MG K3 Magnette 1933, Auto Kit/SE Finecast 1/24

[Matt Bacon]

Since I have a spare Tazio Nuvolari driver figure and a white metal Auto Kit MG K3 Magnette, it seems almost rude not to build the man and his machine... Particularly since reference is not at all hard to find:

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/29334/lot/140/1933-mg-magnette-k3-supercharged-sports-racing-two-seater-chassis-no-k3003-see-text-engine-no-r772-ac/

So, what do you get in a typical Auto Kit originated kit, now sold by SE Finecast?

I think this must be one of the later ones, because it has more fine detail parts (see the "tree" with half a dozen bits on above the front axle and the cast dashboard with holes for all the instruments) than the others I've done. There's a fair bit of straightening out to do, but this one has all the parts, and they are all intact, which is a blessing. Although the body is multipart, the tabs that lock it all together are well engineered and precise and will put everything where it should be. And if I make the main joins with low temperature solder, they will remain tough and a bit flexible to allow fettling. The most important things are to clean up the parts really thoroughly, and test fit and adapt repeatedly until the parts stay together of their own accord before doing any soldering or gluing.

The wire spokes for the wheels will need winding, but I have a plan for that of which more later.

So, we begin:

The floor, firewall and chassis rails are separate parts (the previous owner had stuck the front cowl in place ahead of time -- I don't know why). There's no glue in this picture -- note the neat interlocking tabs at the bottom corners of the firewall and the rear corners of the floor. The journey of a thousand miles, etc...

best,

M.

Edited May 17 by Matt Bacon

[stavanzer]

Wow! Another Masterpiece in the making!

I will be eagerly watching.

Good Show.

Alan

[Dave B]

Ah Matt, looking forward to this, always love your white metal builds.

Dave B

[absmiami]

Nuvolari drove an MG too ??

 

[Matt Bacon]

3 hours ago, absmiami said:

Nuvolari drove an MG too ??

 

This very one:

https://cars.bonhams.com/auction/29334/lot/140/1933-mg-magnette-k3-supercharged-sports-racing-two-seater-chassis-no-k3003-see-text-engine-no-r772-ac/

best,

M.

[1959scudetto]

This will be interesting to watch, Matt. I never knew that Nuvolari also drove an MG.

[Matt Bacon]

Made some progress today, though the fact that I've mislaid my 90-second cure epoxy slowed me down! It must be in the workshop somewhere, but can I find it..?

A dry fit demonstrated that the parts are pretty accurately-shaped and lock together very positively. A good omen...

I think this one is mastered, and possibly designed, by someone different from the Alfa and Delage. I thought to start with that "pigtail" on the radiator cap was a molding artifact, but looking at the Bonhams' pictures it's actually a not bad attempt at the spring clip on the real thing.  The cap also has hinge and lock detail, the strap around the bonnet is very nicely detailed and that cut-out in the bottom frame of the radiator takes a corrugated air feed from the blower under the cowl which is molded as a separate part. In fact, there are a couple of "trees" of small add-on parts as well as the more typical separate shocks and lights.

The assembly sequence is very well thought through as well. You are working towards having a body assembled so it can be painted body color all in one go -- green in my case. This includes things like attaching the wings and headlights. The body is now all glued, except for the scuttle which you unclip to fit the  instrument panel and steering wheel, and give easy access to the cockpit floor to add the transmission, gear shift seats etc.The front fenders had lost their long braces somewhere along the line, so I've pressed some brass rod into service.

best,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

Getting there with gluing together all the bits that are going to be basically green:

This one fits together really well, as well as being nicely detailed. I haven't had to "flex" any of the parts significantly to get them to fit into their locations.

Test fit of the seats and woollen covers, which looks reasonable. The seats are a grey-green leather, and will be painted separately.

The transmission and shift mechanism is nicely detailed as well... Note the separate lever below the main gear stick, and the bolt heads where it attaches to the gearbox. This is also bodywork green, at least in the one in the Bonhams photos, hence putting it in place now.

The dash is a step up from the flat panel with raised discs for instruments in the earlier Auto Kits, featuring bezels and relief detail, and gauges printed on the instruction sheet. I might tart these up a bit based on the reference, but they aren't bad at all.

best,

M.

[PatW]

Superb looking kit. I would see these each year at the Silverstone Circuit (just 5 miles away) for the Classic Car race meetings (better than the F1 GP) as a race and airfield marshall for over 20 years!

Edited May 21 by PatW

[Matt Bacon]

A couple of cycles of prime, fill, sand, prime and here we are:

A little bit of cleanup and detailing required, but the main body is ready to paint, I reckon...

Started on painting the detail, mostly to see if i was happy with the main body color. Which I am. It's old-school Humbrol enamel, mostly gloss H3 "Brunswick Green" with 10% (ish) matt Lemon Yellow (M99) to brighten it up a bit. Takes a long time to dry, so I'm looking into some chemical "drier" to speed it up a bit....

best,

M.

 

[Bugatti Fan]

Another nice classic taking shape in Matt's collection. That Magnette the is a nice looking motor.

If one is into building 1/24th scale Classic MG's the Autokits white metal series would serve MG enthusiasts quite well.

[Matt Bacon]

This is where I was last night:

I have spent a lot of time spraying things green, including this main body assembly. Not seen in these picture are wheel rims and hubs, mudguards, lights...

Today I got to do some detail painting and unmasking...

The brake drums are actually Humbrol Flat Aluminum, and have a more metallic look in real life than in these pictures. Everything else is largely Citadel and AMMO MiG Atomic Metallic colors.

I scanned the dials on the instruction sheet, added a few more details and cleaned them up in Photoshop, and added the splashes of color the real thing has to enliven the black and white printed original. I'm pleased with how they turned out.

Time to finish the detail painting on the chassis. The main challenge will be the springs, which are a sort of mucky brownish creamy yellow... the whole of each spring seems to be wrapped round and round with oily rope along its length.

best,

M.

[MAGIC MUFFLER]

Looking good..!!!!  I always liked these and wanted to build one myself

 

 

 

 

Edited May 30 by MAGIC MUFFLER

[Dave Ambrose]

What an interesting build! I'm a bit of an MG fan so this build definitely has my attention. It looks great so far. 

[Matt Bacon]

Guess what's been keeping me busy the last couple of days...

Auto Kits "Patent Applied for..." method of reproducing wire wheels on period cars is not bad out of the box, but I think you can improve the look a bit. The kit provides a spool of 32SWG wire for the spokes and a neat jig that looks not unlike the spinning top in "Inception" for building the wheels on. The rims are slotted around the circumference, and the hubs have a ledge around each end. The MG hubs, as you can see have a characteristic wide cone base at the inner side of the wheel and narrower cylinder for the outer half. This presents some challenges... 

To make the wheels, you mount the rim and hub on the jig, lash a good length of wire (18" or so) around the peg under the jig, put the whole thing in a vice or holder to keep it still, and proceed to wrap the wire back and forth across the hub passing over the ledge on the end and working your way around. The outgoing wire goes to the slot one to the left of directly opposite where you started, round one slot to the right and back across the wheel to the slot one to the right of where you started, then round one step to the right, rinse and repeat. Each pair looks like this (-). This is where I part company form the "official" method. Done officially, you end up with 24 spokes on a side, and they are reasonably thick (to see it done their way, check out my Delage build from last year). I decided I wanted more, thinner, spokes to look a bit more realistic. 

These are done with 36SWG wire, which is about half the diameter of 32SWG, and there's a slight tweak to the wrapping pattern. Instead of coming back across the wheel to the slot one to the right of where I started, I come back to the original slot, and THEN step sideways around the rim. If you look at the rim bottom left, you can see there is wire running round the rim between every slot, rather than every other pair which is what you get if you follow the instructions. Also on the bottom left wheel, which is upside down, you can see that the wire is green. It's insulated PCB wire, and I sort of hoped it would be green enough not to need painting. But as you can see from the others, i did do a blow-over of the green body color because there were too many bits where the paint had come off during the wrapping process. Only on the outside, though... I'm not mad. That wider inner hub makes these wheels much harder to wrap than ones with a cylindrical hub because the wire has to run much further round on the ledge. I had to superglue the interior wiring at several stages through the process, whereas the outer face can be wired completely and glue applied at the end. Now the glue has set, I can trim the loose ends of that are sticking out and put the tires on.

best,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

Quick test assembly on the highly sophisticated chassis and suspension test and adjustment rig, aka the "cakestand."

Happily, all four wheels sit solidly on the ground from the off, which is perhaps another indication that this one was designed and mastered later on in Auto Kits life: the shape of the parts and the positive interlocking of the chassis components put everything where it needs to be.

Details, details next...

best,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

One of the slightly "out of the ordinary" challenges of these excellent white metal kits is to keep them from slumping over the years. Being a mostly-lead alloy, they are quite heavy. That weight is typically borne by a relatively narrow axle inboard of the kingpin or a few square millimetres of wishbone at the outer ends of an independent suspension. Either way, stand them on your shelf for a decade or so and they will sag. My solution is a hefty transparent perspex pillar at the centre of gravity of the car or thereabouts which will bear most of the weight, with the wheels just serving to keep the whole thing straight and level.

I start by rolling a chunky cylinder of Blu-Tak (aka Silly Putty), roughly the height between the car floor and the ground, and about 1/2" (1cm) in diameter. Then returning to my suspension and chassis set-up tool (or flat marble cakestand) I put the soft pillar in place under the car, the wheels on the axles, and push it down until it is snug and all four wheels touch the horizontal stone "floor." Pick it up again and release the putty stack, and the putty has been squished to the height you need to support the car. I measure that carefully with a ruler, and cut the perspex rod slightly oversize. The it's a matter of sanding the rod down, square to sandpaper taped to a tile or on a flat metal sanding stick and test fitting, until it sits with the four wheels AND the perspex support on the reference surface. In practice, it's better to get the four wheels on the ground and the pillar not quite touching than have a wheel cocked in the air -- the natural sagging process will take up the slack of the first in a few months or a year, whereas the pillar will keep the whole thing floating in space indefinitely if it's too tall...

best,

M.

[Matt Bacon]

So, I promised some details. Everything you see, more or less, is in the box...

Supercharger hose (L) and oil reservoir (R) are both separate castings which drop neatly into place.

Exhaust wrapped with medical tape standing in for asbestos cloth on the real thing. Although the Bonhams car exhaust is routed over the top of the wheel like many modern historic racers, when Nuvolari drove it, it had a straight-through exhaust like this.

Fuel tank filler caps are very nicely detailed and cast out of the box.

A few short lengths of wire and some paint add details to the top of the tank.

And this is where we are tonight....

best,

M

 

[Matt Bacon]

Almost there now...

The fenders were a bit of a pain, particularly since the long lower support of both front pieces had broken off over the years in the box. Thank goodness for "instant" epoxy, which meant I only had to hold each one in place for a couple of minutes before it set solid! I was nervous of the headlights, but the mounting locations on the frame and supports on the lights were sharply moulded and a good fit, so in the end each one went on with gel superglue in seconds. It's not too obvious here, but the inner surfaces of the light reflectors are very nicely done, and punching out a 9mm disc of acetate makes for a convincing front lens effect.

Decision time, now.  As things stand, the scuttle panel in front of the cockpit is not fixed and can be removed. As you can see from the engraved grooves, the windscreen and frame and aeroscreens fit over the top. The original motivation to build this one from the stash was that this was another car driven by Nuvolari back in the day, and I have a spare 1/24 Immense Miniatures head that looks exactly as he did at the Ulster TT in 1933. Unfortunately, on closer inspection I'm lacking a suitable body and arms! Fortunately, that nice Mr Spark at Immense Miniatures is casting up some parts for me, so the driver I need is on his way. The question is, do I pause and leave the scuttle loose and windscreens ready in the wings to make it easier to sit Tazio in the cockpit when he's ready, or press on and get the build completed? He might fit under a fixed dash and wheel, but experience of previous builds in the Roy Cross tribute series suggests that it's a lot easier to get the driver in if you give yourself the maximum wiggle room....

best,

M.

[1959scudetto]

Excellent work, Matt - I neither have the patience nor the ability for making wire wheels like you do here - brings the whole kit to a new level!

[Gramps46]

I have the kit, and your build is a very good incentive. Very well done.  

[Pierre Rivard]

Epic build, as always Mr Bacon.

Tazio approves!

 

[Matt Bacon]

59 minutes ago, Pierre Rivard said:

Tazio approves!

Very nice.... is that the Immense Miniatures figure? Or someone else's? And is he 1/32 or 1/24? I've got Colin from RS Slot Racing casting me the 1/24 Immense standing body, because he was out of stock...

best,

M.

 

[Pierre Rivard]

26 minutes ago, Matt Bacon said:

Very nice.... is that the Immense Miniatures figure? Or someone else's? And is he 1/32 or 1/24? I've got Colin from RS Slot Racing casting me the 1/24 Immense standing body, because he was out of stock...

best,

M.

 

1/24, JPGM

[Matt Bacon]

Right, I think I've done more or less as much as I can pending the arrival of M. Nuvolari. Let's call this the end of Act 2...

The MG badge is made by sizing a picture of the real thing in Photoshop, printing it out on glossy photo paper, and very carefully lifting the top layer of the paper off with a brand new #11 blade before gluing it in place with Formula 560. I also added the radiator overflow with some fine silicone tubing left over from the Meng BMW bike build.

I can fit the acetate for the windscreen and aero screens, but once that's done I think that's it until the figure is seated...

...or not. I'm worried about the gap, or lack of it, between the bottom of the steering wheel and the seat... and Nuvolari apparently had the seat raised on wooden blocks for his Ulster TT drive!

We shall see when he gets here.

best,

M.