DocRob

Progress is slowly due to off bench issues and a healthy dose of sports every day, trailrunning, surfing or swimming and mountainbiking, to get the head free. Nonetheless, I finished the rear suspension, brakes and drive shafts. My normal process with MFH kits is, select parts for the next step, cleanup and drill parts, priming and finally airbrushing, before the real fun begins, assembly. This time, it was not so much fun, unfortunately. All parts mount to the outer suspension part, which later accepts the wheel. Somehow this was impossible and I identified the drive shafts as too long. I have no idea, if this was my fault, but the main shaft leading to the differential was also to long. It needed a bit of metal surgery to get everything to fit and there are some touchups to be made. I also started with the pedals, which means, interior is next. Of course, there will be hydraulic lines later from the pedals cylinders. Cheers Rob

Help is coming, Keith. Cheers Rob

Thanks Bob and I have not given up on the Duchess of Kingston, but have other projects to finish. The DoK is my first real wooden ship build and due to the quality of the kit, it was surprisingly straight forward until I entered the rigging stage. I like busy looking decks and thought, the addition of a boat would exactly work that way. Construction of the little thing was not the easiest, but I like the look of the finished boat on deck. I also have the Sphinx kit on my shelf and was really happy to hear, Chris is planning on sets of printed boats for her. Please feel free, to equip your DoK with a boat as well. I really like to see, how yours is looking finally. Cheers Rob

Thank you OC, I was sometimes about to kick her into life. But the tank didn´t hold the fuel . Cheers Rob

Thank you Tim and sorry for the late answer. MFH motorcycle kits are extremely detailed out of the box, so there is no need for extra detailing. I loved your Triumph build though, a completely different breed of kit, but with a very beautiful outcome. Cheers Rob

Due to illness and passing of my beloved dog, I haven´t been attending here lately. I have to get back to normal somehow and continued a bit with the Cobra, when time and mood allowed. I added the front cooling section, a fairly large and detailed affair. After that, it was time to mount the missing parts of the front suspension and braking system. The large venting tubes were sprayed with Tamiya LP brown metallic and then sanded over the risen parts for effect. Fit was very good, but I had to re-drill tiny PE parts again, as either the bolts (part 308) are too wide or the holes to small, annoying. Another disturbing issue is, there are wires or tubes, where there is no mention, where they lead to. You have to search the hole manual for a fit, but some are not shown. The manual of the Crocker motorcycle always stated the section of the manual, where you could see the other connecting side, but that´s not the case here. I think long and thorough, before altering the building sequence from the manual, but decided to add the tube framing before the cooler section, to have more wiggle room. The part around the engine proved to be a bit delicate, the more complex rear part was easy in comparison. The engine and drive shaft is now permanently built in and I´m ready for the rear suspension now. The chassis is quite heavy now and I will add spacers to relieve the suspension. Cheers Rob

Just a tiny update, while I prepare the cooler parts and some internal framework. If you wonder, why MFH kits are special, then look for this magnificently casted white metal part. genius and madness are sometime close, as you have to replicate four hose clamps from steel PE strips with the screw parts being tinies casted parts . Cheers Rob

Thank you Craig, the kits are so good, that they motivate you, to even tackle the hardest obstacles. A well thought through building sequence is the key with these kits. Cheers Rob

Sorry for the OT, Greg, but when I was a kid, I once visited the old Wiking factory in Berlin Steglitz, as it was near to my home then. They produced only cars by that time, If I remember correct. My father had a huge amount of these metal cast ships and a few in Plastic. Only the Queen Mary survived until today in my possession. Cheers Rob

What a cool project Greg, love it, specially with the sci-fi background. I have a flatbed Tempo from MiniArt in my stash and plan to build it soon, but my, never would I have had such a great idea for presenting it. Cheers Rob

Wow, that´s a fantastic build you finished there. I only now stumbled into the log and have to dig a bit further, but what you have achieved looks fantastic in every aspect. I liked the front pic especially with the perfect coppering showing. Cheers Rob

Thank you Alan, at least, the engine and front suspension will be visible under the large openable hood. Cheers Rob

I am shipping some difficult waters lately, not with the kit though and that´s why I made myself sparse. Nonetheless, some progress with the mighty Cobra. Having thought, everything would build up easier than the engine was partly untrue. The chassis as the central element has so many parts to add, that you need a lot of patience and discipline to get it right. Every hole - and there are many - needs to be drilled with the proper diameter. To achieve this, you have to identify the various parts or sub assemblies through the hole manual and understand, how it joins and what is used for joining, nuts, bolts, screws, pegs, whatever. Finally, I build up the suspension arms and completed the front axle and tubing with a real metal leaf spring. Steerable wheels are not planned with the kit. I made some mistakes on the rear end with the differential housing, but managed to correct that without too much damage. Again Tamiya LP semi matte black proved to be the perfect weapon of choice for the black chassis parts. The engine is only loosely attached for now. Cheers Rob

Three weeks ago, I considered buying this kit for a very good price from Japan, but hesitated, as I don´t like the original car too much. It just doesn´t have the ingredients of a classic to my eye. Nonetheless, I´m sure you will build a beauty out of this kit and I will follow your progress with the Porsche. Cheers Rob

Today, I reached the first real milestone, finishing the engine and transmission. The ignition wiring was a bit delicate and needed a lot of CA to proper glue everything together. Using tiny rubber connectors seemed not to be the best idea from MFH to my eye. The provided wire is very rigid, which helped to pre bend each single wire before gluing them in. Now Tamiya have a look, here is something to learn. the belt on the front of the engine is black adhesive tape over cast iron wheels, looks way better, than Tamiya´s rough cast parts on the 1/12 kits I knew. The transmission housing is made of a mix of resin and metal parts, with white metal gear shifting rods added. The manual suggested steel color for the housing, but I went with metallic grey, to have a cast iron appearance. I read, later modified or rebuild chassis got an aluminum casing, but the original was cast iron. So much for weight reduction . Cheers Rob

Thank you Craig and Yves. the engine is a piece of beauty with all the detail, but it´s also hard to get together in parts, but what´s modeling without a bit of a challenge . The oil filter was primed and then sprayed gloss read. After the third pass with the airbrush, the edges still were a bit translucent and I decided to let it like that, to generate a bit of depth the cheap way. Cheers Rob

The engine got near finished, lacking the ignition wiring and the drive belts in front. To mount all the carburetor parts into the tub was extremely difficult, done by the manual, it would have been impossible. I spare you the details, but you should put in the four carburetor blocks at the same time, only connected by a fragile steering rod and then add the coil spring mechanism with no wiggle room at all. It took some thinking and manipulating of parts to get it right. The carburetor housings were beforehand accentuated with black panel liner. I also added some decals onto engine parts. Cheers Rob

Today, I prepared all the carburetor parts and finished assembling the first pair, which consists of almost thirty parts. The inox pipe in the middle of the funnel was pretty rigid. It had to be cut from a tube and the manual suggests rolling it under a sharp blade. I tried, but no success. I took out my mini mitre and razor saw and managed to cut eight parts, while loosing all the teeth on the blade. Again the holes on the PE parts were to small, to accept the bolts and needed to be re drilled. Pretty annoying, given it´s not brass, but very rigid stainless steel. I also added the distributor, where tiny rods of steel rod are glued into each connector for accepting the tiny rubber isolators. These needed to be drilled wit a 0,3 mm bit to later (hopefully) accept the ignition wiring. Cheers Rob

Great looking car with a beautiful finish Craig. Am I right, that you haven´t even painted the body? It´s good to have these in between projects, without too much fuss for a relaxing change and if the result is beautiful like yours, why not. Cheers Rob

The last days, there was not a lot of bench time to have with our dog being seriously ill and an actual heat wave, but I managed to work a bit on the engine. What you see on the picture consists of about 70 parts. All screws and rivets need to be drilled and glued in. I gave the rocker covers another work intensive go and grinded and sanded, until I was halfway satisfied and then polished the parts with Autosol metal polish. Somehow, my camera struggles to capture high shine finishes, but the rocker covers look ok now. The PE exhaust seals were a bit of a pain, because the holes needed to be drilled out for the fitting `screws´ which are in fact bolts. I would have preferred to have the whole engine in metal. The resin parts needed a lot of work to make them fit. Cheers Rob

Your build triggered something with me, Craig. Never have been a Nascar fan, other than I liked a PC simulation decades ago, but browsed through the Salvino´s portfolio yesterday, which I always ignored before and ordered a 1972 Charger kit. Cheers Rob

This builds up pretty fast, Craig. Detail looks a bit toyish in places, but fully closed up will be more the sufficient to make a nice representation. Like others have said, these type of kits could easily attract new people into modeling, similar to those Bandai Star Wars kits. You may try a hairdryer onto the decals after the Mark Fit Strong soaked in for a bit. Worked marvels with Aviattic decals for WWI planes and as well with my carbon decals on my stalled MP4/6. Cheers Rob

Only to show, that I´m actually working on the Cobra, I made some mock up shots with the prepared main engine components, which will be airbrushed next. The resin body needed quite some adjustments to fit properly and there are about 100 holes drilled into these parts, to accept other accessories. The cast quality of the rocker covers is unfortunately not very good, with a lot of pitting. The photos show the state after two hours of sanding and polishing. The pics exaggerate the effect a bit, but the covers won´t do like this as polished finish, so some more elbow grease is needed. Cheers Rob

It´s a beauty, indeed. Thanks for the motivational push, Ken I like the 250 GTO a lot and might be tempted to buy one (in 1/12 scale ), if MFH decides to re-release it. Would make a nice display, if shown together with the beautiful Cobra Coupe. Almost, OC, there are lots of parts, indeed and building up this kit, will e a lot of work. If it´s equally rewarding, like the Crocker build, I´m a lucky guy. Cheers Rob

With the MFH Crocker build under my belt, I gained some experience with these kind of kits. The Cobra needs less bare metal surface preparation, as most of the components get painted, but you have to unify metal and resin parts more often. The Crocker was 95% metal, with only the seat, the tyres and some smaller parts made from other materials. I can´t really comment about the difficulty of working with metals, as I proper learned it when I was young, but that was a long time ago. At least, I found the metal working aspect more tempting than daunting. The cast white metal parts, MFH provides are of a very high quality and well engineered, however, you have to clean them and drill hundreds of holes into these parts for every connection. Even more than with plastic models, you have to fit the parts perfectly and dry fit a lot, because tolerances add up on complex assemblies, like the Crocker engine and you may run in trouble later on, if you hadn´t taken that into account enough. This needs a proper planning and following the manual, as some areas are hard or impossible to reach for drilling in case you have overseen something. You need a decent tool set, mainly consisting of quality drill bits of every size under 2,5 mm, a pin wise (or better more than one), pliers, cutters and tweezers. For clean up, normal files and sand paper is sufficient, the metal is very soft and good to work with. A power tool, like a Proxxon is very helpful for drilling and polishing, I use mine in a stand and more important added a foot pedal. A good and reliable CA glue is needed. I didn´t use Epoxy with the Crocker, but there may be places with the Cobra, where it could help. Preparation of the metal parts is a key, too. Yo can do it by hand or leave maybe 80% of the cleaning job to a magnetic tumbler. I liked the results with 0,3 mm polishing needles best, as these clean even the tiniest crevices and don´t soften details. A good primer is needed, I use Mr. Surfacer and the usual model paints, in my case mostly Tamiya lacquers, where i really like their gloss black and semi gloss black. I was a bit surprised, that the Crocker build took only about two months, I expected more, but it was motivating fun (a bad weather stretch was also helpful), but except from the chain, which I finally got assembled as well, I didn´t run into bigger problems during the build. Verdict: If you really like to build one of these magnificent kits, do it, take your time and prepare thoroughly. Like Craig said, some of the subjects were never released by other companies. Cheers Rob