Shelby Cobra Coupe by DocRob - Model Factory Hiro - 1/12 - multi-media - Le Mans

[Kevin-the-lubber]

Insane level of detail! MFH certainly give VFM. And I love the steering wheel, from here it looks quite like walnut.

[CDW]

Beautiful details, and the wheels look awesome!

[DocRob]

21 hours ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

Insane level of detail! MFH certainly give VFM. And I love the steering wheel, from here it looks quite like walnut.

Thank you Kevin, had to google VFM, but yup, that´s about it. These are the best car kits, I ever saw. The metal cast and resin quality is fantastic, the engineering is splendid and there is a lot of kit for your (many) bucks. In my opinion the kits are good value, if you get them for a good price and not a scalpers one. A Tamiya 1/12 Porsche 935 is about 120 to 150 Euros. A ScaleLab24 detail up set with turned rims and all the galore is about 350 Euros. Together that is almost the same, I paid for the Cobra, but the Porsche is a kit of the 80´s and has many flaws.

Glad you mentioned the walnut steering wheel, because that was what I had in mind. I toyed with longer grained wood first, but thought, at this scale, I can give walnut a try with it´s more dotted appearance. The steering wheel is now finished and I will shoe pictures in the next update.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, CDW said:

Beautiful details, and the wheels look awesome!

Thank you Craig, I just sprayed the wheels in semi matte black, after test fitting them into the rims and drilling holes for the valves. I hope, I can get rid of the color on the protruding polished parts.
One reason, why I chose this Cobra Coupe chassis (#9, 2286) were the black underlayed wheels. The other chassis had white painted wheels, which doesn´t look cool. The other reason, was less sponsor decals, which let show the shape of the Cobra better.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today, I made the first attempt of a very crucial step, with marrying the body to the chassis. As you can imagine, there are a lots of contact points on the chassis, around the firewall, under the instrument panel, the rear body framing, the rollcage, ...., to cut it short, I failed. Now I´m inspecting everything for color abrasion, which might show problematic areas, which may need to be tweaked. Fortunately, I didn´t brake too many parts, but the rear hatch framing needs to be reinstalled.
I´m very happy, that I didn´t follow the manual with the rear hatch window and windshield installed. before joining the chassis and body. It would have been a nightmare to handle the heavy kit with these mounted.

Before all this, I finished the shoulder straps of the seat belts, which is an easy task with the supplied PE buckles, belt material and double sided tape, which holds the belts perfectly  together and in place.
I finished the steering wheel with a coat of Tamiya´s clear orange onto the dried oil colors and then assembled the PE and center knob. That was more difficult then expected, but finally it worked. The clear center part is made from resin and was not clear at all from the beginning and had some tiny scratches. I polished the lens with Tamiya´s polishing compounds and adhered it with Pledge on the decals.



Next were the wheels, which were sprayed with Tamiya´s semi matte black (LP-5). After two hours of drying time, I didn´t want the paint to cure too much, I swiped the rims with cotton swabs and cotton cloth, slightly dampened with Tamiya lacquer thinner and cleaned off the polished areas. 
 

 

Cheers Rob

[Egilman]

I'm sure they look stunning brother, but, you can't really see it against a diffuse black background...

 

The wheel black just blends into the background....

[Kevin-the-lubber]

1 hour ago, DocRob said:

I swiped the rims with cotton swabs and cotton cloth, slightly dampened with Tamiya lacquer thinner and cleaned off the polished areas. 

I’m guessing you’ve done that before? Either way, you certainly got a great result. The parts look much better than if you’d masked the polished areas, maybe because the transition edge is smoother.

[DocRob]

45 minutes ago, Egilman said:

I'm sure they look stunning brother, but, you can't really see it against a diffuse black background...

 

The wheel black just blends into the background...

Not the best picture for sure, Egilman, it was only a fast phone snap off the bench. I promise to do better, when the wheels got assembled.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

39 minutes ago, Kevin-the-lubber said:

I’m guessing you’ve done that before? Either way, you certainly got a great result. The parts look much better than if you’d masked the polished areas, maybe because the transition edge is smoother.

Thank you Kevin, it´s the first time, I use this method on metal rims. I tried similar things during my Crocker build, but with smaller parts and usually polishing away the dried color with abrasive fine sanding sponges. I didn´t want to leave sanding residues onto the wheels, therefore, I chose the swiping method.
Here I thought, the adhesion of the Tamiya Lacquer wouldn´t be too god without primer on polished metal. The curing time was thumb measured, with hopefully dry paint as a result, but not thoroughly hardened, to have perfect transitions without risking breakouts while cleaning the rims off. 

When I mask objects for airbrushing with kabuki tape, I let the paint dry for only some minutes, before removing the masks. This way, the paint borders are cleaner and smoother.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, Egilman said:

I'm sure they look stunning brother, but, you can't really see it against a diffuse black background...

I hope, I can de-diffuse the appearance of the rims with some new pics, Egilman.

I finalized the rims with installing the painted and polished center parts into the turned aluminum rim. I also added the air valves, but didn´t add the tyres for now, because I fear, the CA fumes might affect them.







Cheers Rob
 

[Egilman]

That is one CLEAN set of wheels....

[DocRob]

18 hours ago, Egilman said:

That is one CLEAN set of wheels....

I like them too, Egilman. The extra work was well spent. There were cast imperfections visible and the near polished look of the turned metal rims would have contrasted sharply against the greyish casted inner parts. Luckily the white metal MFH uses is easy to work with and polishes relatively fast.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today, I had the second attempt with adding the body to the chassis. Yesterday, I tried to identify the obstructing parts and gave them a little workover. This is not like you can pull the body off the chassis as often as you like. All the tolerances are really tight and it involves a lot of bending causing nasty sounds to get it right. When the body was halfway into position, I used a lot of finger force to push everything carefully into place and added screws into pre drilled holes. There were not too many damages to report, only some more scratches and one or two parts knocked off.
It´s hard to describe, but there are so many elements all around, which have to fit, I expected worse, but it was no walk in the part and it´s about make or break with the Cobra. The engineering is fantastic, I don´t know how they are able to do it, this is not the average " I close the fuselage of my plane job".

Attentive readers might see, there were parts removed from the firewall. This is necessary due to the preparation for installing the exhaust system, the next obstacle in this confined space. There is an additional sheet in the manual, showing the sequence of every part, but I couldn´t make it properly during test fitting.

Anyway, I´m lucky, I managed to marry the body to the chassis without too much fuzz. The bonnet is only laid on and the doors need some fine tuning later on.









Cheers Rob