CDW

@gsdpic

Something I failed to mention: the instructions show an option to cut open the headlamp covers on the car body as the headlamps on this Ferrari are retractable. However, there are no further instructions to show the parts or part numbers for building out the headlamp buckets once the covers have been cut from the body. This presents no problem for me as I have no intention of building the model with the headlamps in the opened position as I prefer the clean lines of the closed position. There may or may not be parts on the parts trees for building out headlamp buckets, I am not certain. Just a heads-up so you won't get caught unaware.

At this stage of the game, it's time to begin test-fitting major components such as the body to chassis fit with the engine and tranny in place. I don't want to get a surprise with fit issues after it's too far along to make adjustments if necessary. While it's a very tight fit, as it should be, it's a precise fit and one I'm happy with at this time.

As you will see, it's going to be a very detail-rich model with all the features of the 1:1 car in clear view. That engine in its mid-ship configuration sees a lot of detail get buried, but the turbochargers and air breathers stand proud. That's one of the reasons I was being so careful trying to get those features lined up properly.

There's a lot more detail to add and now is the time for me to figure out whether those details should be installed with the chassis in place, or installed with the chassis separate outside the body. The instruction sequence shows the latter, but I don't trust it. With the tight fit being what it is, I'm concerned some of these details to come might interfere with fitting the chassis to the body...it's that tight getting it into position. 

Wow, looks great, Gary. Well worth all the effort you've put into it.

On a flying model, those ribs with the cap strips make for a remarkably light, strong, wing.

I have good news and bad news.

The bad news; this model is one of the most challenging, difficult assemblies to get together I've ever tried to build. It's enough to make a preacher cuss, as my dear old dad used to say when he was working on our old farm equipment. So, hold tight and be patient when you go to build yours, Gary.

The good news; I managed to get one side of the turbocharger assembly in place in a half-decent manner. Not perfect mind you, but decent. Without wasting too many words, I'll try to tell you what you need to expect when you get to this phase of construction.

If you look closely at the 1:1 photos of the engine bay I posted in an earlier reply, you'll notice that the breathers and injectors are slightly offset when you compare one side with the other. One side sits slightly forward of the set on the other side. The model replicates that offset. However, the model does not make any allowance for this offset when it comes to the turbocharger piping, which has to meet the breathers. I needed to cut off a mm or two from the air breather box shown in my next progress photos to make the piping match up to the opening in the breather. It's clearly an engineering oversight when the model was developed, but it can be corrected with some "field engineering" as I did here. Additionally, at one point I need three hands to apply a dab of accelerator to a super glue joint on the turbocharger piping while I held it in place so that it wrapped around the chassis bracing and down to the other half of the turbocharger extending from the headers. My granddaughter politely and adeptly provided the third hand to apply the accelerator. 

17 minutes ago, king derelict said:

Unless you are silly enough to use black primer on the fret first! Just did that. I now have a scrap piece of clear acrylic used with a sheet of white paper for future silliness. The black acrylic square is a great base for cutting PE and I use a similar bending tool. I find it easier to line up the folds exactly. I have the pliers but on my set the jaws don’t line up perfectly. Not sure if that’s my fault. I think we all develop our preferences for handling PE. I have the former for circular bending which works well with a selection of drill bits.

Alan

Get a bottle of Mr. Metal Primer. It's clear, self-leveling, dries quickly and can be brushed on photo etch. A bottle of it will seem to last forever. I've used the same bottle for 10 years and it's still half full.

After many years messing around with photo etch parts, these two tools from Tamiya are by far the most often ones used from my tool chest to bend photo etch parts:

Amazon.com: TAMIYA America, Inc Bending Pliers-Photo Etched Parts, TAM74067 : Arts, Crafts & Sewing

Amazon.com: TAMIYA America, Inc Mini Bending Pliers for PE Part, TAM74084 : Arts, Crafts & Sewing

The small set being the most frequently used and the large set second most. These particular tools might be found elsewhere for less cost, I just used these links with photos to show exactly the tools spoken of. 

When you have long photo etch pieces to bend, longer than the largest Tamiya set can handle, then I use a tool similar to the one you own, only it's larger/longer than yours. I've seen other modelers simply use a metal ruler and single edge razor blade to bend photo etch as well. That's the low-cost economy model right there.

You are right, the prices on these items have gone up since I bought them last. 🙂

PS: If you can find a 12" x 12" or similar size piece of black acrylic sheet, it's perfectly flat and a huge help when cutting or bending photo etch. The black background makes it much easier to see what you're doing, particularly when cutting photo etch from the frets.

49 minutes ago, Darius359au said:

Was going to apologize for the slight history hijack of your build thread😎😄

Ironically I'm doing a Battle of Berlin theme for my 1/16 armour models ,the T34/85 1944 I shared pictures of is  55th guards brigade Berlin 1945 ,I'm in the middle of building a Panzer IV J late based around some photo's i've found  ,after that the plans for a tiger 1 ,tiger 2 and a Panther G late with IR - all in 1/16 ,next thing is to find somewhere to display them ,i'm already out of room with 2🤣

Richard

Don’t know if you are interest ex d, but there are some nice 1/16 scale figures on sale at Andy’s Hobby Headquarters on line. I was just looking at them on his sale page today. These are new ones that have recently been released.

After looking over the photos of the 1:1 Ferrari engine bay, I will not go through the effort to install ignition wiring. All that detail will be buried and hidden from view, so in my opinion, it would be a long climb for a short slide.

Just one more thing I realized after studying photos of the 1:1 engine; the instructions show parts E6 and E5 installed in the wrong locations. They need to be flipped. See the 1:1 photo and then look at the intsructions. You'll see what I'm talking about. In a way, it really won't matter too much if you get it wrong as it will be buried from view in either event. I only discovered the error as I was looking at 1:1 photos to create ignition wiring. 

Mea Culpa: I erred when I followed the instructions sequentially rather than looking further ahead in the instructions first, then looking at photo references of the 1:1 car.

The kit offers the option of displaying the engine separately on an engine stand. If I had intended to do that, following sequentially would not have been a problem, but that's not what I wanted. I wanted to display my engine inside the chassis, inside the car. Again, looking at photos of the 1:1 car is essential to getting this complicated turbocharger assembly right. The instructions do a poor job of pointing this out, but it may be a language barrier problem. I can't read Japanese so I have no idea what the instructions may or may not say about sequence, but the photos in the instructions certainly don't point it all out clearly.

Here are 1:1 photos of how the complete engine and turbocharger assemblies would look.

Here are photos of the 1:1 car/chassis with the engine and turbochargers inside the chassis/car.

I found that I first needed to glue the headers to the parts labeled E36 and E37 in the instructions. Next I attached parts E53 and E57 to the turbochargers and then attached those to the collector box D7. Last, attach parts E29 and D36 to the turbocharger and header assemblies as seen here.

The chassis and components shown here are assembled and painted before installing the engine assembly. The remainder of the turbocharger parts, the air breather boxes as well as the injector covers are only installed after the engine is in place inside the chassis.

My engine and breather boxes are dry-fitted here in the chassis for purpose of explanations of the sequence to follow. Do not assemble all the turbocharger parts as one assembly. The only way that could possibly work out okay is if you intend to display the engine on a stand rather than inside the car. 

25 minutes ago, gsdpic said:

I wonder about first sticking at least some of the pieces together with plain white glue until you get things aligned, so that it is easier to undo.  Then once it is together use regular plastic cement.  Though that might be hard to do without messing up the paint so may require touch up.

 

First of all, I recommend all the individual pieces be painted first, before any assembly. In retrospect, I don't see a benefit in temporary gluing. I'm working out the correct assembly steps as I write this and keeping my fingers crossed because I believe I have found the best sequence to follow. I'll write some more on this and provide some photos of the steps I took later on tonight or tomorrow.

10 hours ago, gsdpic said:

That's unfortunate, but thanks for the heads up.  I actually bought my own copy of this kit off of ebay a few weeks back.  Not sure when I'll start on it, I've got way too many things in my stash and really want to wrap up the Sopwith Camel before doing another car.  But yes, that engine looks pretty tricky.  What you've done so far looks excellent; hope you can recover with out too much grief.

 

Thanks Gary.

Glad you are seeing/reading this before you start your model. Hopefully we can learn from each other's mistakes and solutions to problem areas. I should have known I was likely to run into issues without careful planning on these particular assemblies. The first clue is when you realize there are no aides built in for correct alignment of the pieces. Even now, it's going to take some guesswork to find the correct approach. I'll try to photograph the steps I take so I can share what works (hopefully). I plan to work on this conundrum for a couple of hours today to try and straighten it all out. 

I'm having a difficult time with the turbocharger assemblies. There are many parts to each side of the assemblies and the challenging part is finding a correct way to assemble so as all line up properly in the end.

At this point, I need to disassemble what I've done and start over again, without destroying critical parts in the process. I'll even need to disassemble the headers as well as the covers that sit atop the injectors.

The areas I highlighted in yellow on pages 3, 4, and 6, give an idea of the complexity of the turbocharger pieces and how they must align. 

122969-21-instructions highlighted turbo chargers.pdf

Very sharp figure. I like the fact it does not fit a well-beaten path of many figures associated with conventional war themes. Master Box are a sort of treasure for unusual figures. 

I wonder how hard it would be to build a bridge diorama similar to the one on the box art.

She's big and beautiful. Great model, enjoyed following your build of it.

29 minutes ago, DocRob said:

Should be a nice kit, Craig. Peterpools over on LSM recently built the basic version of the kit and made a build log

MiniArt P-47D Thunderbolt: COMPLETED 2/13/24 - LSM 1/48 Work in Progress - Large Scale Modeller

Cheers Rob

That's a great-looking build on that Jug!

6 minutes ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Hey Craig, great subject!  The kit looks really nice - I have the Tamiya one but this Miniart kit looks amazing.  Not sure if you saw, but Plasmo recently built this kit:

 

 

I did see this. It's inspirational.

6 minutes ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow, just found out you finished this one Craig - amazing job!  That Mr. Color silver paint job looks fantastic - love it!

Thanks, Mike.

There are a few things I need to add for it to be truly finished.

I need to attach the landing gear doors, but I lost one. I'm confident I will find it because it's too large to be lost, but will wait to install them all at the same time when I round up the lost sheep.

Need to install the wing tip lights.

Need to attach the antennae wire from the cockpit, through the canopy, and to the vertical stabilizer.

23 minutes ago, Egilman said:

It was printed on the fabric before it was applied to the aircraft..

 

A sort of silk screen process maybe? Have you ever seen modelers apply it using masks? It would be tedious at best.

MONTEX K32215 - 1:32 German Lozenge Camouflage (5 colours) - Exito Model Store

(these may not be the correct mask for this particular model)

For any of you who may want one of these models, Andys Hobby Headquarters online shop have them on sale for $159. That's one heck of a bargain right there.

I wonder how this Camo was applied on the 1:1 aircraft back then. Are there any photos of it being applied? Were masks used or was it applied freehand?

I love the scale look of your Camel, Gary.

Does the kit provide a set of full size plans for the model, or just an instruction manual? Is it intended to remain uncovered when finished?

For many years, I built and flew scale radio controlled models. Your kit reminds me of Lou Proctor kits of WW1 subjects. Very detailed models of similar construction but of course, the Proctor models are designed to fly.

A fabric material from Sig was used to cover the models. The fabric would shrink tight when heated with an iron or heat gun, then dope would be applied to seal and paint the fabric.

Thanks, Dan!

Getting back to my Ferrari 288 GTO Yellow...starting up where I left off...

Ignition wiring and turbochargers will be going on next.

14 minutes ago, Egilman said:

Skyblazers decals are hard to find especially in 1/48... they are usually sold out...

 

The Trumpy decals will work you just have to be extra careful with them...  the Thing with skyblazers decals? the research shows that there isn't a great deal of demand for them so the printers don't print a lot of them, but when one does, they sell out quickly so fast you have to be there when they put the ad up... 

 

One of the weird things about modeling that comes about from time to time...

There is a guy on EBay who has a set of TwBobs decals for sale for around $45 plus shipping. Too much IMO, and he won’t negotiate. I can buy the entire Trumpy F-100D with Thunderbirds decals for around $40, so guess what I’ll do if I still want a Thunderbird? A no brainer.

I started off with paining and assembly of the intake trunk and the cockpit. In an attempt to use only the kit parts, placed the decals on the kit cockpit consoles and instrument panel. Not happy with the results. Too toy-like in appearance. I ordered up an Aires cockpit found at an online source for $16, then a resin pilot figure to go inside the cockpit. Will put this build on a short hold until I receive the parts I ordered.

A dry fit of the fuselage halves reveals soft engraved details that will be lost once the halves are glued together and the seams filled/sanded smooth. So, there is some panel line engraving and rivet replacement in my future.

On the decal front, I did not find a suitable replacement set for my C version, so will make do with the kit decals when that time comes. Reports say the stock Trumpeter decals are not very good.

When I first saw this model was coming out, I thought I could do without it. The price tag was north of $50 and the venerable (though long in the tooth, fabulous, 1:48 scale Tamiya Thunderbolt kit was already in my stash. But then I saw one of these MiniArt kits built and I knew I wanted one. MiniArt have produced some nice kits, but this may be their best offering yet. I found this one on sale at an online hobby shop and ordered it up. While I won't be starting the build for a while, I thought you might want to see what's inside the box. Two very nice decal sheets with markings for three different aircraft, a photo etch sheet, a beautiful instruction booklet and a ton of styrene plastic sprues/parts. Every ordnance used by the 'bolt is included to choose from for your specific build. I'm looking forward to building and detailing mine with all the panels open to expose the fine details. The big radial engine is a kit all by itself and rivals any aftermarket resin engine kit. About the only thing I may add will be fabric belts and harness in the cockpit and some lead wire for details.