Thanks Mike. I kinda figured they were shocks of some sort. This just seems to be one of those builds that takes it's sweet old time getting there.

Kimmo

In continuing with the what else is going to slow me down motif, I had a minor mishap which turned into a blessing in disguise. In doing some dry fitting of the chassis for the umpteenth time, the engine decided to pop off with no damage, just naughty words. Because the chassis fit is so tight, all the flexing loosened the joins. I ended up having to sand down the chassis frames some more. As I said, this was a bit of a blessing, the steering column was giving me absolute fits. All those bits added to the right side of the frame yesterday made fitting the column a right and proper pain. This is the offending piece, the pin on the locking nut. If it isn't dead centre, you're sort of up a creek.



This is going with the assumption that I was actually trying to mount it in the correct place. The instructions aren't very helpful as mentioned upthread. Logic dictates it can't go anywhere else. Next issue was the angle of the column. I already knew this was a bit hinkey, so in the end I filed a small round notch in the firewall. The column mount will now sit where ever it sits. In the pics it's just wedged in place. I'll adjust the height once the steering wheel is on.





Turning to the make work department, I added the fastening wing nuts for the side panels. A strip of 10 x 60 thou was added to either side towards the rear, and a strip of 20 x 40 was added to the front edge. I scrounged wing nuts from the spares box.




And finally we have a mounted chassis! I was wondering how the front end was going to sit, the answer lies in the tow hooks. Glue the hooks in place on the hull only, line up with the mounting guides on the chassis frame. Once they've dried a bit, glue to the chassis and clamp in place. I'll get clearer pictures when the clothes pegs come off.




And some engine compartment shots.






So for better or worse, it's full steam ahead and hope that all the weathering and any touch ups needed can be reached through the available openings. I'm 95% confident that this is the case. Right, it's another gig night and I'm looking forward to tunes and beer.

Kimmo

A good session today. Got the wiring done, an initial dirtying of the engine and compartment and gave the interior an initial wash to get some definition going.

The wiring wasn't as tricky as I had feared, just took some time. I decided to get fancy with a couple of them. I wrapped some copper wire around strecthed sprue to create a spring that is pretty much hidden behind the cooling hose and wrapped some more very loosely around whatever cable that's supposed to represent per the refs. Still need to give the wires some paint and dirt. The wires got pulled through the holes and just tacked on to the back of the dash.
The engine got a little bit more dirt and oil staining.







I also added the brace on top of the radiator. That was interesting, to say the least. The brace needs to be bent, but there are no bend marks on the pe piece and of course, no measurements in the instructions, although they do provide precise bending angles. Yay. Here's a rough set of measurements. I say rough because yours will undoubtedly be slightly different to mine and any others as well. Mark the halfway point of the brace, and measure out 10 mm, that should be fairly constant. The bends are where you'll need to fiddle and try a few times. Fortunately the brass is very flexible. The key was getting the ends short enough to get tucked under the hood framing. Getting it in place was not fun. I ended up using a file handle instead of the toothpick shown for more surface contact and the used gator glue to get the silly beggar to somewhat stick. Then pushing down at the front edge, gator glued the ends under the hood frames and pinched with tweezers to get a decent sit. I then painted on some Vallejo primer to seal everything in place. I honestly can't say if it would have been wiser to add earlier or not. If you add it earlier as per the instructions, you run the real risk of knocking it off a few times. So pick your poison.



And this is where I say I could have sworn I had a picture of the brace in situ. Next update.

Speaking of missing pics, here's a shot of the tow hooks in place, refer back to the previous post if it isn't clear what's going on.





And on to the interior. I used water colour again, just mixed up some brown and black and went at it. It will get another coat of "dirt" once I figure out what my dirt colour will actually be. Another great thing about using water colours is you can leave the paint on a palette and add water to existing mixes and you're good to go again. No need to worry about making too much or too little.





I'll go back again and soften up some of the staining. It should go without saying that if you do use water colour and you want it to be permanent, you'll have to give it a clear coat of either varnish or a medium to seal it. If you do, either spray on in light mists or just touch a loaded brush here and there and let capillary action do the work. The colours will in all probability fade under a clear coat, so experimentation will be needed. The wash flowed well because the surface was glossy. If you have a flat base, you'll find that the surface will get stained quite a bit even after a good wipe because of all the microscopic dimples inherent in a flat finish. I would recommend giving this technique a try, you won't need to break the bank, a cheap set of starters tubes will do fine. Mine came from Lidl if I remember correctly.

With a bit of luck, more tomorrow.

Kimmo

Another short but fruitful session. Pedals, levers and knobs installed and the rear hood in place. Be careful removing the gear lever and brake handle from the sprues and cleaning them up, they're very thin and fragile. The knobs were made from stretched sprue with the heads mushroomed with a candle flame. I added some wear to the interior while I was at it and had a chance to go straight down through the hood opening.








The hood was glued in place using the armoured covers as a guide. Pay attention here. The fit will be dictated by the hinges. Everything else can be filled etc, you don't want to misalign the hinges, m'kay? Tack the hood in place at the front and sides, let dry for a few minutes, then remove the covers and glue at the windshield line. Let dry again for a bit, then add the covers back to help keep everything in place.



Moving on to the front, I added a couple of 10 x 20 thou strips to build up the nose cap a little. You can also see yesterday's radiator brace.



That's it for today, another short session tomorrow. My mom's visiting so the next few days might not see much bench time. Getting some nice goodies and supplies from the Great White North. Red cross packages are always a good thing.

Kimmo

No bench time today and tomorrow's not looking good either. With some luck I might get a couple of hours at some point over the weekend. On the plus side, I got some nice new brushes and water soluble oil paints, I might even get a chance to test them out on this project.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,

Hadn't looked in for a few days nice progress.

Cheers

Al

Thanks Al, I was wondering whether I was starting to talk to myself again.

Kimmo

No worries, Kimmo, unless you're answering yourself!

FWIW, I'm still here and following along.

I agree with Al, your M-H is indeed coming along nicely.

Thanks Mike. Doing blogs is a little strange sometimes, you see people are looking in but not leaving comments. Maybe I'm just getting addicted to the fame and was looking for a fix of loving from the masses

Kimmo

And I finally got some bench time. Cleaned up some seams and painted some stuff. Short and sweet.


The nose got trimmed and sanded, I decided to remove the rivets, the refs seem to indicate this. I guess the rivets are a carry over from the initial releases.




Added 20 x 30 strips to the windshield frame to represent the recess that in all probability should be there. A bit of sanding and blending will be needed.




Continued with the interior bits so I can add the roof plate. The plan is to get the roof in place this week and a base coat of primer on. Summer vacation is almost here and that means bench time may be hard to come by as of next week. I can't believe time has flown by like this.







The turret got some paint and wear too.




There isn't a whole lot left to do really, the stuff that is left is going to be time consuming though. All that lovely etch will be added and I need to scratch the handle/actuator for the armored grills and a seat for the commander. I should get some more time in tomorrow, as always, stay tuned.

Kimmo

Another good session today, lots of fiddly stuff. Looking over the refs for the actuator rod and clamp, I realized I'd forgotten a detail on the left side, some sort of cooling contraption. I think. Or maybe a fire suppression system. No idea. All I know is I think I figured out what that little hose on the radiator is supposed to attach to. I was trying to figure out where the hose ran in the engine compartment and finally found the answer on the Mk III pages. After a quick sort through my wire assortment, I discovered something appropriate and said: self, let's do this.

I removed the short piece of hose, drilled into the radiator and drilled a hole in the firewall. I bent the wire to shape and test fitted, worked nicely with minimal fuss. Just took a while. Fortunately the wire is already black so I didn't have to paint it. I attached the wire to the firewall halfway into the hole so I could mount the hose from the other side. A dab of super glue on the hidden side and bingo, job done.





Now for the cylinder and hose. A length of tube with a rod core, the tube was rounded off and the wire glued into a drilled hole. The handle and mount is flattened strecthed sprue with a slice of sprue on top.




The actuator rod and clamp were simple enough if not somewhat fiddly. The actuator is just 20 thou rod bent to shape. The clamp is 10 x 60 strip bent into a U. The fun part was drilling a a hole through 40 thou rod for the actuator to slip through then trimmed and glued in place.
Not the clearest of shots but you should get the idea. You can also see the rough cylinder taking shape. The rod was painted with a permanent marker, it's supposed to be glossy so I went with easy.



The steering wheel was painted and added, as was a missing knob.



I gave the armored glass frames some OD primer after adding the eye hooks, they should bend downward so keep that in mind, and glued the glass in place. Fit was good although the glass is slightly distorted and has minor scratching, it doesn't actually look terribly out of place so I didn't bother fixing it. I just ran some thinned gator glue around the edges.




Yesterday's recess strips didn't work as hoped so I redid them. This time around I beveled the inside edges slightly to get the sit angle in line with the hull sides.



And that's that for today. Hopefully more tomorrow.

Kimmo

Some more progress today. Lots of little things here and there, trying to get the interior sorted so I can get the roof on.

The pump thingy painted and installed along with the battery. Not sure if this is a spare or what. The seats are just dry fit to see where we're at. Added the "dirt" with water colour.



Rear cushion installed



Armoured glass and frames dirtied and dry fitted



Roof washed and armoured cover support glued and painted. Be careful which support swing you use, you get an up and down option. And of course, be careful removing from the sprue.



The recess wing with a few coats of primer will get a sanding tomorrow. The left nose frame need some shimming.



I should get another short session in tomorrow. With some luck, the roof will get glued in place. Need to triple check that everything that goes into the interior is actually in place.

Kimmo

Our long national nightmare is over, we have a roof! Before we get to that, some interior bits needed doing.

The radio got its protective cage, this went fairly well. I knew that the smaller cage might be a problem because of all the wiring added, turns out it fit. First off, you need to figure out where to make your bends. I took a piece of paper cut to length and used that as a bending guide. The etch frames are rather delicate so extreme care is needed. Mark off your bends, lay flat and use a ruler or piece of styrene if you don't have a handy bending tool and a razor blade to make the actual bend. I used the brass wire provided in the kit to make a curved bend.




And in situ. There is an antenna wire back there too, it just isn't very visible.



The rear seats and covers for the batteries in place. The cover doesn't flip upright because of the rear wall so I improvised a couple of stays from flattened stretched sprue.



The front seats and handle in place. The actuator rod is glued as well, just not really visible from this angle.




Now with roof goodness.






Some gaps to deal with between the roof and frames. I should have paid a little more attention to where the frames would actually sit. If you manage to get the frames butting against the roof, you may not need to trim the visor frames like I did. Perfect putty will take care of those gaps pretty well and the head cushion will hide the rest up front. Fortunately there are a lot of openings to work through.





And seam filling almost done.



The rear wall will go in next go round. There was a bit of a gap on the right side so I used a strip of 10 x 60 rather than try to fill the gap. In dry fitting, I also noticed the cage was touching the support frame on the door opening, so that was sanded back a little. No pics, next time.

So, major progress made today. I figure two decent sessions for the etch and commander's seat and then paint. The question remains when these next sessions will be. Stay tuned.

Kimmo

I've been following this build quietly from the start and must say I am very impressed , great attention to detail Kimmo!

Aha! One of the hitherto silent followers! Thanks for following along and for the kind words.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,

Lovely work this is a terrific build.

Al

Thanks Al.

Kimmo

Starting to look like an armored car now, Kimmo!

I really like how the radio has turned out. That's a lot of detail in such a small space.

Thanks Mike. The radio is probably the best injection molded one I've ever seen in terms of fine detail. It's a real challenge to do it justice when painting. It's funny how my mood changed when I got the roof on, and now it feels solid. This has been taking so long I was beginning to wonder when I'd get it done, now I know it won't be that long until it's time to start planning the next project.

Kimmo

Managed a few hours today. Installed the rear plate and scratched the commander's seat.

As I mentioned, there was a slight gap that was dealt with by gluing a strip of 10 x 60. I didn't want to deal with a larger gap than necessary on the inside of the vehicle. As it was, some thinned putty was needed. I had also mentioned the butt joins of the wheel wells, why IBG did it this way, I'll never figure out. Leave them loose and after the rear is attached, glue and clamp. I puttied the outer seams and primed to see where we are.







The seat and frame was straight forward once I got an idea of the measurements. I did some rough guestimates using proportions from the reference pics and came up with a seat of 10 x 6 mm and an overall height of 17 mm. The frames are 10 x 30 strip cut to size and the ends rounded slightly. The turret race was glued on first. I lined up the stubs with one pointing straight ahead. It looks like IBG got this area more or less right. The stubs are actually clips on the real thing, I shaved mine off cleaning up the undersides where I had filled in the holes so be careful here. You can go whole hog and add various missing details should you wish, the only thing I added was a handle made from wire that was formed whole and then cut, the pics should make that clearer.








And painted up, still needs weathering.





Another couple of things out of the way that were holding up the build. Everything else is just simple details (more or less) with the exception of the armoured grills, that will be interesting. Hopefully I'll get another session in this week.

Kimmo

Nothing new to report unfortunately. Looks like the next installment will be next week some time. I have had a chance to do some musing over the construction sequence and have come to the conclusion that it might be best to do it the following way:

1) Complete the chassis in its entirety. The only issues to watch for are the steering column and whether you want to position the front wheels pointing left or right. Assemble the engine and radiator, but do not attach until you have the painting and wiring sorted out if you go this route. Refer to pics and notes upthread.

2) Assemble the hull, window frame and nose cap leaving off the hood plates and windows (use them as guides as needed). Fix the door openings before gluing if you wish. The hull should go together without needing to use the floor or chassis as a guide; dry fit, tape, think, then glue. You can detail the interior framing and dashboard, if you wish. The body should drop down onto the chassis/floor (Edit: if you attach the firewall to the hull first that is, see below), so decide when and how you want to add the lower/firewall framing. These might be best added to the floor and firewall rather than to the hull. You will probably need to remove the mounting tabs on the floor to make dry fitting easier. Alignment can be done with the the inserts that get attached to the bottom of the floor plate. These can be taped in place if needed, and you may need to shave off alignment ribs on the hull.

3) Floor/firewall. This is where you need to make a decision. I'm leaning towards adding the firewall to the floor because of the fiddly nature of the steering column rather than the firewall to the hull. Check for gaps and shim as necessary. Framing will hide some of the gaps, but not necessarily all.

4) Attach the engine to the chassis, run the steering column through the firewall, attach the floor to the chassis. Now you can add any remaining wiring to the engine, leave extra on the interior side to get tucked up behind the dash.

5) Drop the hull in place when you have everything painted and detailed to your heart's content.

Regardless of whether you follow the instructions or decide to go with my thoughts on the subject, you will need to think ahead, consult the instructions and any notes I've made, and do plenty of dry fitting. The main advantage to doing it as I suggest is that you will now have sub-assemblies to glue together rather than trying to get bits and pieces lined up as you go. Obviously, I can't say with 100% certainty that this is the way to go. If I ever get another kit to do, I will do it this way and then compare notes.

Kimmo

EDIT: It occurred to me after writing this that the firewall will prevent a straight drop fit with the hull due to the pinch in the hull sides unless it is attached to the hull rather than the floor. The floor/firewall should, however, slide in from the rear. As always, dry fit and think a bit to see how to best proceed.

I finally got some bench time in, seems like months since I've been able to do anything. Funny how that goes. Did some seam cleaning, filling and started on some etch.

The nose plates were glued on and the gap filled. I had shimmed the left side a bit as it had quite the nasty gap. I'm pretty sure this is because of the soft nature of the plastic twisting and bowing rather than a design flaw. The hood frames can be easily replaced with strip styrene or brass should you want a more scale thickness, and in the process you should also manage to avoid any unsightly gaps. There should probably be a hairline gap, I'll run a blade once the putty and check coat of primer have cured.




Speaking of scale thickness and staying with the hood, here's one of the rear bullet splash guards from the Part set. They're a simple enough replacement if you want something a little thinner than the what the kit provides. You will of course need to sand off the ones on the kit. The bend is marked on the backside and is tough to align without the guide line. I bent mine backwards as the divots for bolts aren't really appropriate anyway as the guards were welded on.



I cleaned up the headlight mount. I decided to use the kit part rather than fiddle with etch here. The part is very petite and doesn't look overly out of scale. Take real care when removing from the sprue and cleaning up the stubs on the lights. My approach to removing stubs from uneven parts is to first trim close with a razor blade, sand down to the higher profile, rock or scribe a guide line for the edge of the lower profile and sand or scrape the rest. If you aren't all that confident cleaning up stubs from small or uneven pieces, pick up a cheap 1/72 scale kit to practice on. The older the better, lots of cleanup need on those.



The rear hull got tow hooks and the step and tray. The step is provided as two pieces by Part. The frame is very thin and didn't want to straighten out properly so I ended up scraping the tread off the kit piece and thinning the leading edge. A lot less hassle. The tray is slightly undersized in width so I shaved off a bit of the weld bead and glued it up against the tray.



And today's insanity is brought to you by the letters P and E. The Part set includes replacement armoured grill covers. They are definitely more in scale, but are a real pain in the neck to put together. The spacers are provided as separate pieces which means each side needs 12 tiny washers. After some trial and error, the best approach I came up with is to first thread a washer onto stretched sprue (wire will work too) and secure it with some super glue. Do this 6 times and then thread the wires through the middle plate and glue on the front side. Then thread the remaining washers onto the backside and glue again. I used a fine copper wire to place a drop of glue where needed. You get quite a few extra washers, I'm sure a few will go flying. I'll get some more pics of the process when I do the other side. To be absolutely and brutally honest, this should have been thought out a little better by Part, a thicker fret of etch with the spacers in place would have saved a lot of hair pulling and foul language. It would almost certainly cost more, but I think most would gladly pay the premium.




While it may not look like it, a fair amount of progress was made today, and the next session just might be the last one prior to painting. That will hopefully be in the next couple of days.

Kimmo

Hi Kimmo,

Looking excellent - nice but fiddly work by the look of it.

Al

Thanks Al, fiddly would be one of the adjectives I could use. It would have helped somewhat if Part had suggested a method on the instructions and/or provided some rod or wire. One small bit of good news with the washers is that there is only one very thin attachment point which will be hidden from view if you position it correctly.

Kimmo

Big update. Got myself a major session in yesterday and have the bench to myself until next Wednesday. Continuing with the fun that is photo etch, I did the other grill and added the bolt heads to both. What good are armoured covers without hinges? So they were done up too.

Here's my method for tackling this silliness:







So, thread a washer on wire or sprue and glue, drop in place, glue. Flip over, thread a washer, glue. Then thread the slatted plates on, glue and trim. The fun doesn't stop there, then you need to add 6 bolt heads per unit. No pics here, the camera isn't picking up anything useful. I added a drop of diluted gator glue (regular white glue should be fine), used the tip of a moistened tooth pick to drop the bolt in place and let dry for a bit, then touched some Vallejo primer to the heads to secure them in place. Varnish should do the trick as well.


Moving on to the hinges, Part has for some reason etched the hinges together, meaning you have to cut them in half and remove some stubs. If you've never done hinges before, they're not difficult, just fiddly and time consuming and of course, quite small. Use tape to secure them to a surface to help with bending, the hinge portion folds very easily. I used a wire that was slightly thinner than the one that comes with the kit as a former. Do the double prong first, then slide the single in place, thread some sprue or wire through the two loops trapping the single in place, bend the single over the wire and trim to fit. Simple, right? Fortunately Part provides a few spares except for the hood hinges. A good pair of tweezers are a must here to crimp the loops tight up against the wire. Use tweezers, knife blades etc to prod and poke and hold things in place, take your time and you should get the hang of it pretty quickly.




Next up is the hood. You need to bend a couple of bullet splashes, make sure you get the bend square. A bending tool will really help here. The handle needs the feet twisted. Fairly straight forward stuff. I glued a sheet of 5 thou to thicken up the hood a touch and to make gluing the hood prop easier. Believe it or not, good old Humbrol poly worked here. Rough up the etch with some worn wet/dry, slather the etch with glue, slap the plastic on and press it against a flat surface. If you have any loose corners, a drop of super glue will take care of that.




Next up, the actuators for the grills. The kit supplied actuators are sort of simplified and somewhat thick, and might be a little tricky to remove without breaking them. The Part etch is more accurate, but a whole lot more complex. In either case, you'll need to add an actuating arm for the opening/closing rod. I made one from brass cut to size from the etch fret. A dry fit revealed that the left side hole on the hull needed to be moved forward a hair as the radiator was interfering. Plug and re drill. I half painted the assembly to make life easier. The door hinges and rods need to still be added.




More in part two below.

Kimmo