Thanks, all... the decals are surprisingly good for the fabric. And it must have been a real beast to drive like that, spreadeagled around the transmission tunnel. The thought of all that torque whirring heavy, sharp bits of metal at 8000 rpm in close proximity to your nethers is quite unnerving, isn't it?
Anyway, here we are tonight...
First up, in unforgiving close-up, the dash. The raised detail in the dials is very finely engraved, so I gave up on trying to get the decals to settle down, and did them by painting Citadel Chaos Black over the Humbrol Chrome Silver sprayed dashboard. Once the black had dried, I lightly scraped over with a cocktail stick, and it came easily off the raised detail. Finally, several coats of Klear for glass. I added pull switches in the main binnacle, raising the moulded detail higher, turned the left hand "button" in the centre console into a twist-switch, and made an ignition key from flattened solder to fit into the right hand position,
...and now, if you're going to build one of these, pay close attention! I had a bit of a disaster, and what you see above is the rebuilt version...
There is an upper frame piece, made up of the firewall, which sits on the cockpit tub in front of the dash, and three rods. Two go diagonally from the left to the crossbar just in front of the engine, and the third goes downward from the right side to the lower frame ahead of the exhausts, just behind the wishbones. If you want to get this piece to fit, you need to be very careful.
There is a cut-out in the front corner of the engine which allows the middle rod to reach the central attachment. If you wire the engine as I did to start with, the rod won't fit. I had to move the two thicker black leads out of the way - one backwards, one much closer to the top of the engine. I'd suggest doing any wiring round here with either soft vinyl or solder, so you can move it easily!
The second issue is the exhaust manifolds. For the right hand side rod to be able to attach the frame, they need to sit as low as possible - but how low is fixed by the lower chassis frame. Since the instructions would have you attach the manifolds very early, which building the block, and they don't have a very precise location, it's easy to end up with them too high - especially if you fit them as "square" to the mounting surface as you can. I'd suggest here that you either just press them into position, or tack them with a couple of small dabs of glue - no more. When the engine block is fitted in place (it's held well-aligned with a tab), flex the exhausts down as far as they will go onto the bottom frame, and fix them more firmly.
If you try to flex them when they are more firmly fixed, the engine springs out, the front frame breaks, the brake drum falls off and one of your wheel bearings comes apart... I warn you!
It wasn't irredeemable, but it was a horrible moment, and an unnecessary one...
Normal service will be resumed tomorrow!
bestest,
M.
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