Sincerest thanks to Mark, Chris, Kev and Roy for those kind words, much appreciated as always!
This installment finishes off the firewall 'bits and pieces' with the fuel valve bracket and addition of the 'dangly bits' on the Oil expansion tank. I've found some new photos of the 312T5 which, although there are a few minor alterations to the engine layout from the T4 does have pretty much the same components with some more clues as to the wiring and pipework. Hopefully they'll come in handy later on!
I'm aching all over at the moment - pretty sure its from having my flu jab on Thursday - I don't normally get anything beyond the sore arm where the needle went in but I think this year's dose is a little more potent due to last year's 'holiday' from seasonal flu!
Anyway!....
So, now for the fuel valve support bracket. It’s a strange looking thing, it only encompasses half of the valve body with no visible means of holding the valve in place. Although, having said that, there is a shot of the valve in one of my reference pics that does appear to (possibly) be a large black cable tie (zip cable?) going around both the circumference of the valve and also around the bracket – I might have to look at that a little closer! Photo 26 shows the start of the bracket with the kit valve together with a short piece of the semi-self-adhesive DecraLed. The round diamond dust rat tail file shown alongside was used to finish off the raised channel seen running along the lead which was started off with a large darning needle. This was impressed into the back face of the strip and is necessary to allow the strip to encompass the valve over its raised rim seen towards the bottom (I’m wondering if this is supposed to represent that cable tie!) The next step was to trim the width of the strip down so it was the same size as the larger cylinder on the valve as shown in Photo 27. Then, using the razor blade cutter the rimmed strip was cut to length starting at the rear locating peg, and coming about one third of the way towards the front of the valve. Once it was cut to size and ‘tacked’ down in place a drop of thin superglue was applied to seal it down. To make the two flanges on the top and bottom of the bracket I went back to the set of leather hole punches I built up making my paper model Sopwith Pups (I used them for cutting out the rotary engine cylinders amongst other larger round parts). Two of these are seen in Photo 28 and were used to cut out a plasticard disk and then punch out the centre of that to fit the valve (that bit is still in the front of the smaller punch). The black arrow points to the DecraLed strip in place around the valve body as mentioned above.
I then had to slice off the part of the disk beyond the rear locating peg, pencil mark the curved end of the disk just beyond the lead strip and cut that back, sanding it down into the curved end shown in Photo 29. I had hoped to be able to make both flanges from the one disk but after rounding off the end of the top right piece of plasticard it was about half a mm too short! A couple of hammer taps later I had made up the second disk and that made up the second flange, both of which are seen superglued in position in Photo 30. Photos 31 and 32 show the painting of the bracket, first a couple of coats of Vallejo Grey Primer followed by a single coat of The Army Painter Warpaints: Rough Iron. Once all was dry I then dry-brushed it with a drop of the grey primer to simulate the wear and tear seen in the reference photo. The final effect, minus its electrical wires, is shown in Photo 33 with the valve firmly pushed into its locating hole in the firewall. The wires will be added in after the engine section has been fixed onto the body of the car, that cut out visible at top right is for one of the two big support struts that join the firewall to the engine block – I’ve already been bitten once with the oil expansion tank’s outlets – I’ll wait and make sure the wires don’t foul the struts (or anything else) first!
Now its back to Kev’s Veniard yellow tubing! As I mentioned earlier, I bought a pack of the larger 1mm tubing to try out and as I said then, it turned out to be too small for the fuel lines in this scale. However, with a little help its just right for the expansion tank. Photo 34 shows my first trial outlet made up on the end of a length of the 1mm aluminium tubing. The clear tubing on the end is from another modelling supplier on ebay and is 1.2mm in diameter. This fits extremely well but is too thick and too stiff to form the oil lines. The bottom half of the photo shows the Veniard yellow tubing which is just the right size for the lines and beautifully flexible too. Unfortunately at 1mm diameter it’s also too small to fit the 1mm aluminium! The solution is shown in Photo 35 – gently push the tube end over a suitable needle tip, this one is an old brass ended tool from a dissection kit (no, I can’t remember how on earth I ended up with a dissection kit!) The problem then becomes as soon as the tubing is removed from the needle it immediately returns to its original size. The second solution I discovered is to pour hot water over the tubing whilst it is on the needle and let it cool down again. We have a nifty little water boiler which we use now instead of a kettle, this keeps the water at 85 degrees all day (using a measly 2W of power to do it) and that temperature seems to be ideal for this procedure. As you can see in the lower half of the photo, once cooled down the tube end retains its stretched opening compared to the original end shown below (and this is how it would also look after stretching over the needle and removing without the hot water).
This then allows the tubing to fit over the connectors as shown in Photo 36 (the tube on the bottom is just a short piece used to test the fit). The second tube that I knew where to position is shown in Photo 37, this one passes behind the alternator and drops into a conduit down the left hand side, and finally, Photo 38 shows all the oil lines in position, even though I have no idea where the heck the others go to! (Almost every reference photo shows them going somewhere different, that’s the problem when your references are not only contemporary ‘vintage shots), but also modern photos of ‘re-conditioned’ classic cars. Oh well, there’s bound to be some dark recesses where things go in but never come out!
In the next installment, its away from the little details and back to the massive again, with the main forward section incorporating the driver’s cockpit.
Until then, keep safe and Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Love what you are going with this kit.

Mark

H Robin
Wow what a prize, Just caught up on your build, another fine piece of innovative scratch building and weathering, just what we've come to expect from you, hope all is well with you and your mum, please send her our regards.
Paul

I think I'm slowly getting there regarding this (expletive deleted) Windows10 stuff! I managed to get the new computer to get online ok but for some reason the ruddy thing would keep dropping out of the wifi connection to the router!
Having looked online for possible causes I decided that the easiest way to solve a wifi problem was to do away with the wifi connection! And having learned very recently that the four ethernet sockets on the router are actually designed to have four devices running simultaneously and not, as I thought simply different channels to try and get a good connection for one device
I sent off for another ethernet cable and bingo! No more unexpected loss of connection! (Touch wood!)
Ok then, onwards...
Well, I’m glad to say the airbrushing went really well. The first job after airbrushing the whole piece in Vallejo Duraluminium was to mask off the upper panels on each side of the cockpit to keep the shadowing to the lower panels. The masking is shown in Photo 6, using Frog Tape which was cut out following a pattern I first made up in thin card. I first stuck the tape down on the worktop cutting boards a few times to reduce the tackiness of the tape so it didn’t pull off any of the previously dried Duraluminium. I then airbrushed a mixture of Duraluminium and Vallejo Jet Exhaust Metal Colour at 3:1 to give a subtle shading effect. It was definitely subtle, so subtle in fact I could hardly see any difference! I then tried a mix of 1:1 which still wasn’t dark enough and ended up airbrushing light coats of Jet Exhaust on its own which gave a nice shadowing effect as seen in Photos 7 to 9 which can be compared to the original kit finish, repeated in Photo 10. The real pity is that just like the lovely pipe-work on the engine, most of the shadowing is completely hidden by the driver’s seat panel a little way down the line!
Just for those who can’t resist sneak previews, Photo 11 shows how the engine and its firewall fits into the rear of the cockpit cradle!
With the overall colour on, I then had to re-detail the fuel tank filler, which was previously an overall matt black. This was achieved with Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel Wash, applied thinned down to fill in the flat bottom section and the surrounding riveted ring, and with a darker solution of the wash applied to the two crescent plates front and back, shown in Photo 12 and enlarged in Photo 13. The same darker wash was also applied to the riveted brackets, which carry the roll bar later on and also, the two struts which help to secure the engine to the chassis. The grooves around the filler and the rivets were then accentuated with Humbrol Black Enamel Wash. The brackets which form the top of the driver’s position are shown in Photo 14 after the blue grey and black treatment. I also tried to pick out the edges of the thin brackets which are found on either side of the top of the cradle in the black wash but it was so thin it took multiple applications to get any noticeable effect! It was much easier picking out the panel lines on my Spitfires with this wash in the ‘Scramble!’ diorama but I suddenly remembered afterwards that I airbrushed the Spitfires with that Johnson’s Klear before applying the wash, maybe I should have done that here too! (I’d forgotten all about it, plus I’d already airbrushed the Vallejo Metal Colour clear varnish over the whole thing).
Anyway, I’m quite pleased with the overall effect and with the cockpit cradle, that brings us to the end of Pack 3. The next step is to begin the seat belt construction, which should have gone on to the rear of the driver’s compartment before it was added on to the cradle (but couldn’t because of the re-painting). After that, Pack 4 is devoted entirely to the construction of the cockpit.
Until then Happy Modelling to you All and stay safe!

Robin.

This just keeps getting better and better.
Astounding work. Keep it coming.

Nicely done Robin
WW2 fighter Pilot, 17+ shillings a week (ave), life expectancy 4 weeks
F1 driver today £480,000 a week (ave), Life expectancy 3% per year.

Many thanks again to Paul and Roy! £480,000 per week? That's less than some professional footballers get and all they seem to do is run around for 90 minutes and pretend to get injured!!

Anyway, the first job for the New Year is to assemble the anti-roll bar frame with it’s two side panels. The parts for this come in Pack 26 as shown in Photo 1. We have the anti-roll bar which comes as a chrome plated metal casting, a pair of triangular plastic panels which either just clip into place or can be glued if the join is too loose (mine were nice and tight) together with a pack of five Type G screws to secure the frame to the cockpit ‘fuselage’ (again, only four required with a helpful spare)!
As you can see in the photo, the manufacturers have helpfully (NOT) already applied the emergency sign decals to the left hand panel. This is a slight problem of course as I’m re-spraying the larger silvered/chromed components with the Vallejo Metal Colours to match everything up. There are two obvious routes to follow here – either mask off the decals and airbrush the Duraluminium then (hopefully) reveal the decals back again or else create my own DIY replacements. The problem with the masking is, by the time I’ve airbrushed the panels in Vallejo black primer and then a coat of Duraluminium or possibly two, when the masking is removed the decals will be a few paint coats lower than the new top surface! Fortunately, the panel is a flat component and so I took it, placed it into the scanner of my new shiny Epson Eco Tank printer and scanned it. Photo 2 shows the screen of my old faithful Windows XP computer which I’m still using to create the diaries on before flash driving them over to the new Windows 10 machine to up-load. In the picture, the top scan of the panel is life size, the bottom one is a duplicate enlarged just to show you here. The page they are on is actually the older page of Corel Print House I made up the battery face decal design on (I later re-named the page and deleted the battery designs so I could print off just the emergency stickers without wasting the decal paper).
Using the life sized scan I then duplicated it, sent the duplicate to Corel Photo House (which is a part of Print House) and then cropped the photo down to just the red circle with the ‘E’. That was then edited with colour-fill to improve the quality of the red and blue before again colour-filling to turn the previously silver background white. This, after more duplicating, gave me the four red circles shown above in Photo 3. I did the same with the blue triangle with the lightning symbol but then realized that cutting out the finished decals would be easier if I turned the background into the same red as the outline around the triangle. So as you can see in the top right I have a series of blue triangles on a common red background. I did later redo the red circle decals, using the shape creator and text to create a red circle the same size as the scanned one with a blue capital ‘E’ inserted on top (I had to also insert tiny red rectangles to cover up part of the middle line on the E as the text I had used had all three lines the same length!)
Once I deleted the battery decals, I moved the two new designs up to the top of the page, duplicating them to form a full line which was then printed off onto white decal paper as shown at the bottom of the photo.
Back to the metal anti-roll bar frame, Photo 4 shows the before and after shots. On the left is the piece as it comes in the kit, on the right is the same part after some toning down with the Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel Wash. This actually took some time to get just right, probably because the attic workroom is, shall we say ‘a little cooler’ than it was a few months ago, the enamel wash was quite thick and needed multiple brushings with thinners to get it to the right shade or tone.
Photo 5 illustrates the ‘accentuated shadowing’ of the side panels. The exterior face is airbrushed with the Metal Colour Duraluminium whilst the interior is airbrushed with the Metal Colour Jet Exhaust. This was where I discovered a very interesting fact – after first getting a very thin, watery effect with the Duraluminium which I immediately washed off under the cold tap I discovered that the ideal ratio of paint to thinner for the Vallejo Metal Colour range is – 1:0! The paint sprays best used straight from the bottle. I just drip about fifteen drops straight into the airbrush cup and spray away. If any is left over just take the bottle cap off and drip it back in!
As I mentioned earlier, the fit of the side panels into the metal frame bars was a nice positive ‘click in’ so I didn’t need any glue and Photo 6 shows the two panels securely on the frame. There are four locating pegs on each panel, three going up the top sloping frame and one in the bottom corner. Once they are all lined up a little pressure on the panel and in they went. The thing that really impressed me on this section was the fit of the bottom edge of each panel to the top of the fuel tank beneath. If you remember back when I was re-spraying the cockpit body, I was trying to get the flanges running along the length of the fuel tank to stand out with some subtle shadowing. One of those flanges is shown in Photo 7. Photo 8 shows the frame fitted into the four holes in the tank top and after the four Type G screws have been secured into the bottom of the frame from below. Only now did it become obvious that those two flanges are not actually a part of the tank but are the bottom of the side panels, bent through a right angle and riveted to the tank! Photo 9 illustrates just how well that joint works. The DIY decals were given two coats of Humbrol Semi Gloss Clear Enamel varnish, (the first attempt used only one coat to keep the decals as thin as possible – when released from the backing paper they immediately curled up into a cylinder!) Two coats was fine (or at least better- I still had to move quickly to get them off the backing and onto the model) and I cut out the triangular decal with scissors having found even a new knife blade still produced a torn edge to the red border on close inspection (obviously the decals weren’t that thick even with two coats!) The circular decal was a little harder however and for that I used an 8mm steel leather punch, one of the ever growing set I bought whilst working on the card Sopwith Pup (for making the engine sections). The strip of decals was placed on the cutting mat, the end of the punch carefully placed in position followed by a couple of taps with a medium sized hammer to neatly cut out the circle. The decals were soaked in Humbrol Decal Fix for a couple of minutes or so, it’s quicker in the summer warmth though! Then they were placed into position on the left hand panel, using the slightly raised impressions from the original decals visible under the re-sprayed metal finish to get them exactly right as shown in Photo 10. You can just make out those impressions in Photo 8. And finally, Photo 11 illustrates that emphasized shadow effect I was trying to get from using the Jet Exhaust colour on the interior faces of the panels.
In the next instalment, the big gaping hole in the left hand panel gets plugged with the addition of the battery electrical system emergency kill switch (more scratch building to come of course!)
Until then, Happy New Year to you All and Happy Modelling too!

Robin.

Just catching up Robin, very impressive work. I also have this kit and I’m making notes.

Mark