Has anyone else got a mostly complete car sitting somewhere in the modelling environs looking a bit forelorn under some other stuff?
I had a 1/12 Lola T70 in exactly that situation until this afternoon. I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs waiting for something to dry on the Bentley and thinking about how to do the mesh for the radiator cover when I spotted the Lola looking at me from the shelf under a paper envelope with a 75mm field gun kit is it (an old RPM one) and the rotor assembly off a 1/72 Apache on top of that.
I bought the old girl over and went and got the huge box from between the bookcase and display cabinet where it has been sitting for at least three years. I had a look at the model and retrieved the doors from where they had been sitting on the bench on the base of a lamp, together with some suspension components.
This model is 85% complete yet I had let it sit idle due to some big fit problems around the turret of the body. The doors don't fit well at all and the piece that goes into the roof to form the spine of the body, is all the wrong shape, flat instead of curved. Problem was this problem was not discovered until the part was in place and the doors didn't even go close to matching. The tops of the doors are curved whereas the roof is flat.. dang!!
I got the first door in fine but then Murphy struck and one of the door hinges decided to break off.. I glued it back on and put it aside.
When I removed the front body piece I found that the material used for the air-pipes to the driver are affecting the plastic of the body and chassis. Here is the pipe in question..
See how it has eaten into the plastic. And under the front are two patches like this where it has been pressing against the body..
Luckily you can see nothing from the outside but the tubing has to go and be replaced with something that won't eat plastic. Any suggestions??
So in summary, with just a few hours at the most spent on the model it had progressed from 85% complete to at least 95%. In summary I ..
- Attached the front wheels and tyres.
- Attached one of the tail pipes and re-glued the ends of the exhaust.
- Cleaned up the body parts reading for being painted royal blue after I paint the white for the stripe of course..
- Got the door with the intact hinges into place.
- Attached the rear anti-roll bar to its suspension mounting points.
- Got the rear tyres onto the wheels while they are in position on the car. Should have left them off.
- Fixed some front suspension parts that were assembled a bit sloppily many moons ago.
- Re-attached the rear body framework to the undertray.
So the poor old thing has been sitting staring at me for at least 7 years now and she is finally ready for masking up before I paint it.
The moral of the story? Check out your un-finished models every-so-often and do just a little bit if you can. You may find, like myself, your skills have increased heaps since you last touched the model and everything is that much easier because of it.
I will keep you all updated.
Cheers
Warren
