Many thanks indeed for those kind thoughts Kev!
Progressing along slowly at the minute as the attic workroom has been so hot recently (more expensive bottles of glue have gone solid in the heat!) Have just completed a major re-paint of the side radiators and I'm very pleased with how they've turned out - coming soon!
Onwards....
The first task was to remove that moulded spigot from the rear of the plate as shown in Photo 1. With that done the plate was first airbrushed with Vallejo black primer and then the Vallejo Metal Colour Duraluminium. When dry, the little Frog tape mask was carefully removed to leave the plate looking as in Photo 2 (no replacement decal required!! ). The next thing was to carefully apply the Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel Wash to the side legs of the plate to match up with the steering wheel arch washed previously. The difference between the plate and the legs can be seen in Photo 3. I now had to slightly alter the semi-circular cut outs in the top corners of the plate so that they would fit tightly up against the arch as shown in the test fit in Photo 4. As I mentioned last time, that locating spigot isn’t found on the real car, in actual fact the side legs of the plate are welded to the arch so I’d need a good accurate fit to be able to simulate that. Photo 5 shows the plate resting in place with the top tight against the arch and the bottom legs fitted over the moulded screw holes. By getting the fit perfect now I could first glue the simulated welds at the top and when set, screw the bottoms without putting any undue strain on the joints.
Photo 6 illustrates the actual joint on the real thing whilst Photos 7 and 8 show the little drops of steel epoxy glue prior to mixing together and the ‘welds’ applied to the plate/arch. As the glue set (rapidly) I used a cocktail stick to dab and prick the glue, sculpting it into a more realistic weld-looking join. Once the joint was set I could then put in the pair of screws to secure the bottom legs to the chassis top as seen in Photo 9. Later on I went back over the epoxy with Vallejo Chrome to tie in the grey joints to the overall metal colouring. After I had glued and screwed everything in place I realised that there was another little addition I could/should have added in! I realised too late that the top and bottom edges of the plate also have a row of rivets but there is nothing on the back of the plate to rivet onto. The frame behind the plate obviously has a crass bar at the top and bottom which only needed a thin strip of plasticard to glue on the back to represent - another one for future builders to consider!
Anyway, I could now finally join the engine to the rest of the chassis via the firewall bulkhead (a special note here – DON’T try a dry fit of the firewall to the chassis if you haven’t screwed it to the engine first – getting it back off is NOT easy! ) First however, my many hours of pouring over the reference photos showed up a need for yet another hole to be drilled into the firewall! Photo 10 shows a pair of copper tubes and connectors running along the side of the engine. They are joined on to a pair of tubes or pipes which run back through a rubber grommited hole in the firewall (arrowed). The colour of the pipes is interesting – white and brown! If you think back to the brake cylinders on the front of the car, there was a pair of white and brown tubes coming off the cylinders and running through the chassis into that ‘box’ behind the foot pedals – I’m wondering if this is where they re-appear after running through the length of the chassis inside the double walls of the box construction! If so, they presumably carry on back to the rear brakes somewhere along the line. Anyway, after working out where that hole was to be found I first drilled it out as shown in Photo 11 and then, using a short length of rubber tube on a cocktail stick, super glued the outside of the rubber and slowly pushed it through the hole as seen in Photo 12. After a few seconds the cocktail stick was withdrawn leaving the rubber tube standing proud of the wall ready to accept the tubing much later on.
The engine and firewall are shown ready for joining together in Photo 13. This should have been done ages ago according to the instruction schedule (way back in section 3 in fact) but I just wanted to keep all that extra detailing I put on the end of the engine ‘gaze at able’ for as long as possible! The three raised screw points fit onto corresponding holes on the engine and are secured with three Type N screws, once tight the bulkhead with engine attached then fits inside the open end of the cockpit. Before that however it was time to work on the fire extinguisher control thingy as seen in Photo 14. There were some fairly prominent mould or flash lines around this one but once again, as I was re-painting it I could carefully sand down those before priming the piece matt black. The areas sanded back are marked with the arrows here. Not shown is the third part of the control – an ‘L’ shaped lever which push fits into that semi circle cut out seen in Photo 15. Here the control has been primed, airbrushed with Vallejo Metal Colour Duraluminium and toned down with Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel Wash. A couple of small holes were drilled into the end of the cylinder and three single strands of wire, two painted with Vallejo acrylic turquoise blue and one with acrylic red were glued in as shown. The actual thing is shown in Photo 16 and from what I can see, those wires go into a rubber sheath which joins on to the one coming from the electrical cut off cone up above the cockpit. So before joining the firewall onto the chassis a last fond look inside the cockpit in Photo 17. Note the two rectangular cut outs at bottom left and right, they’re important!
The engine/firewall is attached to the chassis with three Type P screws – two in the sides and one at the top. I should have put in the side screws first according to the instructions but I actually put the top one in first as seen in Photo 18. That might explain why I had to use the old blunt needle in the screw hole trick to align the side screws afterwards! The two side screws are shown in Photos 19 and 20, they pass through two projecting tabs on the rear of the firewall, which in turn slide down into those rectangular cut outs mentioned earlier.
Finally, the top screw is semi-disguised by the addition of the fire extinguisher control which is push fitted into the two holes seen above the screw location, as is shown in Photo 21. The transparent yellow tubing seen running below the extinguisher control (and down the left in Photo 20) will eventually be connected on to the left hand radiator, which is coming as soon as the weather gets a lot cooler!(All done and dusted now!)
In the meantime there’s just a couple of ‘boxes’ to be airbrushed and added to the chassis sides to bring the diary up to date with the build so far.
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All and stay cool!

Robin.

CRIKEY... Another mind-boggling update here.
Looking forward to seeing the final result.

This is really a masterpiece!

Best,

Mark

I'm really enjoying what you are doing here.
Absolutely top notch stuff.

Roy

Many and grateful thanks again to Mark, Chris, Roy and Kev for their kind words!
I am really enjoying the build as you can rightly tell Kev, I think when you come down to it I'd probably enjoy any build that can be 'personalised' with up-grades and improvements like this one! The thing that really surprised me was just how 'hand made' these F1 cars are - there's none of the mass produced neat and tidy approach as you get in the commercial vehicles - moulded conduits for wiring? forget that! Run them from A to B and bung in some cable ties and duct tape to stop them flapping about! Judging from the reference photos, no two cars of the same type and model are actually identical - some run cables and oil lines here and another sticks them out of the way somewhere else! Means more research but gives a lot more leeway in what you can get away with!
Anyway....
As mentioned in the last instalment, the next part to make up is the radiator coolant tank, the components for which come in Pack 52 as shown in Photo 1. The tank itself comes in two halves, one of which has the pipe attached, together with a second pipe. As you can see in Photo 2, both the pipe sections have some noticeable flash lines which will have to be removed, and both the pipes also have a moulded on jubilee clip shown in Photos 3 and 4 which will also be removed for a better looking add-on version. If it wasn’t for the flash lines I would have left the pipes in the manufacturers ‘chrome’ finish to differentiate them from the duller aluminium of the radiators. I chose to apply a thin bead of Revell Contacta poly glue around the edges of the tank before pressing the two halves together and once dry, proceeded to sand down the flash lines along the pipes. Some of the reference photos show the filler cap on the top of the tank as having a set of four holes or depressions in the plastic cap as shown in Photo 5 (one of the photos also has the tool to remove said cap laying on the tank as well – it looks just like a larger version of the bottom bracket removal tool in my cycle maintenance tool set – yes, the one I managed to snap one of the pins off! ) The first job was to drill out those four holes with the mini drill vice as seen in Photo 6 – the holes aren’t actually as big as that, I slightly countersunk (countersank?) the holes to clean up the edges and like most of this kit, the plastic is black under that chrome paint finish! Photo 7 shows the bottom of the tank after sanding down the joint and the pipe flash. It was then airbrushed with Vallejo Black Primer followed by Vallejo Air Chrome acrylic. Once that had dried overnight I used the Humbrol Blue-Grey Enamel Wash with a very small brush to flow the wash around the raised weld lines on the top and sides of the tank as well as the details on the pipe connectors. This is shown in Photo 8 and a closer shot in Photo 9, which also shows the plastic filler cap painted in Vallejo acrylic Ivory.
The tank was then attached to the bodywork by press fitting as seen in Photo 10. This was a difficult process – the pins and holes are a very tight fit and it’s not easy to get the tank in flat to the chassis. Once I’d started I couldn’t get the thing back off again and if I was doing it again I would drill out those holes a little and poly glue the tank into place instead of press fitting it on! Before fitting the tank in place, the new jubilee clip was made from thin aluminium sheet with the ratchet holes embossed by pounce wheel before cutting the thin strip out, curling it around the pipe and super gluing it in position. A tiny length of aluminium micro tube was then cut off and glued in place for the tightening screw, illustrated in Photo 11.
The joint on the upper pipe is a bit of a nightmare! It even looks pretty rough on the official build photos, it is essentially a half butted joint which leaves a nasty joint/gap between the two halves as shown in Photo 14. Fortunately, some of the reference photos show this joint to be covered by a wrap around something (possibly asbestos?) so that would allow me to cover the joint up without having to fill/sand/paint after fixing it together. Photo 12 shows my ‘asbestos’ patch – a strip of DecraLed adhesive lead cut to the right width and then rolled down over a course piece of sandpaper to create the ‘material’ texture. This was then painted with Vallejo Sky Grey acrylic and when dry a steel rod was positioned down the centre and gently hammered along to create the depression for the jubilee clip to sit in as shown in Photo 13. Photo 15 illustrates the concealing wrap around which was super glued into place followed by the aluminium jubilee clip to finish it off.
Photo 16 shows both the pipes in place, connecting the right hand radiator to both the engine block and the coolant tank.
With the pipes in place it was then time to clean up the loose tubes and cable seen on the right in the last photo. My first intention was to join the pair of oil lines back to their other halves coming off the big blue oil filter with a short length of black rubber tubing – however I suddenly thought up a much neater method! Photo 17 shows the raw material for the joiners – some clear plastic sprue (probably from the 1/72 Airfix Spitfires in the Scramble diorama). As shown, the corner section was snipped off and stretched over the candle flame to produce the filament shown at the bottom. The two wider ends up where the sprue begins to stretch were then cut off and inserted into the ends of the clear/yellow stained vinyl tubing as shown in Photo 18, a drop of thin super glue securing the clear ‘pin’ in place. The other end of the tubing was then slid over the clear sprue and another drop of super glue fixing the two halves together with a nearly invisible join. Before joining them together however, I’d cut three rubber bands from the larger rubber tubing and slid them over the two yellow oil lines. After the lines were joined I could then insert a needle nosed pair of tweezers into the bands, the spring in the tweezers opening up the band as seen in Photo 19. As Photo 20 shows, whilst the band was kept open, I could then thread the black cable through, pulling it taut and then simply removing the tweezers to join all three tubes/cable together. This was repeated with the other two bands, leaving the entire run down the right hand side joined as shown in Photo 21. On some reference photos, that’s all there is for the cable run but on a couple there is a bolted on metal clip to secure the lines at the rear of the chassis. I couldn’t leave that off (it does help to keep everything where it should be) so I cannibalised one of the failed brake fluid tank cradles and fitted that on as shown in Photo 22. It already had a drilled hole at the end and I just had to make a pilot hole in the plastic chassis body and then use one of the spectacle screws and screw it down to fix the clip in place.
There was one more piece of pipe routing to carry out on the section – one that I’d been looking forward to for some time – I had such fun creating it that I’ll keep that one back for a nice short instalment coming next! (Plus the fact that I’m up to my ears in trying to find a missing tool in the conservatory that has resulted in loads of tools (and junk) piled up on the worktop out there which is just where I have the airbrushing station set up! I don’t even need that tool at the moment – its just really annoying me where it’s gone!)
So anyway, until the next instalment, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

This is looking amazing, Robin! Keep it up!

Best,

Mark

Yet another brilliant update.
This just keeps getting better and better.

More stunning work.
You're clearly enjoying the project. Keep it coming.