Radiator part 2

I fitted the metal braids and things went well. The steel sleeves make a good work hiding the roughly cut ends. The copper wire is now in its final place and I did not even have to make a groove at the top of the bulkhead since the nose cone fits perfectly well.
See also Radiator part 1.

Langton HMS Victory part 1

There is no way I can start building my Heller kit but I can work on a smaller scale for a more immediate use. So thanks to Rod Langton, I can work on a 1/1200 model and even play with it with Close Action (find reviews of this game here). Here is a picture of the parts of the kit. Sails are die-cast ones, they get my preference over photo-etched ones even though they are bulkier. I have ordered four more sailing ships from Mr Langton. It is time to see if I have the nerves to go through the rigging of those beauties!

Rear suspension part 1

Here are the assembled elements of the rear suspension. I do not really like how the kit was designed there: the lower triangle is placed between two cemented parts and I can imagine some stresses going through this assembly, even because of the weight of the car itself... Worse: if things go totally south, repairs will not be an easy task. Time will tell!
The wheel hubs are painted semi-gloss black, and the screw heads Boltgun Metal. The lower part of the damper is painted Boltgun Metal and dry-brushed with Tin Bitz. That gives a weathered look to the part. In fact it gives a rusty look, but that can make for a nice contrast with the rest of the car (even though I tried to weather the engine and transmission too).
The main challenge is to watch for the correct orientation of the various parts. It would be really dull to find myself with inverted arms or whatever...

Radiator part 1

The radiator is kept in place with only two thin plastic parts glued to the front sub frame. So far, no big deal beside the fact that those parts are from the dreaded chromed tree. The assembly is much stiffer than it looks like, but not enough to fight the load created by the tubes connected to the radiator. That is where it gets interesting... Four tubes are expected to be running to and from it: two to the lower section of the body, one from the engine running along the left hand side of the cockpit and one to the oil tank. Dimensions for all four are given in the notice and the user is supposed to play with the soft black tube already used on the engine. I wanted to do something a bit different and a bit more appealing to the eye.
I got a piece of shielded thermocouple cable, which has a diameter perfectly compatible with the model. I cut it a bit longer than required in order to open the braid and allow me to remove the cables inside. Then I cut it to the right length. Without its content, the braid may gain a bit of length, but it is not a really big problem. With rough cut edges, I needed to find something to make the connections to the radiator look good. I used a tiny bit of steel ribbon rolled onto itself (thanks to the round handle of a small brush) and slid over the braid, then squeezed a bit more over the braid in order to make it fit tightly around the end once in the right place. The final view should be available in the next few days.











I spent a lot of time trying to find a way to enhance the look of the tubes and I was really happy when I came across the thermocouple cable. However the material is quite stiff and I was not able to replace every plastic tube by a metallic one unfortunately. I am not saying that it is impossible to do, but I could not find a way to use them and maintain the radiator in its intended place at the same time. I made the choice to use the braid only for the lower tubes and I used the plastic material for the other ones. It will then have a mixed finish despite my efforts. The main difficulty was with the tube which is connected to the side of the car. The braid was too stiff for me to bend it correctly over the oil tank tube and around the oil tank and left front suspension. I could not place the radiator on the miniature tubular frame afterwards. So I replaced them with their plastic equivalent and glued together the front sub-frame, the radiator and the chromed parts. That should give enough strength to the whole thing for me to put the braids in place.

Cockpit part 3

I finally cemented the cockpit assembly into place. My first disappointment was to see that it looks like there is a ton of space between the dashboard and the rim of the body. I hope that the windshield will make it less visible. If not, then I missed a good chance to paint things black!
I managed to put the steering wheel where it should be without breaking any part. The challenge was to make a correct alignment between the angle of the steering column and pinion, the fitting at the cockpit end of the rod and the wheel itself. I will never try to make the wheels turn with the steering wheel: A) there is no protection on the paint and B) there is too much friction in the guides of the steering mechanism for the operation to be safe.
I wanted to model some wiring behind the dials of the dashboard as I have some good reference pictures. However my attempts were complete and epic failures, cyano glue is apparently not what it used to be. What is seen on the picture are a few coloured wires bundled together with a thicker wire. The bundle is just resting on the right of the seat with nothing to make a permanent assembly anywhere. The larger red wire is bent behind the dashboard and masks the back of the dials. It was picked from a 14 gauge household electric cable. The thin wires were picked from a telephone cable.
Had I to make the operation again, I think I would have used painted metallic wires with no plastic sleeve in place of the thin wires. I would have then been able to bend them into the proper shapes and put them into place like the oil thermocouple seen here.

See also Cockpit part 2 and Cockpit part 1.

Front sub-frame part 4

I painted the master cylinders in Boltgun Metal and left their covers as from the tree, in the original chromed finish. The only thing to check is to have them in the right position and parallel to one another, especially since they will be clearly visible behind the oil tank.










I then glued the oil tank in position. I put my temperature sensor mock-up into place to get the right feeling about it. I tried to make some plug at the base of the tank to make the connection look more realistic but with no success. The attempt was made made with Milliput but I was not able to make it stick to the surface of the tank.
I made it with a copper wire found in a electronic connector. I will have to shape a groove on the top of the bulkhead in order not to get in the way of the nose cone.

See also Front sub-frame part 3, Front sub-frame part 2 and Front sub-frame part 1.