DocRob
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Everything posted by DocRob
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Wow thank you Egilman, I can feel your head shaking about my non existent knowledge about the ignition system of classic bikes. I will need some time to digest the thorough information you supplied here. I have to understand the English terminology first an then the described process itself. Cheers Rob -
I added the ignition wiring, spark plugs and the mysterious third wire, which leads to the hidden condenser coil, the shift rods and gearbox. The alternator and battery are finished, but only mounted temporary, to determine the length of the wiring. The only "AM" used is the tiny bracket, which holds together the ignition wiring. I fabricated it from tin of a wine bottle cap. So far no real worries except a wrong aligned part (my fault), which needed to be pried loose. Luckily I was test fitting the following assemblies and noticed it. Electrical wiring is a bit tedious, as there are tiny PE parts to bend, to accept the un-isolated wire, which easily slips out before gluing. You learn to like Tamiya manuals, where they show you the length of the wires, but apart from that, the MFH manual is pretty clear and easy to understand. Cheers Rob
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I achieved some important progress today, marrying the engine and the frame. Luckily casting precision and design is very good and I had only a little wiggling to do, while join the numerous connection points of the engine bearing plates to the engine. The frame itself needed some bending, to accept the engine, which I did before painting. The cast material is durable but easy to bend an very good to work with, luckily. Cheers Rob
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Oops, I missed the start of a new page and the even more detailed information, Egilman, thanks for that. I studied a lot of pictures from various Crockers and all seem to be different in details, specially the ignition system. I cannot tell, which of them are original or have been modified later. The condenser coil seemed to have been all over the place, in front of the engine, under the tank and like on your pic behind the engine, which I haven´t seen before on my pictures. When I look for the MFH pictures of the ´Small tank´ model, there are lots of differences to the later ´Big tank´ version. Like on your pic, the coil is mounted behind the seat post. The later big tank allowed to hide the coil under said tank. Cheers Rob
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Muchas gracias amigos, you solved the mystery to a classic bike noob like me. The Crockers were hand built and all a bit different in the end. Some examples show said coil mounted onto the frame visibly in front of the engine, with others it´s hidden under the tank. I think Egilman is referring to the 61 cubic inches or about 1000 ccm leading to about 65 hp.
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That´s a possibility Craig and yes the Crocker has a battery. Cheers Rob
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Thank you Craig, I think, the wire you refer to is shown in the manual in green It ends at the handlebar. The yellow one with the section 7 reference on the lower pic is the one in question, it´s the same like the yellow one in the upper drawing, labeled section 4. Cheers Rob
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I have one question for the classic bike experts. Which function has the marked wire, which leads from the distributor to the area of the tank. The other two are the ignition wires, but the third cable, I have no idea of the function. The MFH manual doesn´t show either. The cable just ends under/in the tank area. Cheers Rob
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After airbrushing the frame with Tamiya LP-1 gloss black, I continued with the engine. I added the carburetor and some fuel lines, which are hard to reach later. The engine is more or less finished now and will be mounted into the frame next. Cheers Rob
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I built up the frame from it´s various parts, which again included lots of drilling and leafing through the manual, to see, which diameter is needed for a hole and what´s going in. Luckily the precision of the casting is fantastic and there are only minimal irritations in the parts. Here is a mock up with the engine mounted into the frame. Meanwhile said frame is primed and the missing carburetor parts got airbrushed. Cheers Rob
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Triumph 3HW by Tim Moore - Italeri - 1/9
DocRob replied to Tim Moore's topic in Non-ship/categorised builds
The bike looks absolutely fantastic, Tim. I really like, how you nailed the materials appearance of everything. The paint has the right shine as have the different metals and dullness is where it belongs. Hard to achieve, but great to look at, congratulations. Cheers Rob- 77 replies
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Keeping my head in the game.....
DocRob replied to Egilman's topic in 3D-Printing and Laser-Cutting.
Impressive work Egilman, I hope your CAD development will be put to reality, when ready. Like you, I learned pen and paper construction in my early days as an engineer, but I never converted to CAD other than producing early day 3D-animations. Your re-engineering is fascinating to follow, I only recently learned, that Model Factory Hiro designs their kits only from pictures very often as well. Cheers Rob -
Absolutely Gary, these veneer Tamiya kits are a bit of a mixed bag, quality wise, like I encountered with my recent Renault RE20 Turbo build. With a bit of extra work, they will look very good in the end. I also changed a lot of the Tamiya tubing with finer tubes from MFH and braided lines, which looked more realistic. For my future Brabham BT44 build, I added some MFH funnels and other details to the highly visible engine. These decals must be pretty old, I would test them before applying them to the model. Cheers Rob
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The last building sequence was a bit fiddly, with wiring the spark plugs with tiny etched parts and micro rivets, followed by the distributor, which consists of about 20 parts, a lot need to be pre drilled for various installments. There are two variants and I chose the more complicated. The magneto has a fewer parts count, but looks odd and the pictures I have of the real bike always have the distributor installed. I prepared the wires, but add them later, when the engine meets the frame. And that´s how tiny the distributor is, you find it on the left side of the engine, lower middle. Cheers Rob
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I added more details to the engine and also prepared the distributor. Drilling the tiny oil tube connectors proved tricky. They need to be drilled to accept the oil tubing made from solder wire. Most of the screws shown on the casings are separate parts and also need to be pre drilled and then inserted. The manual suggests to add the oil tubes next, but I will do it later, because handling the still not finished engine would be a nightmare with the soft wiring on. Luckily the places for the tubing should be reachable later. I also added some dots of black panel wash here and there to enhance contrasts. Cheers Rob
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Exactly Craig, most of the polishing tumblers include a bag of non specified steel pins. Mine, the only one which could be shipped to my place after a lot of effort included none and had to purchase them separately. Cheers Rob
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I use only the 0,3 mm steel pins, water and a drop of detergent. There are polishing fluids around, but I haven´t tested these. The non magnetic white metal parts are relatively unmoved in the magnetic tumbler, which helps avoiding scratches due to impact of the parts. Only the steel pins swirl around and do their polishing job. I tried a simple rotating tumbler as well, filled with water and tiny steel balls. The surfaces were shinier with that treatment, but you loose sharpness of details and the steel balls don´t reach in all the tiny crevices. Cheers Rob
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Thank you Craig, the tumbler indeed helped a lot, specially for a kit like the Crocker, where many parts will be left without painting or even be polished later for a realistic chrome effect. You can toy a bit with the diameter of the steel pins, I bought some with 0,6mm and 0,3 mm diameter and used 200 gram of the latter. The tumbling process needs to be supervised. I tumbled about an hour, but you have to find a balance, between nice surfaces as a result and not losing sharpness in tiny details like boltheads on the other side. I recommend wearing rubber gloves, while handling the parts after tumbling, you will be astonished, how black the water will be, and I guess, it´s not too healthy either. I also got the magnetic tumbler suggestion through videos and build logs too. Cheers Rob
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The engine is on it´s way and it is a bit fiddly, but due to great engineering and tight tolerances manageable. Adding all the V-shaped cylinder parts proved tricky, when the rocker came into play and the connecting tube (carburetor) needed to be added at the same time. Unfortunately, I mis-orientated this part and had to pry it loose later, which was no fun at all and caused some spots for later touch ups. Cheers Rob
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Well, first building steps are prepared. Note to myself, test fit often and understand the manual, specially where parts need to be drilled. I don´t know about the MFH car kits, but with the Crocker engine parts there are dozens of holes to be drilled and some are hard to reach in later stages. The foot pedal and drill stand for my Proxxon mini drill help a lot to make the job faster. The good thing with drilling white metal, there is nearly no burr to be removed. The engine block, with one cylinder mostly mounted, showing the parts of the other: Mock assembly for test fitting of one cylinder. The ribs and heads are actually removed and primed and will be sprayed semi matte black later. Cheers Rob
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Well, I´m not much into the chopper thing, Ken. Personally, I prefer European bikes for European roads, they just perform better. My last one was a KTM 950 SM, the last one with carburetors. This thing drove like a sharp blade, but with the handling of a bicycle. Perfect for ultra fast city commuting, alpine roads, just everything below 200 km/h, because there was no windshield. Even week trips were no problem with the furious KTM. I loved that beast, but left it in Berlin, when I went to my island and promised my wife not to drive motorcycles anymore. Well, now it´s mountainbiking . Cheers Rob
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Your Dino came out fantastic, Gary. Somehow, I missed your log, but read it now. These veneer Fujimi kits seam to be a very good base. I´m in the middle of their 1/20 McLaren MP4/6 and found the kit lacking in many aspects, very disappointing, but not unfixable. Cheers Rob
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Today, I spent some exhausting hours to sort the parts, mainly the white metal cast ones, as they are the most numerous. I made it a two step affair, first using the parts layout prints from the MFH homepage, to check if everything is there. These photos of the parts are especially helpful, as they are scaled and this helps to identify the parts. In the second step, I sorted the parts into a plastic box with different sized trays, ordered after the steps in the manual. The tiny parts, like screws and bolts, I left out, as they are easier identified separately. Tomorrow, I will add resin and rubber parts along with screws, nuts and bolts. Cheers Rob
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Good to have you along, Yves. I´m sure, sooner or later, I will have a lot of questions about how to work with this kind of kits, so be prepared . Cheers Rob
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Same with me for a long time, Gary. I often looked for the MFH kits, watched build logs with fascination and then there was the Crocker, hitting all my buttons. The F1 cars in large scale are really tempting. I had the luck two weeks ago, to lay my hand on one of the 200 limited Williams FW16 ´Senna ´Edition, which hopefully will arrive next week. They started to sell at 7:00 pm JST on the seventh of May and a quarter of an hour later, there was a message, all have been sold, so I´m overly happy to have scored one. Cheers Rob
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