CDW

A Bonneville racer was a great idea. What color did you paint it?

It’s been many decades since I last built this kit. Time to give it another go.

Some months ago, my son gave me a pair of brand-new photography lamps that sit atop tripods. Aside from setting one up and turning it on, twisting the knobs to see how they worked, I did nothing with them until now. Here I have one of those lamps set up and took a few photos to test the difference it makes. Looks like there is a marked difference. Maybe if I had the pair of them set up from two directions, focusing on the object to be photographed, that may be the ticket. It looks like what I need to do is set up a dedicated location to take photos where I can keep all this menagerie set up and ready.

I believe a florescent light was causing a large part of the issue. Here are some photos with that light turned off. Here is one with the light turned on. Thanks for pointing that out. I am not very good at photography.

This wraps it up. Time to move on to a new project. Thanks for following, your likes, your comments. It's been fun as always. See you again soon with a new project.

Getting very close to finish now. As I look at it, I'm satisfied with the model as a nice addition to my model car shelf but it's definitely not a show model. Maybe if you started with the Fujimi body shell then scratch built the chassis or maybe even scavenged the chassis from another kit (not sure what all is out there), added an aftermarket engine/transmission, along with other things, you could make a show model from this. For the $30ish price tag I paid for the model, I really can't complain. Also from this experience, I would recommend using the kit supplied parts and just building this as a curbside model. Forget about wasting time with the kit supplied engine and so forth. Could have built this model in half the time.

This will be where I leave well enough alone and enjoy it as an interesting shelf model. As you said, when you pick it up and look underneath, there is no hiding the fact the collector pipes do not line up properly with the headers. In the end, I chose to make the header pipes line up with the heads, as these parts can be seen with the bonnet open, and not worry about the collector to header match. The only real way I can see to solve this deficiency is to build a custom set of headers. The model is not of sufficient quality to make that a worthwhile effort. To bring this model up to a showpiece level, a LOT of scratch building would be required and that's not something I'm interested to do with this kit. As a side note, I have looked through other builder's efforts with this model and have noticed that the better modelers such as Plasmo, don't even give any photos of the header to collector fit and that leads me to believe it's a common problem. Looking at the history of this kit, it was originally released as a curbside kit, meaning no engine detail except for a plastic insert that showed a raised detail of the bottom of the engine. The collectors were cemented to a plate on the bottom of the chassis. Somewhere along the way, Fujimi added the engine and header details without making other improvements to the chassis. My kit even came with the parts to build it as a curbside model on the sprue trees. If I had known how poor the fit was going to be, I actually would have built it as a curbside model and cut out a lot of work. Anyway, it is what it is.

I can dream....

My grandson (16 years old) is a real time, natural born horse trader. Today, he traded for this Honda CR250 dirt bike. of course, 70 year old grandpa had to try it out. My wife scolded me for it. IMG_4601.MOV

With the right space, the right layout, and a nice size scale like this, I can see where a guy could get hooked for life on model railroading. At my age, will not get into it but it’s very tempting.

Here is another great Don Garlits interview video. The man is a national treasure. It's short, but a very good story about the extraordinary race engine builder, Smokey Yunick and what he did for Don Garlits long, long ago. I guarantee you will like this video.

Headers and side pipe exhaust system. Each side consists of 5 pieces, 10 pieces in all. Bad news, the early indications are, they don't fit. 🤔 Will have to make them fit as best I can. Worst case scenario, the bonnet will remain closed. It appears the headers don't quite reach the heads. I may be able to extend each of the 4 header pipes to each head and make them fit. We'll see. I had the feeling all along this could be a problem area, and it seems as though it is. Murphy's law at work here.

My advantage is a dedicated spray booth in a separate building outside. I agree, without the appropriate gear, leave it alone. I bought this quart size can and a pint of hardener over a year ago and it’s still fine. Paid somewhere around $65 for it. Have used it a number of times on various projects. Custom Creations Creative brand. PS: I see now where my source is selling a 5 liter can with a half-size of hardener for $100, so my memory of $65 for my liter (I said quart earlier) size was probably more like $45 instead of $65, but whatever. You get ripped off when you buy things like this in tiny, small, "hobby sized" bottles. Another thing....keep your hardener far away from the base and use every precaution not to introduce and hardener whatsoever to your can of base. It's so easy to accidentally contaminate the entire batch and if you do, it will harden it in nothing flat.

For the dashboard, I drilled out the molded, raised detail gauges, used the kit gauge decals on a backing sheet made of thin styrene which was then glued to the backside of the dashboard (to show the gauges through the holes). Next used some generic photo etch rings that fit the holes. everything else in the interior is box stock.

A dry-fit. Finished the suspension, lowered it a bit by cutting and repositioning this and that. Out of the box, the model would sit a little higher than you see it here, by 1mm all around.

It’s next to impossible to avoid all specks of dust or even a grain of dirt in a clear coat. So this is pretty much standard procedure to fix it. One must be very careful not to burn through the clear coat or else another clear coat will be needed.

There were some specks of dust embedded in my clear coat, so I wanted to wet sand them out. After allowing the clear coat to cure 72hrs+, used a 3000 grit sanding/polishing sponge to lightly give it a go. Next, used three grades of Tamiya polishing compound in successive sessions. Last, used Tamiya wax to finish it out.

Once this project is completed, sometime in the near future, will build this 1965 world champion Cobra Daytona Coupe. A limited run, fully detailed resin/multi-media kit.

Don’t want to spend a huge amount of time on the engine. Along with the wired distributor will add some hose clamps where appropriate. Once the engine compartment gets built out, I think it will be okay.

2K Clearcoat, Custom Creations paint.

A cardinal rule when build a model kit is to test fit everything in advance. In this case, I failed to test fit the windscreen frame before starting the body work. This came back to bite me in the rear end, but fortunate for me, I had another Fujimi Cobra in the stash. This allowed me to use the body of it (identical bodies) to correct the ill-fitting windscreen frame. The bodies have recessed locations underneath that are supposed to be opened up to fit the windscreen. The instructions don't tell you this, but you figure it out once you try to fit the parts together. Unfortunately, if you open the holes you'll find out the holes don't match the locating pieces on the windscreen. I marked these locations on the bottom of the kit body. Don't open these holes! To get an even, smooth fit to the contour of the body, I've used Tamiya epoxy putty on the bottom of the windscreen where it meets the body. I kneaded up a small amount of the 2-part putty then rolled it into a small diameter "snake". Then placed the putty snake along the bottom of the windscreen. Before setting the windscreen into place on top of the body, smeared a light film of vaseline on the body to serve as a barrier, or else the putty when it dries would stick to the body. I set the windscreen in place over the light film of vaseline then pushed it down to fit the body contour. The excess putty that squeezed out both sides of the windscreen was carefully trimmed away well before the putty set up. I'll now leave this in place until the putty cures, then remove the windscreen for painting and inserting the glass. It's a nice smooth fit now, no gaps between it and the body. As soon as I remove the windscreen, I'll wash and clean the body of any vaseline before packing it back into the model box. The windscreen will need washing and cleaning as well, maybe a light sanding, we'll see.

Painted the stripes today. A couple of small places on the metallic gray paint had a peculiar reaction to the Tamiya masking tape. I will try to work these out as best I can but will live with it. Don't intend to strip it down and start over a second time. Odd thing is, this only happens to me when I'm using the 10mm Tamiya tape. At first, I thought it was because of an old roll I was using (on a different model) and I threw the old roll away and started with a new, fresh roll. But here is the same problem again this time on another model using 10mm tape. Never happens with other sizes of Tamiya tape, only the 10mm. Weird.

The intake manifold has the distributor molded in and rather poor in detail. I’m going to drill it out and replace it with this aftermarket distributor.