wiring the six inner spark plugs wasn't easy. And attaching the outer spark plug wires and running them into the looms wasn't easy. And finally... because everything on the engine is black, you can't really see any of this added detail unless you look really closely. And once the model is finished and the hood attached, pretty much all of this added detail will be basically invisible. I think I might have been better off just leaving all the wiring and loom detail off. Oh well...

[Harry P.]

The ebay seller described this as a "junkyard" kit because of all the broken pieces... like the mounting pins for the radiator hoses, which were broken off. Simple fix: brass rod.

[cobraman]

Nice job on the snake pit wiring.

[sjordan2]

I was wondering how you were going to tackle the plug wire loom. Good job.

[Twokidsnosleep]

I thought you apply the KISS principle to you builds?!

That wiring set up is anything but simple, holy cow my fingers hurt just looking at all those bends

You did a fantastic job and we have photographic evidence of its existence

I have a weird attraction to fixing glue bombed and junkyard kits. It gets worse and worse as I build up a stockpile of model parts, tools and few merge skills. You get some real good deals on those kind of kits.

Brass tubing is awesome stuff to work with.

Edited May 15, 2015 by Twokidsnosleep

[wayne swayze]

While it might be covered up, you'll know it's been done....well!

[southpier]

wash & drybrush to emphasize & highlight?

[Harry P.]

wash & drybrush to emphasize & highlight?

Maybe. Something to think about.

I'm just glad that wiring job is over!

[LaughingIndian]

Wow. That wiring looks stunning. I always think different tones and textures of a similar color (especially black) add so much more of a detailed look ... especially if there's a mile of wire in an inch of space

[Harry P.]

I did try to mix it up bit. The air cleaner can, valve covers, and long wiring looms along the cylinder heads are gloss black, the distributor caps, coils, and fan are satin black, the wire I used is flat black. You're right, the trick to realism is various levels of gloss/no gloss.

[Harry P.]

The steering system includes a multi-link tie rod assembly. You have to be careful to not get any glue on the ends of the links when you glue on the small round retainers.

[Harry P.]

There's a problem with the cowl. As you can see, there is a recessed channel on the edge, against which the front edge of the "sheet metal" door lip closes. The woody doors will have thicker frames than just the thin outer lip on the "sheetmetal" doors, so if I left that recessed channel on the cowl in place, when the woody doors are closed you would see that recess as a gap between the door and cowl edges.

Another problem: the lower corner of the cowl doesn't meet flush with the raised curved area on the fender:

Both problems were fixed by using some styrene stock to fill in that recess, and extend the lower corner of the cowl back a bit. Some Bondo and sanding/shaping will be done to integrate everything and smooth things out. Then a new lip will be added to the inside surface of the cowl (using styrene stock) for the woody doors to shut against.

[Harry P.]

While the revised cowl dries, let's get into some body construction. After going through the buidling sequence over and over in my head about a bazillion times, trying to figure out the most sensible and easiest way to build the body, I finally decided on this sequence: Rear side panels first, install side panels, tailgates, then do the door hinge posts/doors as an assembly and install the doors (already attached to the hinge post), then finally add the roof.

So to begin, I made a cardboard template of the rear side panels. Remember, I had already made those curved lower pieces earlier, stained them, and then glued them to the fender surfaces using CA. Making the panel template was not any sort of scientific process... just some "eyeball engineering" until I got the template right (on the third try). The critical areas here are 1; Establish the angle/slope of the rear wall of the body, and 2: Determine the location of the rear door opening. The angle of the rear wall was determined just by "eyeball engineering" and what look pleasing to me. Another important point was to make sure the leading edge of the template is at 90 degrees to the floor, because I want the door openings to be perpendicular to the floor (except for the front edge of the front doors, which obviously will follow the angle of the cowl). Another detail I added was to put a very slight slope on the top edge of the template, so that the roof will slope slightly downward from the point where the rear side doors end to where the roof meets the rear wall of the body. I did this just because I think it looks better than having the roof be arrow straight all the way from windshield post to rear wall.

Here the third (and best) template looks about right...

[Harry P.]

Next, with the cowl/firewall temporarily in place, I used a strip of wood to determine where the beltline of the body will be on the rear side panels. The important thing here was to make sure the beltline was parallel to the floor and running boards. Once I determined the location, I marked the are on my template...

[southpier]

interesting development ideas, considerations, & methods.