¹⁄35

Trakz German Staff Car

The Build--- Part 2

a.k.a. “THE SCREAM“

This where the fun really began! After finishing the interior painting, and letting it dry for a few days, I glued the doors on. The door interiors were pre-painted along with the rest of the interior, using the same colors. A little bit of sanding got a decent fit for the doors, I then had to fit a narrow piece on the interior that is the centre support for the doors. Also pre-painted to match, and it sure looked like it would fit on the dry runs, but after the doors were glued in place, it would no longer slide down into place.

I now had three choices, one was to try to widen the space these pieces slid into, the second was to pop the doors off and try again, the easiest was the third, narrow the centre piece. I sanded each side to try to keep the piece even, and eventually it slid into place like it should have, except it was now a little too long, a little snip and a little more sanding. Photo 15 shows the door in place from the rear, and Photo 16&17 show the doors in place and the centre strip fitting between the two silver vertical strips.

Another scream, and the hammer almost came out when I looked at the doors from the front (Photo 18). No matter how many photos I looked at, I could not see any of the doors sticking out this far from the rest of the body. They were between 1.5mm to 2mm too thick at the front, and .5 to 1mm too thick at the rear doors. Maybe no one will notice! Actually I was ready to trash this kit by now. Another small point about the doors is they come molded with the windows up, and flashed over. No matter how gentle I tried to score around this flash, the frames just disintegrated on me. OH well…. Windows all the way down.

At this point I decided to set the kit aside for a while, a long while. When I returned I tackled the fenders, and the supercharger pipes. The pipes really turned out to be easier to make than I thought they would be. First I tried a flexible drinking straw, too large in diameter. Next I tried bending some plastic tube, it kept kinking on me. I finally found some soft solid solder the right diameter, this I wrapped with some really thin solder for the flex tube look, and bent it to shape after taping the fender in place. I then glued it solidly to the fender. I brushed on a coat or two of CA to hold the smaller solder coils in place on the thicker solder (Photos 19-20).