Many thanks indeed to Mark and Kev!
That blue-grey enamel wash virtually does all the work itself on the kit chrome effect, all that is required is to thin it down a little more with white spirit and either big brush large areas or tiddly brush small details!
Talking of details....
Photo 1 is a snapshot from the Haynes manual on the Ferrari 312 showing the actual Alternator on the engine. This is the first part which differs in detail from it’s appearance in the instructions. In the official instructions the alternator comes in two parts – the base section which is chrome and the upper half, which is entirely gold in colour. On the actual kit part, only the top or lid is gold and the rest of the upper body is chrome. As you can see in this photo, it IS only the top which is gold (although it looks more ‘steel’ in this shot), other pictures in the manual do bring out the gold finish more – so well done to the manufacturers for changing to an even more authentic finish!
The gold colour was so close to the
Vallejo Metal Colour Gold I used on other parts that I hummed and hah-ed for a long time on whether it was worth the extra bother of re-painting it at all. In the end the ‘Hapeth of Tar’ proverb won the day and so I did re-spray the gold with the Vallejo as seen in
Photo 2 with its Frog tape coat on. I then also gave it a coat of the
Vallejo Metal Varnish so that I could use the
Citadel Shadow Black acrylic wash to accentuate the three screws and central boss as seen in
Photo 3 with the upper chrome body washed with the Blue Grey as well. The two halves of the alternator simply push fit together and then the entire alternator push fits down into the Distributor base as illustrated in
Photo 4. It is then fixed down permanently by screwing a
Type J screw up into the body of the alternator from below as shown in
Photo 5. The final ‘improvement’ was to add a tiny decal label to simulate the alternator ID label seen in
Photo 1. Somewhere, probably up in the attic I have a cardboard shoe box half full of unused decal sheets – many of them bought years (I mean decades) ago from an advert in the Military Modelling magazine. They were out in the old garage workroom for many years but had survived in very good condition despite the damp winters! My next job is to climb around the attic and find them again (wish I’d left them out there now!
) Anyway, I clambered in to the old workroom and found a box of
Italieri 1/48 US Flight deck crew with the decal sheet still inside. I cut out the label that most fitted the bill and applied that to the alternator as shown in
Photo 6 with four ‘dots’ of thick aluminium paint to simulate the rivets in each corner. Finally the chrome part of the cylinder including the label got a coat of semi gloss varnish as I was a little suspicious of how the decal came off the backing sheet even
before I put it in the Decalfix!
With the alternator securely in place, the next task was to fit on the Distributor itself. The ‘kit finish’ is shown in
Photo 7, this piece is a single moulding in a black polythene type plastic (like the 1/72 scale figures from Airfix etc.) To give it a more worn or used appearance I just dry-brushed it with
Vallejo Sky Grey to give the result shown in
Photo 8. This was actually a little more difficult than I’d expected, the plastic has a slightly ‘oily’ finish though to be honest I didn’t first wash it in soapy water (didn’t think I needed to) and the water based acrylic tended to go on and then get rubbed off by the brush again. I think an enamel-based grey might have gone on easier but I didn’t want to over do it anyway and the result wasn’t too bad. The distributor is simply push fitted into its location on the base and this was the first such fitting that I had to adapt in the kit so far. I found it was just too tight a fit to get the thing to go right down and ended up having to carefully file down the hole by inserting a rat tail diamond dust file and gently rotating it. This allowed the distributor to go down ok but a little on the slack side so after it was in position I added a few drops of super glue around the peg from underneath the base. Although super glue doesn’t normally stick to polythene plastic it did seem to fix it in firmly here and the distributor is shown fixed in position in
Photo 9. This section comes with three HT leads and their connectors. However, before commencing to fit them on I needed a little addition!
Photo 10, photographed from the Haynes manual again shows the connectors on the distributor and as you can see, each HT lead has an off white ID collar down at the connector’s ‘um, connection! I hunted around for something similar and came up with some electronic wiring of 24/0.2mm with white insulation (my normal 7/0.2mm wire was actually the same diameter as the HT leads themselves so that was no use!) I stripped off a few mm of the insulation as shown in
Photo 11 and sliced off thin rings to use as the collars. Now the instructions say to use a wooden cocktail stick to push into the end of the HT lead tubing to widen it slightly before sliding it onto the connector. I tried that method but found that trying to twist the stick to insert it merely twisted the HT lead around with it too. I discovered that it was much easier to use a sharp pointed metal rod like a large darning needle size. As you can see in
Photo 12, I first inserted the white ring onto the tip of the needle and pulled it back down the shaft stretching it wider as it went, then the HT lead was pushed onto the metal point for a couple of mm to widen the end. Whilst it was stuck there, the white ring was pushed back down, slipping over the end of the black tube. The HT lead was then removed and a connector inserted into the end before it could return to its former size. Once the connector was on, the white ring was slid up tight to the end of the HT lead right on the connector/lead join. The first three leads, which came with this pack are seen plugged into the distributor in
Photo 13. Enter my next boo-boo!
After consulting the instruction photo on the computer screen umpteen times I was convinced that the first three leads were indeed numbers one, two and three and so the ends of their leads were duly inserted onto the metal rods protruding from plugs one, two and three as shown in
Photo 14. Each lead has to pass under the gold panel with the air intakes on, passing in front of the trumpet above the HT connection and over the chrome plate beneath it. There they stayed until I began working on
Pack 15, which contains the rest of the HT leads and plugs. I knew that the first three leads I fitted in were each 100mm long. In pack 15, we get six more of that length, three of 80mm and a baby one of 35mm. At the end of the instructions is a reminder that plugs one, two and three are 80mm long and the other nine are 100mm – so the three 100mm ones already on couldn’t be one, two and three!
After more squinting at the photo I discovered they were actually numbers ten, eleven and twelve! So off came the leads and moved up to the other end of the head as shown in
Photo 15 and
16. After that was cleared up it was much easier following the remaining positions ending up with all twelve leads on the distributor as shown in
Photo 17. Later on I was to re-arrange the positioning of the connectors to closer approximate the way those leads come springing out from the distributor – even the Haynes manual describes the V12 wiring as “
an art form in itself”!
With the completion of the HT leads, that completes the build from Pack 02. In the following installment, we begin Pack 03 with the fuel distribution system (and if I thought the HT leads were complicated, wait till you see this part!!!!)
Until then, keep safe and Happy Modelling to you All!
Robin.
PS: I found this video on Youtube a few days ago – talk about some good reference material!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Y1MUkq8PE
Plymouth57 attached the following image(s):
First wooden ship:
The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second:
Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third:
HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale
Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault
Index for the Victory diary is on page 1
US
