Many thanks for that Mark and Roy!
I love getting into the resin casting Roy, its so much easier when building multiple and identical pieces to make just the one and cast the rest in resin, there's another bit of scratch building coming in a couple of instalments or so to add on another missing bit!

Carrying on with the ‘spare’ rear wheel hubs, Photo 4 illustrates that ‘adapting’ of the rubber mould. Despite ensuring that the original went in the right way up to form the silicone mould, it was still very difficult to persuade the kit hub to part company with it’s rubber cocoon! The only way out of that little problem was to use the modelling knife to turn the one piece mould into a two piece. As you can see here, it was not a simple cut around the middle as I would need to have some means of keeping the two parts aligned when they went back together for the casting process. This was achieved by cutting the mould in a step pattern as shown here, with the top half now removed, the kit plastic original could be ‘wobbled’ free from the bottom half ready to receive the liquid resin. As it happened, the first casting revealed that I’d managed to get a large air bubble trapped in the rubber under the outer rim which produced a large lump of extra resin as shown in Photo 5. Annoying as it was, it was no great problem actually as all of this area is safely concealed inside the foam lining of the rubber tyre. It is possible I could have left it untouched and still had the tyre fit over the rim, but for the sake of appearances I decided to remove the offending bit by simply razor sawing along the top of the moulded tab on the rim followed by three cuts parallel to the hub sides and the not yet fully cured resin was removed as seen in Photo 6. That zig zag line shows the slight misalignment of the upper and lower mould halves – again of no consequence as the single ‘cone’ in the middle of the mould produces a perfect inside surface of the hub and the lines are safely hidden away inside the tyre. That little semi circle above the number 5 is the back of one of those bolt heads I pushed in, removing the need to cast them separately.
Once I knew I could successfully cast the main hub body, it was time to sort out a mould for the inner hub. This one is a little easier to make up than the front wheels inner hubs as the rear ones are solid instead of the cruciform ‘spokes’ found on the front wheels. On those I was forced to try and make the inner hubs in two halves, split down their thickness but with these I could try and make a single casting (much less work putting them together afterwards! ) Photo 7 shows the result of the first half of the mould. The metal casting was pushed down into a bed of softened plasticene before adding the Lego brick wall around the outside and pouring in enough silicone rubber to just submerge the hub. Once the rubber was set I removed the bricks and plasticene base, leaving the hub embedded in the rubber as seen here. I then added masking tape strips to cover the four holes in the outer rim and also added a length of wooden dowel to fill in the central hole, this would become a pouring shaft for the resin later. At the same time I also carved away a shelf around the mould to provide a fixing area for the second half of the silicone before giving the mould a couple coats of liquid wax release agent to stop the other mould sticking to the first one (it’s not nice when they do! ) Photo 8 shows the final result, the first mould is on the left with the second half which was poured onto it on the right. Note the rim around the edge on that one, that’s where the rubber filled in the carved out shelf allowing both halves to fit snugly together. The first casting is in between them. To cast the resin I first add enough to fill just the sunken trough with the bolts in it (right hand mould) and quickly prod each bolt with a cocktail stick to push out any air bubbles, then pour in resin into the left mould, again sweeping around the bottom with the cocktail stick to ensure the rim is full of resin with no air trapped and finally adding resin to completely cover all of the right hand mould and quickly put the two moulds together and add the last of the resin down the pouring hole or ‘axle’. The result wasn’t too bad – there is a thinning due to trapped air at the one o’clock position on the casting but all of the detail is there and I could use this one with a coat of primer and gold if I had to. More than likely I’ll have a couple more goes to try and rectify the blemishes later, but at least I know ‘it can be done’ when I need to make the spare tyres.
So then it was back to getting on with the ‘real thing’! The re-painted kit hub is shown in Photo 9. The inner hub is black primed and Vallejo Metal Colour Gold airbrushed with Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel Wash in the sunken holes (although you can’t even see that in this shot) and the main hub has been primed and airbrushed in Metal Colour Duraluminium – but only on the inside of course, the outside which is hidden inside the tyre is left in kit chrome. After far too much swearing and blaspheming, the hubs were fitted into those flaming rubber tyres as shown in Photo 10. In the end I used a stainless steel wax carving tool as a miniature tyre lever to get the hub to fit after which one of the main hubs needed a quick re-spray to cover up the scratch when the tyre lever ‘slipped’! I then had to carefully paint the ‘Michelin ‘ in gold and the direction arrows in white followed by the pit crew’s yellow quick ID markings of ‘LR’ and RR’ with larger arrows. But finally, all four wheels are now in place as shown in Photos 11 and 12. The size of this thing is now becoming apparent – that’s an A3 cutting mat she’s perched on!
What follows hereafter involves a lot of turning the car upside down which, in the kit finish is probably no problem, but my re-paints and airbrushing won’t stand up to resting on the bench without rubbing off parts of it and so, before any further modelling, it’s time to build her ‘dry dock’! The final Photo 13 shows the two hole cutter saws I needed to construct the project, the front wheel saw I had to buy specially but the back one I had already (fortunately).
In the next instalment its back to some woodwork – it’s been years since I got sawdust back my throat!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Hello there.
Absolutely amazing as always.

Looking forward to seeing the finished result.

Roy.

Excellent work Robin.



You must have the patience of a Saint.


Regards
delboy271155
(Derek)

Lovely update as usual, and great idea.

MARK

Looking fantastic! (As it should, given the amount of amazing work you’ve put into it!)

Cheers,

Mark

An incredible build.
This is really a show winner. Keep it going.

Very grateful thanks to Mark, Kev, Roy and Carl for those great compliments!
I've been thinking hard about one particular 'improvement', whether it was worth the considerable effort or just to leave it in the kit finish. After some trial efforts on scrap plasticard I've come to the decision - well I've gone this far, might as well go the whole hog! It means a lot of preparation work on parts that would have gone straight on but what the heck - the trials looked really good!
The following section may well get a little confusing, it has a great many photos many of which look very similar without the text here to point out the evolving wiring system (it certainly confused the heck out of me!)
Anyway, Photo 1 illustrates the parts contained in Pack 82. I’m mostly concerned with the rear mounted auxiliary battery connector on the extreme right, the other four pieces are the rear exhaust pipe brackets and the two rear body panel supports. Photos 2 and 3 show the two possible positions for the battery connector, Photo 2 shows how the connector is fitted on in the kit, and also, on the Tamiya kit as well. Photo 3 shows how it appears on the majority of the reference photos – instead of being bolted onto the rear suspension chassis panel, it has moved over to the base of the rear wing with the lower of the two previous fixing points being converted into a chassis earth point. The second option is the one I’m going for, and also, this is another example of the Centauria kit having a nicely detailed part which does nothing! The connector just sits there whereas in the smaller Tamiya kit it is actually connected to something – the starting motor!
Until I actually opened up the poly pocket, all I could see of the connector was what you can see in Photo 4, I had visions of having to scratch build all those little ‘vanes’ running along the sides but once the part was out of the packet it was obvious that it had been created with all the details on there as seen in Photo 5, (which I would have realised if I’d looked at the instructions photos closer!)
Since the conversion required all of the existing bracket to be cut off I decided to go down the resin route again and create a copy so I didn’t ruin the original, change my mind and end up with no connector at all! The little mould and resin casting are shown in Photo 6. One slight change to the usual mould making was used here – those two plug in sockets were just begging for an air bubble so I took a length of cured silicone rubber which had been sliced off a previous mould to create the locating ‘shelves’ keeping the two halves of the moulds together, and sliced it down into two thin strips which just fitted into the sockets. These protruded a couple of mm or so from the kit part and when the first silicone rubber was poured into the mould box it chemically bonded to the strips which became part of the mould. As you can just make out on the resin cast – no lumps from air bubbles! Photo 7 shows that even clearer with the resin copy pushed into the ‘proper’ position as per the kit instructions. To convert the casting, the two ‘wings’ of the bracket along with the fixing pins were cut away, the back face was sanded flat and a thin plasticard strip super glued down the back to form the new bracket. Four holes were then drilled into the connector, two into the rear end facing the engine and two through the centre. The two rear holes had a brass rod glued in which would become the push on attachment points for the following cables, the connector was then placed in it’s new position on the shroud of the red light at about a 45 degrees slant upwards and the two central holes used to start a drill into the shroud. This is shown in Photo 8 after the shroud holes were drilled out, note also, the red light casing is also drilled to take a single brass rod shown by the arrow. As shown in Photo 9, two more brass rods were then glued into the connector sitting flush with the top face and protruding out to fit into the shroud holes. The rod ends will be hidden by a pair of resin cast nuts, seen in the foreground. Nearly forgot! The inner walls of the two sockets were also cut away to match the version seen in the reference photos. Photo 10 shows the connector primed and then painted with Mig Matt Aluminium before the usual Humbrol Blue Grey Enamel wash with a thin black tube attached to the brass rod on the red light body. Next to go on was a thicker black rubber tube, painted red on the end and equipped with an even bigger rubber ‘collar’ (the reason for that will become clear soon). This was pushed onto the top brass rod with a drop of super glue for good measure as shown in Photo 11. The big red tipped black tube is the main live cable, which will go direct to the battery positive terminal on the engine deck. The next item on the list is shown by the arrow in Photo 12. This is a chassis earth connection point which is directly connected to the negative plug on the auxiliary connector and is actually bolted into the redundant chassis hole previously occupied by the self same connector! This is essentially a big hefty bolt and screw connector hidden under a black rubber boot for protection. The booted connector is made from two sizes of styrene rod as shown in Photo 13. The larger one was drilled out twice – once into the back to allow a length of copper micro tube to be glued in, this is the same diameter as the locating hole in the chassis plate, the other hole is the diameter of the smaller rod, drilled in at right angles and liquid poly glued in place. The end of the main rod was rounded off to match the rubber boot profile, the smaller rod is simply a peg or spigot over which a black rubber tube will be glued to create the main earth lead. Photo 14 shows the finished connector with the copper tube cut down to just fit into the hole, the styrene boot painted with matt black Humbrol enamel and the rubber tubing pushed over and super glued to the smaller spigot rod.
Before gluing the boot in place I wanted to do a little alteration on the four holes into which the rear wing support fits. The instructions say to simply push fit the support in place which is fine as you also have to remove it again to fit that horrible alternative rear section (and also if you want when fitting the exhaust pipes in position later). What I didn’t like much was the amount of bending of the entire rear panel when trying to get the pins all the way in! Since I wasn’t going to be removing the rear wing (or actually adding the wing on to the support until the end) I was much happier to just enlarge the locating holes a little as seen in Photo 15, allowing the four pins to go in smoothly and just super glue the thing on permanently. With that out of the way I could then glue the earth lead in to the lower hole as shown in Photo 16.
Now comes the extremely fiddly part (though not a patch on the exhaust upgrades coming later!) The thick rubber tube was cut to length and super glued into the bottom brass pin on the aux connector (the top one in this upside down shot of course). Once that was set the smaller tube from the red light housing was also cut to size and pushed down into the rubber tube of the boot itself, again securing with super glue. This is shown in Photo 17, the arrow is indicating the positive lead off the connector before that goes off to the battery. Remember that rubber tube sleeve on the positive cable? This serves the same purpose as the rubber boot and allows the live lead from the starting motor to be ‘spliced’ into the live cable from the connector as indicated by the arrow. This is shown in Photo 18 and is made from single core telephone cable, painted with red enamel and slid into a suitable black pvc tube. This wire is great for pre-shaping, because it is a single core it will bend into whatever position you want and then stay there! Photo 19 shows the other end of the live cable after trimming to length and super gluing into a new hole drilled into the starting motor – I’d already drilled two holes for these wires, but I just couldn’t find them again! In the foreground is the other starting motor wire, this time painted in light blue enamel and pre-formed into the shape to come off the motor, bend around underneath the motor body (actually over it when it’s the right way up) and then pass up the side of the gearbox on its way to the ECU . In this case the blue wire simply goes inside the black tubing a short distance, the rest of the cable is just the tubing as that is easier to thread along under the existing cables and wires on top of the engine. The wires are all tidied up in position in Photo 20 whilst Photo 21 shows the wheel support in use as it was all through this part holding the car upside down whilst threading the wires in. The long thin black tubing seen on the underside of the chassis is the rest of the starting motor blue wire. The thicker black tube from the live socket is shown in Photo 22 after finally being trimmed to size and connected to the previously constructed battery terminal fitting. Like the socket end, this was also painted red at the tip. Immediately above the red part is that starting motor lead coming up from below and snaking over the engine on to the ECU. Finally, in the ‘biggie’, Photo 23, you can see the finished re-wiring exercise the right way up! I think it certainly add more interest to this area compared to the kit version although I think if that version was only fitted out with the correct wiring instead of just sitting there doing nothing it would also be a great improvement too!
In the next instalment, probably the final large-ish scratch built addition followed after that by a tiny extra which was probably the most infuriatingly difficult one to fit on in the entire model – and then comes the body work!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Apologies again for all that text to read through!

Many thanks again for that Mark! It certainly does improve the 'look' of the car when items are connected up as if they actually do something!
At the moment I'm working on something I've been considering doing for a long time - it was a case of 'is it really worth all that effort'? In the end I just couldn't resist giving it a go and the difference it makes is (although I say it myself) stunning! The downside, apart from all the extra work, is that the latest additions can have some adverse effect on some of the earlier super detailing (bits won't fit) which then entails some more remedial work!
But - it's going to be worth it!

This next part is another example of something not being included on this kit which is a part of the smaller Tamiya model. Photos 1 and 2 are taken from the Tamiya instruction sheets which I downloaded during my hunt for extra references. Photo 1 is from the section fitting in the oil tank and its associated pipework. Note on the curved rear face of the tank that spigot sticking out. Photo 2 shows what that is for, there is a length of black vinyl tubing which pushes on over the spigot and then runs down under the right hand air intake and then up over the gearbox to terminate at the rear of the car. On the Tamiya kit this termination point is within the two sides of the rear wing support, which indeed it was (early on) as seen in Photo 3 where the end of the pipe is arrowed. However, during the evolution of the 312T series, the position of this termination altered (as indeed did the positions of the four exhaust pipes as you’ll see when we get to them!) Also, this photo was taken fairly recently when the 312 had become a ‘classic racing car’, this is evident from the rest of this photo (cropped off) showing the car surrounded by the public enthusiasts and also by the fact that the subject of the last instalment, that external battery connector is not fixed to anything at all here, just dangling off the back of the chassis (and connected to the charger too!) Many of the other reference shots show that tubing from the oil tank was later plugged into a dedicated collection vessel as shown in Photo 4.
I’ve been wondering a lot about all these oil tank expansion vessels, apart from the big tube which now goes into the ‘can’ there are three others which still go into the rear wing support (you can see one of them emerging in Photo 4 just between the two big bolts holding the wing support in place) two of them come from the oil tank expansion vessel on the firewall and the third comes from that ‘tubeless’ nozzle I reversed on the top of the gearbox. My thinking is this – all those tubes are supposed to carry excess hot oil away from the oil tank presumably if it was overheating. Now overheating is most likely to occur when the engine is being overtaxed ie, when being pressed hard by a rival trying to overtake. Now since all these oil lines from the expansion vessel terminate at the rear of the car, including the big one before the can was introduced, did the Ferrari designers deliberately put those tubes there so they would squirt hot oil onto the track and into the face of their rival competitors if they were pushing their beloved 312 too hard? Well, as others have said, old Enzio Ferrari was pretty ruthless!
Anyway, only joking! Photo 5 shows the main components of the can, the main body is composed of four pieces of 2mm plasticard liquid poly glued into a box with two thinner pieces to make the lid and bottom. The lid is drilled out with thirteen holes, twelve for the vents and a bigger one for the input pipe. Both the lid and the base have a slight overhang in the photos (possibly the weld lines joining it all together?) so they are slightly bigger than the sides. The vents do not appear to go right through but probably have some sort of air filter underneath, when the lid is glued onto the sides the outer lines of holes are blanked off by the thickness of the sides but the three in the centre needed a strip of thin plasticard glued inside to blank them off as seen in Photo 6. The can has been glued together in Photo 7 and is seen alongside the rest of the components – the input tube made from a length of brass wire, I think it was 1.5mm diameter, the support cradle was made from the same thickness plasticard as the lid and base, the emptying spout was a tiny length of styrene tubing with a punched out plasticard disk, trimmed into an octagonal cap and finally, a thinner strip of plasticard to construct the retaining bracket. The bracket is shown underway in Photo 8 whilst Photo 9 shows a styrene square rod being sanded down into a semi-circular section, which is attached to the left hand side of the bracket where it can be glued into the circular hole in the chassis. You can see this piece in the completed Photos 10 and 11. The bar across the rear of the cradle is there to strengthen the (inevitable) resin casting, and a pair of resin cast bolt heads completed the cradle.
The silicone mould was a simple little two parter, about one by one and a half inches and the first castings are shown in Photo 12. The prototype is on the left, the first casting was simply filling the mould with resin, this resulted in an air bubble forming inside giving that depression in the front. The second attempt involved filling part of each mould, letting that cure and then filling in the middle and joining them together. This almost worked with just a missing bolt head (I could have just glued another one on and used it of course). The third try was perfect – I put a drop of resin in the bolt heads with a cocktail stick to remove any air bubbles, filled one mould just to the rim and let that cure then filled the other half to almost overfilling and placed the cured half on top – any air bubbles were formed in the centre of the casting not at the outer face! The perfect copy is shown test fitting against the chassis panel in Photo 13, that curved peg as you can just make out by my finger nail is resting against the rim of the panel hole, the other side is resting against a pair of raised shelves forming part of the wing support fixings. When gluing in position, a small drop of super glue gel is applied to the circular rim and the shelves. The prototype and resin casting are shown together in Photo 14, the casting having been grey primed and hand painted in Mig Matt Aluminium with Mig Ammo Blue Black Panel Line Enamel Wash applied to pick out the brackets etc. I’m trying Mig’s enamel wash – my Humbrol bottle is starting to jelly-fy just like the first one did (and the Mig plastic bottle hasn’t got that awful child proof clicky top which stops up tight and won’t work at all eventually – yes I really hate the things!)
Before fitting on the can it was time to finish off that reversed oil nozzle on the gearbox top. Photo 15 illustrates the clear tube fitted onto the nozzle after a thinned down wash with the Vallejo Transparent Yellow. This tube then runs down over the top of the gearbox where it picks up the two smaller lines from the firewall expansion vessel and all three are joined together by a silicone rubber ‘cable tie’ before passing into the rear wing support column (you can see the other two lines coming in from the centre right).
Finally, in Photo 16 we have the finished expansion can glued into place on the back of the suspension rear plate. I forgot to mention that that bottom emptying cap is turquoise blue! The curved rear pin is super glued into the rim of the round hole whilst the right rear face is similarly glued to the two curving shelves which are visible in the insert pic which shows the same location as per the kit without the extras added on.
In the next instalment its time to get at the plate full of spaghetti which is the exhaust system!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Well done Robin.

Regards Trev

Many thanks indeed to Roy, Trev and Kev for their kind words! I think for me, the hardest thing to accomplish in modelling would be to build a kit straight out of the box with no embellishments at all! Every little extra not added in would be festering around in my head thereafter! (You know you SHOULD have done it!) Still, half of the enjoyment comes from making the model personalised and unique - I've finally reached the part of the construction where I thought I'd just be adding on the body panels with no need to alter anything - I thought wrong!

Before getting stuck into the exhaust pipe construction, it might be interesting to some to realise that the 312T series went through quite an evolutionary process as regards to the exhaust system! I’m not sure what the T1 and T2 layout was but by the time of the T3 the twelve exhaust pipes were in the configuration shown in Photos 1 and 2. These are actually of an early T4, which carried the design on for a while. As you can see here, the four pipes are actually separated, two above the gearbox and two below it, the bottom one is indicated by the lower arrow as it has an anti dirt cover on, making it more difficult to pick out. The upper arrow points out another difference – the pipe support bracket is the same one which comes in this kit, but is reversed, instead of angling outboard, it points inwards as the upper pipes pass inside of the rear brake air scoops and not outboard as in the kit. Because of this, the two fibreglass air scoops are actually moulded with a cut out to allow the pipes to pass as shown by the arrow in Photo 2.
Photo 3 illustrates the state of affairs on the later T4, as modelled on the kit. The front three pipes now no longer pass under the gearbox but swing up parallel to the rear three above the gearbox. The T4 was then redesigned (again) and became the 312T4B. The pipe arrangement went back to the earlier design with the two up and two down layout with the upper pipes again curving inwards over the gearbox, this time however, the rear brakes had also been changed removing the rear air scoops in the process. This is shown in Photo 4 and this arrangement then carried on into the next version, the 312T5 which I believe this photo actually shows (there’s a few more differences ‘up front’ compared to the later T4!) Apparently the T5 was a change too far for Ferrari's drivers who didn't like it at all!
Anyhow, back to the model! The first exhaust components arrive in Pack 83 shown in Photo 5. This comprises of the three forward pipes on the left hand side of the engine together with a push fit triple joint section. The first thng to notice is that there is a noticeable flash line running down each side of each pipe. If you are leaving them in the kit ‘chrome’ finish this is not that prominent but as mine are getting the re-paint treatment as usual, I needed to sand down each pipe before pressing it into the joiner as shown in Photos 6 to 8. Note that that ‘flash line’ running around the joiner is actually supposed to be there! It’s a weld line, not flash at all.) Photo 9 illustrates the three pipes ‘plugged’ into the engine block. At first sight this appears to be a pretty slack joint, easy to push in and easier to fall out again. I had plans to mix up some metal epoxy and spread it around the holes in the block, any squelching out would look like a sealant of some sort. As it turned out however, once the remaining part of the pipe work is attached and the end of the exhaust is resting in the support bracket the whole thing is perfectly tight and doesn’t move at all.
The other three pipes for the left hand side come as shown in Photo 10 in Pack 84 with the three pipes, a triple joint in two halves and a pack of Type J screws. These pipes are fitted in differently, instead of a push fit, the three pipes are screwed into their triple joint. They also required the sanding down to remove the flash lines as seen in Photo 11 before screwing in with the Type J as shown in Photo 12. All three are fitted on in Photo 13, the triple joint is a simple push together fit but first you have to wait to add the end pipe which comes later and is screwed into the other half of the joint before they can be pushed together.
Once again this was a pretty good fit into the engine block, the three pipes do have a tab where they screw down but there is still about a mm of ‘wiggle room’ which might need ‘wiggling’ to get them all to fit securely into the holes in the engine. The final Photo 14 shows all six pipes in place on the left side.
In the following instalment the right hand side will be built up in the same way before the end sections are added on to complete the exhausts (or not as in my case – more scratch building on the way!)
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.