Looking good, look forward to seeing your next update....

Regards

Alan

Stage 10

For the next few stages we'll be building up the motor



We receive cylinder heads and heat exchangers. Try and avoid following the instruction to screw together the top parts of the exchanges, these will be opened up and "abused" in the next stage over again.

Figuring out which cylinder head goes where in which orientation is a bit fiddly to find out. Here it would have made sense to not make the connecting pins inside different from each other, as the parts are identical from the outside anyway.



In contest news, michu has easily won the creative writing contest without contest. Please send me a PM with your adress to receive your winnings and a little surprise.

Stage 11



We recieve the silencer, break disk ventilation and oil cooler

A simple case of stick and screw. Not much about it other than the fact that a) we got the wrong screws, again... b) even after receiving the replacement pack the screw to fix the oil cooler is way too narrow for its hole. Pumped the hole full of epoxy and stuck that screw right in. No worries.



This WOULD have been an excellent place to provide the instructions for optional detailing of screws, because right now all the parts are readily accessible still. Unforatunately the instructions arrive only with the next delivery at a time when it is largely impossible to reach certain parts for painting and where disassembly is out of the question. You'll see why in stage 12.

So I probably should pick up the pace on this one, I'm 5 stages behind in "diarying" for reasons I'll go into next time. Next time after next time actually.

Stage 12 - What do all of these things even do?




We receive a busload of parts including the exhaust manifold, starter, air filter, inlet pipes and carburator. Pretty nice loot if it weren't for the fact that all the included screws were wrong.

So after receiving my replacement pack I installed all of these parts which turned out to be a major.... issue. The manifolds must be manouvered into a space entirely too small for them while trying not to rip apart all the other very flimsy parts occupying the same space. Took me over half an hour to place that part and I was so drenched in sweat I got the flu for two weeks. Not even joking on this one.

Afterwards all of the piping needs to be installed in three places simultaneously all three at off angles from each other while at the same time prying apart the heat exchanger halves of stage 10 with a screwdriver. At this time I angrily call my parents about being stingy when they outfitted me with only two hands. Joking on this one.

The airfilter then goes on easily enough. Yay.

At the end of the stage we have a tangled mess (ok that's authentic enough) that doesn't give a whole room of manouvering if say for instance you wanted to reach certain parts far in the interior to paint them. Which is exactly what happens next time.



This is turning out to be a very very weird build. The quality of parts is excellent, but clearly someone in packaging is badly asleep, the build order is all screwed up and on the whole someone didn't exactly think the whole build through to the end.

Very nice Greyhawk, that's actually a very nice looking engine. Great work

Looks great, all that ducting consentrates the air flow over the cylinder head fins to prevent over heating. Many years ago I drove the CItroen GS and GSA basicley the same engine but with four cylinders instead of two as in your engine.

Regards

Andy

Stage 14/15/16

And now begins the part everyone dreads with car models. A whole bunch of deliveries and nothing to do.

We receive the chassis (stage 14), a circuit board (stage 15) and 5 wires (stage 16).

Building across all three stages is restricted to extending the circuit board wiring with the 5 wires from stage 16 aaaaand that's it. The instructions instead include a lot of "soon to come" and other unhelpful info. Also the translator managed to discombombulate the design for these pages likely by extending textboxes beyond their margins. That's the problem with German and our Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenfabrikleiteruniformbüglerin-like words.

I don't like these phases. I want to build stuff, I want to see my car grow. Instead I get to dump some stuff into storage.

So I went ahead and did some steps of next months delivery already, namely installing the circuit board to the chassis already where it's way more safe.



Soon to come: We're going to completely ignore the ingenious and unique suspension system that we told you all about in delivery 1 and that is the calling card of the 2 CV. Instead, we're gonna slap some springs on to the thing in an unrelated place, just because we can.

By now "parts delivered in a phase" vs "what we're actually building in that phase" has completely and utterly desynced, so in the interest of keeping things less confusing I'm going to switch the format to per-delivery reporting instead of per-phase at this point.

Delivery 5 - Phases 17 to 20 but also maybe only to 18, who even knows?




Pictured above are the two unique packs in this delivery.

The first one contains an extension to the chassis, a hook for the bonnet and cable holders.

The second contains parts for the suspension, which is NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST how the actual suspension works. It's just a bunch of springs to provide springydity to the model, but doesn't exist like that in the original. That's a bummer, especially after the instructions in delivery 1 spent so much time talking about how super cool the actual suspension of the Citroen is.

We also receive another two packs. One containing a wheel carrier and one containing a tire. Just a tire. Yay. You saw these already.

Also note we are somehow back to blister packs. So for some reason only the most breakable of parts yet was delivered in a non blister pack together with the heavy full metal chassis (I suspect the reason is blue and crystallized, Jesse).

Putting all of it together was no major thing, although the instructions conveniently forgot we already fit the wheels to their carriers several stages ago. I left them on because I'm not a big fan of constantly fitting and removing screws again and again. Especially on moving parts.

Oh and then there was the thing where several of the tiny screws for the cable holder arrived broken but I'm not even phazed by that anymore.



Notwithstanding my constant need to complain, the results are still beautiful and the spring thingy DOES work even though it's not original. Not sure how LONG it will work, but it does right now.

Can't wait for the next phase in this love-hate relationship (actually I can, cause I read ahead and we're going to fit like a wheel (A, one, 1) across the whole delivery, so wheeee I guess?)

Another month, another delivery for the Citroen.

This time around all 4 phases deal with the installation of the (simulated) unique suspension you can see to the sides of the chassis



In a first, there are no damaged parts in this delivery. DeAgostini seem to be reacting and have begun packing parts better. There was even a little carton around problem parts of the last Countach delivery, something I had been clamoring for a while now.