R/M Ferrari 612 hood fit

[Merkur XR4Ti]

I am diligently working on my Ferrari 612 and have found the going frustrating so far, although not due to any faults in the kit itself. Bad paint jobs happen to everyone, and they happened to me on this one.

Anyway, after fixing the paint I am having a devil of a time getting the hood to fit well into the body with the engine surround insert installed. I seem to have a small warp in the hood, but it also appears I may need to grind down some material on both the hood hinge and the engine bay insert to get a tolerable fit.

Anyone have these issues with this kit? While the kit looks nice I must say I will be glad when this build is over.

[ismaelg]

Steve,

This kit can be frustrating at times. I've done 2 already.

Most 612 builds I've seen have the same problem. In my first build the idea from the begining was to keep the hood in the opened position due to all the work done in the engine. I added struts to keep it open. Just before adding the struts I noticed it didn't close properly, just as you are finding out. Did you already glued the hood hinge part in place? If not, see if the hood closes properly without it. If that's the case you can probably separate the hinges and avoid using the center section, or maybe trimming the end of the hinge if it is hitting the cowl. But I think the engine bay insert will also need some grinding at the back.

Option # 2 is what some people are doing, and what I did in my second build: "Curbside". Glue the hood shut, without the engine bay cover, but I have to admit the engine in this car is beautiful.....

If you haven't already, getting the body with the interiors sit properly and evenly with the chassis is also a challenge.

Hope this helps. Keep us posted on the progress.

Thanks,

[Zoom Zoom]

I haven't build one w/the stock hood; I used a Dodge Viper hood on my custom 612. But I have seen several examples w/slightly warped hoods. The stock hood in my custom one fit perfectly (w/o hinges) in the hood opening. It's best to fit the hood/hinges and see how underhood things fit before painting; this avoids complications down the road. I used the 612 hinges w/the Viper hood and it fits fine. Revell plastic can take a bit of bending to shape if there's a slight warp. Be careful and you can probably get the warp out.

I had quite a bit of chassis warp at the back of the car, took me a lot of fiddling to get it to seat properly where the chassis meets up w/the back bumper. I ended up having to glue some of the upright rear wheel well parts to the seatback/interior sides IIRC to get the chassis bent in the right direction. This problem didn't occur until everything was being glued in place.

[Merkur XR4Ti]

The paint I'm using seems extremely non-flexible; one of the reasons I had to do a repaint is that in my efforts to massage the hood into shape the paint cracked. I was so bummed out that I had to repaint that I polished the whole thing afterwards before remembering that it's metallic! :oops:

I'll try a bit more grinding and massaging to get this thing to seat properly.