Big Bad Benz...finally finished!

[Mr.1/16th]

B E A U TIFUL!!!!!! HAVE FUN BUILDING IT!!! KEEP US ALL POSTED

[Harry P.]

Engine is now mounted on the chassis. The valve cover has not been painted yet!

Brakes. Yep... brakes! That's Pocher detail...

[Fuel Coupe]

Very Nice work Harry. Ive been wanting to build a Pocher for a really long time. This just makes me want one even more....

[Harry P.]

Very Nice work Harry. Ive been wanting to build a Pocher for a really long time. This just makes me want one even more....

If you're up for a little frustration along the way, they're a lot of fun. Almost like building a real car!

[vizio93]

If you're up for a little frustration along the way, they're a lot of fun. Almost like building a real car!

Yeah and almost the same price

[vizio93]

Hows it coming along with that Benz Harry ?

[kyledr330]

WOW, I'm sorry I didn't see this thread sooner! That is the most detail I have ever seen in a kit before. Outstanding work!

[Harry P.]

Lots of progress. Let's start with the chassis, which is pretty much done. Here it is as of today... you can see that I've installed the floor (it comes already "carpeted"):

The grille is an aftermarket PE piece which replaces the black plastic molded grille from the kit (don't even ask what that piece cost!!!). Having that mesh actually be "mesh" with open holes makes a huge difference in the look. BTW... I did't have a big enough surface to shoot this thing on, so I shot it on the floor!

Now that the chassis is built, I'm skipping around to various subassemblies, not following the instruction's sequence.

I'm going to do a custom interior for several reasons:

1. The kit's seats are very nice... they have foam padding, real springs, "leather" upholstery (actually vinyl that looks like leather)... but they are very inaccurate. In fact they don't look even vaguely like the seats in the real car!

2. The kit supplied "leather" upholstery isn't my cup of tea, color-wise. It's also too thick and would be a pain to try and stretch around curves and edges.

3. I want to do things my way!

First step for the custom door panels: cut off the molded- in armrest and door cubbyhole surround:

Next, fill in the cubbyhole with scrap sheet styrene and trim about 1/32" off all around the perimeter of the panel to accomodate the thickness of the upholstery and wood trim coming:

Finally, do it my way!

I used a French curve to lay out the arcs on the door panel and to cut out the pieces. What you see here is 1/64" birch veneer, stained and covered in several layers of clear acrylic. I used CA to glue the large center "swoosh" in place first. Next, the "chrome" trim strips (two different gauges of aluminum beading wire from Michael's) were attached with CA. Then I cut the "leather" pieces (actually vinyl fabric that looks like leather, but much thinner and more flexible than leather would be) and attached them to the panel with contact cement. With contact cement you get literally ONE CHANCE to position things correctly, because once it's down, it's down for good. I got lucky and matched up to the curved trim strips pretty well. The "leather" was cut oversized and wrapped around the door panel edges, than the excess flaps attached to the back side with CA. Finally the top piece of wood trim was made from pieces of the same birch veneer, stained and assembled to look like one big slab of wood trim. The door handle, window crank and armrest/storage bin haven't been installed yet.

[Harry P.]

Like I said, the kit seats, while impressive as far as detail, don't look correct, so I used aftermarket resin seats. I lose the kit seat's detail features, like foam padded cushions and real springs under the seat and backrest... but what I get instead are seats that actually look like real 500K seats. Here is one of the seats as it comes in resin:

And here's what it looks like after I upholstered it with the same "leather" that I used on the door panels:

Pretty cool, huh?

[Harry P.]

Like most Pocher kits, the wire wheels are built up spoke by spoke, and each spoke has its own individual nipple. Needless to say, building a Pocher wire wheel is tedious and time-consuming. The "round" parts of the wheels are stamped steel. How many kits can you think of that come with steel parts trees?

Now, I won't bore you with all the gory details "behind the scenes" as far as building the wheels. Let's just say that none of the parts fit correctly, the spokes are too long, etc. Here's an example of one problem: On a real wire wheel, alternate spoke holes around the rim are offset a bit so that the spokes can cross each other without interference. On the Pocher wheels, all the spoke holes are on the same plane, and the spokes are straight... the result being that the spokes can't cross each other and wind up with their other end in the correct position on the hub. What this means in plain English is that every single spoke has to bent a little bit, so that they can cross each other correctly. Talk about tedious! I actually spent more time correcting the parts so that I could build the wheels than I spent actually building the wheels! Here's one of the finished wheels:

The seven little cylinders around the rim represent the balancing weights. On the real car the wheels came with these balancing weights already installed. Each one was in reality a stack of smaller weights. The wheel was balanced by adding or subtracting individual weights from whichever weight stack necessary. Kind of clever in a Germanic engineering overkill sort of way...

The kit tires are very stiff and won't flex enough to get them to stretch over the finished wheel... so what I did was put the tire in a bowl of water and microwaved it for a minute or two. That made the tire nice and soft, soft enough to stretch over the wheel. Of course, you have to be careful not to heat the tire too much...

Eventually I'm going to paint whitewalls on the tires.

[Foxer]

Nice upholstery job, especially on the seats! Those seams are flawless.

[Harry P.]

Here's the dash, again with the same birch veneer and "leather" as on the door panels:

It was hard to cut the veneer to exact shape, and I missed in a couple of spots. It's not perfect, but after the time I spent trying to get a piece exactly right, I got fed up and just installed what I had come up with. The fit around the tops of the glove boxes is pretty bad, but oh well...

The "mother of pearl" gauge panel inlay is made from a piece of scrapbooking paper that looks sort of like mother of pearl, and the glove box handles are pieces of paper clip bent to shape. Gauge "glass" is clear 5-minute epoxy.

[vizio93]

Wow nice updates Harry !!! I love the detail that is involved in these builds. You must have some Kahuna's to be able to cut up one of 'em . Can't wait to see this thing all put together.

[Harry P.]

Scratchbuilt shifter boot... in matching leather, of course!

[Harry P.]

Nice upholstery job, especially on the seats! Those seams are flawless.

Thanks, Mike. It was a pain. Took me most of a day to upholster one seat (bottom cushion and seatback). Getting the material into all those seam lines while keeping everything stretched tight as you glue each pleat, and also keeping wrinkles out around corners, is one of those jobs where it would have been real helpful if I had an extra set of hands...

[Harry P.]

Wow nice updates Harry !!! I love the detail that is involved in these builds. You must have some Kahuna's to be able to cut up one of 'em .

It's just a model kit... a darn expensive one, but still, just a collection of parts–until you build it. Then it becomes something to show off. Parts in a box aren't what it's all about... putting those parts together is the goal! Sure, I could buy up as many Pocher kits as I can, sit on them for several years and then resell 'em and undoubtedly make a profit... but that's not what model kits are for. I have other investments already, I don't invest in "collectible" model kits! I buy 'em to build 'em...

[vizio93]

It's just a model kit... a darn expensive one, but still, just a collection of parts–until you build it. Then it becomes something to show off. Parts in a box aren't what it's all about... putting those parts together is the goal! Sure, I could buy up as many Pocher kits as I can, sit on them for several years and then resell 'em and undoubtedly make a profit... but that's not what model kits are for. I have other investments already, I don't invest in "collectible" model kits! I buy 'em to build 'em...

Ahh I understand. I would rather build them than just look at the box art. How many Pocher kits have you built ?

[Harry P.]

Ahh I understand. I would rather build them than just look at the box art. How many Pocher kits have you built ?

I have three finished, and two (including this one) in the works. And one "lost" years ago. Don't ask...

[Chuck Most]

How the hey-all do you lose a Pocher kit!?

(Remember when you told me there was no demand for a Veyron kit?)

[Harry P.]

How the hey-all do you lose a Pocher kit!?

(Remember when you told me there was no demand for a Veyron kit?) :lol:

It was "lost" sometime between when I had it half-finished and in a box, and moving to a new house. That particular box never made the move. I have to assume it was thrown out by mistake, and by the time everything had been unpacked and it was found missing... well, too late. It probably wound up buried in a landfill somewhere...

[vizio93]

I have three finished, and two (including this one) in the works. And one "lost" years ago. Don't ask...

Wow 5 of 'em ! Well good luck on this one and the other one

... it was found missing... well, too late. It probably wound up buried in a landfill somewhere...

Almost brings a tear to your eye

[AzTom]

That is incredible Harry! I think any part, Engine, Chassis or interior could have been used in the "Real or Model" section.

I have one of these kits somewhere, don't remember what model it is.

AzTom

[Harry P.]

That is incredible Harry! I think any part, Engine, Chassis or interior could have been used in the "Real or Model" section.

I have one of these kits somewhere, don't remember what model it is.

AzTom

If you ever want to sell it, let me know...

[bsoder]

Harry your a true modeler...and a Pocher master always fascinates me how you proceed on these kits, actually kit isn't really the right term they're works of art

[Harry P.]

Ok... here's something I've never done before: build a cloth convertible top!

The kit supplies pre-cut cloth pieces for the top–a center section, two side pieces and a lining. The kit cloth is tan, I wanted a white top... so off to Hobby Lobby to get some off-white muslin. I used the kit cloth pieces as templates to cut my new top pieces. The borders of each piece were "hemmed" by folding them back 5mm and gluing the flaps down on the inside of the pieces. Then the three main top pieces were sewn together by hand!

And here I thought building a Pocher wheel was tedious! It took me a couple of hours to fold and glue all the "hems" and another several hours to do the sewing (since I don't know how to sew!!!).

I didn't use the kit rear window, it's way too thick... so I cut a piece of clear acetate for the window and sewed it in place into the opening I cut.

The reason I'm already working on the top this early in the game is because it attaches to the body from underneath, with screws, along the rear flange. You have to attach the top to the body before you mount the body to the chassis... and since I'm pretty much at the point where the body is going on the chassis, I had to build (and install) the top first.

One of the biggest problems with the top is that the center section has parallel sides, but in order for the top to look good and not have a bunch of slack and wrinkles in it, the center section has to taper in width as it goes towards the back. The width of the center section has to be about 40mm narrower at the rear than at the front. A lot of trial and error goes into fitting the top sections, and even now I'm not sure how tight the top will stretch over the three hoops that make up the framework of the top. I might have to make my own hoops out of brass strip, depending on how well (or how poorly) the top fits. We'll see...