The two sub sections of the right hand exhausts come, as you might expect, in the next two packs, Packs 85 and 86 as illustrated in Photos 15 and 16. After the same flash removal both pairs of pipes were test fitted onto the engine as seen in Photo 17. The final parts for both the exhausts come together in the next pack, Pack 87. This consists of a set of four end pipes, two poly bags, each containing a pair of sprung steel springs, and a bag of three Type J screws (one being a spare as usual), shown in Photo 18.
The ‘J’ shaped tube indicated by the arrow is the left hand rear exhaust, this is secured to the ‘empty’ triple joint half with the Type J screw and the two halves of the joint are then push fitted together indicated by the arrow in the following Photo 19. The join on the two halves is pretty good and didn’t require any filling. NOTE however that the two exhaust pipes for the rear sets are not identical or interchangeable! They are not actually straight – each one has a very subtle curve inwards towards the centre of the engine – it’s not very pronounced but it is there to lead the end of the pipe onto the previously fitted pipe support bracket. I can’t remember if the screw end had a tab to prevent going on the wrong side, but if it didn’t (and you did) it won’t line up with the bracket! That bracket is shown in close up in Photo 20, as mentioned earlier, once the pipe is resting against that piece, the tube ends in the engine block are kept tightly in place.
The ‘S’ shaped tubes belong on the front set of pipes, they are fitted on to the triple joint by a simple push fit and I’m pretty sure there was a tab on each one to ensure they went on the correct side. All the pipes are on in Photo 21, you can probably make out that curve on the rearmost pipe, the front pipes curve up from the front joint to lie alongside the rear one (except that in real life they don’t – well not exactly, more on them next time).
With the pipes all connected up it was time to finally paint them. I had the perfect medium all ready to go – my last few tins of Pound Shop Pro Driver Grey Primer Car aerosols.
Funny story with this actually, after reading through Ken’s masterclass on achieving the heat discolouration effect on the stainless steel exhaust pipes I sent off for some bottles of Vallejo transparent colours to try the same. As soon as I’d ebay’ed off the order I discovered the damned T4 had switched to ceramic coated exhausts which were a plain grey colour and didn’t discolour under intense heat!
Anyway, the result of the spray canning was as shown in Photos 22 and 23. Which I have to admit, came as a total surprise to me! The last time I mentioned these paints was years ago when I was singing the praise of how they were the best spray cans for a dead flat light grey primer I had ever found. I don’t know if these things alter with age, they must be seven or eight years old by now but instead of a lovely light ‘battleship grey’ and dead flat I got this semi gloss slate grey with a decided blue tinge. I have to admit though, whilst they looked horrible in my hands, when I tried dry fitting them on the engine as shown here they didn’t actually look too bad! In fact they matched quite closely with some of the reference shots of the exhausts as you can see in Photo 24. My own preference however was the lighter, matt finish similar to Ruda’s model as seen in another reference shot of the real thing in Photo 25.
The bestist matt grey finish I currently had was the Vallejo Grey Surface Primer so I decided to airbrush the slate grey pipes with that using my new No.2 airbrush – exactly the same as the No.1 except I bought one with a 0.5mm needle instead of the other’s 0.3mm (this saves all the changing around from one to the other, and besides, the airbrush rest on the compressor had two parking stations! ) I thought the larger 0.5mm needle would cope better with the slightly thicker primer paint – which it did seem to do. The theory was, if it looked even worse I could simply re-apply the car primer again and go with that finish. The result of that second coat is shown in Photos 26 and 27 – a finish, which I thought did look much nicer. The only addition was a very muted application of the new MiG Blue-Black Enamel Wash along the joints, around the weld lines and into the crevices. I’ll show you a close up in the next instalment.
And also in the coming instalment, the most fiddly, curse raising piece of scratch building so far to finish off those exhausts!
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Many thanks for that Mark! There's a lot of history in this car reading through the Haynes Manual, the original 312T wasn't very popular with Ferrari's drivers and then each successive variant T2, T3 and the T4's became better and better, but then the final T5 proved to have too many changes, the drivers didn't like it and racing successes were few and far between!
Anyway...
In the official instructions, the final job to complete the exhaust system is to add the two sets of springs, which secure the pipes to the bracket (and each other). As I mentioned earlier, even without these springs, the pipes are in fact quite firmly fixed in place already! There are two sizes of springs which came in Pack 87 – the shorter ones are used to wrap around the end of the pipes fixing them onto the brackets as shown in Photo 28. There are two little pegs on the reverse of the bracket, which the hook on each end of the spring locates over. This is a very fiddly exercise and the instructions actually state that you can remove the bracket, add the spring and then fit the bracket back on, pushing the spring over the end of the pipe if it proves too difficult. Unfortunately, a) my pipes are re-painted in matt grey which won’t take very kindly to having a steel spring rubbed along them and b) I’d already super glued the ruddy brackets on as they were a little on the loose side! So I just had to persevere until the springs ‘sprung’ into place.
Photo 29 illustrates the next part in the instructions – adding on the longer spring shown by the arrow (theirs, not mine this time!) The instructions have you simply wrapping the spring around the longer pipe, linking the two hooks and then sliding the spring back over the shorter pipe as well, ensuring that the join is on the inside, out of view. Again, the issue with scratching the paintwork would apply, if, I was just doing that. As you can see from Photos 30 and 31 however, those pipes do not in fact touch each other at all on the real vehicle. Instead of just the one big spring going around both pipes there are actually two smaller springs attached to an ‘x’ shaped spacer which keeps the pipes slightly apart. I know it’s only a little detail but what the heck, I’ve gone this far…!
The spacers were made from 1mm thick plasticard as seen in Photo 32. The next couple of photos are in the wrong order as I didn’t realise composing the photo pages that I had in fact taken a picture of the defective attempt but bare with me! The first attempt to create the hole seen here was made with a leather hole punch of the same diameter as the exhaust pipe (whatever that was!) Unfortunately although the punches work fine with thin plasticard, it cracked the plastic on the thicker 1mm sheet so the hole seen here was actually drilled out instead. The hole punch did however furnish me with a very useful item as seen in Photo 33 – the disc I’d punched out! This was used (with a centre drilled hole) to mark exactly where I needed to drill the second hole which is right where the disc is placed in this shot. That first attempt is finally shown in Photo 34 along with that disc and the second ‘x’ spacer is shown under way in Photo 35.
The first one was drawn freehand, the second was drawn around the first as a template. Using a safety razor blade cutter, the four straight cuts in orange shown in Photo 36 released the spacer from the rest of the plasticard and a further two vertical cuts (not shown) trimmed the excess off from the curved section which was then filed to shape with a diamond dust curved file. The two arms on each side were then drilled out to accept the spring hooks. Photos 37 and 38 show the test fitting on the pipes – as you can see, this was all done before the pipes were re-painted! Photo 39 shows a little jig I made up to try and make the fitting of the springs a little easier. By luck, one of the styrene tubes in the multi-sized set I bought earlier exactly matched the exhausts so I liquid poly glued two short lengths onto a plasticard base with the spacer resting between them to give the correct distance apart.
The two spacers were then painted as shown in Photo 40 – Vallejo Chrome all over with Mig Polished Metal for the darker section on the top. Note, there’s a couple of holes to be countersunk after this was taken! My initial plan was to cut down the longer kit spring to provide the two shorter ones. This I did for the outer springs, but that spring steel is an absolute pig to try and cut with snips and even harder to get the newly created end coil to bend up into a new hook! I managed to get the springs shortened for the outer half of the unit and to get the spacers fitted in between the pipes but the inner springs were a job from Hell! Although I could eventually get the springs reduced to fit on the plastic jig, trying to get the things to go around the inside of the pipes where there is no room to move about or get long nosed pliers or tweezers in to grip the ends was a nightmare! In the end I was forced to give up that idea and instead made new inner springs from the single strand electrical wire. Getting even those to fit wasn’t easy but at least the ‘springs’ weren’t actually springy so I could just get hold of the ends with the tweezers and pull them up to the tiny holes in the spacer arms and carefully thread them through. Photos 41 and 42 show the double springs in place from below and above and the final effect is shown with both sets of pipes fitted and ‘spaced’ in Photo 43. The final picture in Photo 44 shows that close up of the triple joints I promised with the (very) subdued Mig Blue-Black Enamel Wash applied around the weld lines and the crevices.
In the next instalment I can finish off that oil tank expansion set up by adding in the tubing back to the ‘can’ sitting on the rear chassis, for which I need the side pod bodywork panel which comes next in the instructions (for reasons which will be clear next time!)
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

That is some stunning detail in them pics.



WTG Robin,

Regards
delboy271155
(Derek)

A well documented and pictured build. Looking in with great interest. Andy.

Once again, another wonderful and comprehensive update.
It's really starting to come together now. Love it.

Utterly superb, I am now running out of words for this masterpiece.

Mark

Robin; this is a wonderful series you have chosen to share with us, thank you for your detailed reports. I would like to follow your upgrades next winter when I build my second Ferrari 312T4; is there a website or Facebook page with all of this detailed information?

Hi Robin,

Given the nature of your posts, I suspect the build log is cached off of this site in some form? It would be awesome to see it in its entirety, commercial free as it were.

Best,

Mark

Many thanks again to Mark and Roy! I'll give that some serious thought Mark, it would be an interesting exercise to compile a full diary/how to on this monster using screen shots from the official instructions alongside my own photos and text showing the differences between the stock build and the upgraded!
It's almost there now (here I mean, not on the diary yet!)

Going back to that photo of Pack 90, I didn’t describe the contents so we’ll start with that one again as Photo 1! What we get is the right hand bottom section of the side pod along with two solid metal rods, each of which is drilled and tapped in the ends to take the Type H flanged screws in the little polybags. These will literally go right through the entire car from one side pod, through the chassis and out through the opposite side pod securing the whole thing together. On the bottom left is a separate half-cylinder which is fixed to the floor of the pod at the front for the metal rod to pass through. The rear rod simply runs along the floor of the pod without any such enclosure.
The big upgrade I had been thinking about for some time involves the actual finish of these side pods. The kit finish is a simple smooth black plastic – however, these side panels on the real vehicle are made from fibreglass mouldings – beautifully smooth and polished on the red outer surfaces but what has been described as ‘raw fibreglass’ on the insides. As you can see in Photos 2 and 3, there is a definite texture to the panels – a smoother ‘nobbly’ finish on the top, especially under the air intakes and although not especially clear in those pics, a fibrous texture on the insides.
I had hunted around for ages trying to find a way to simulate these finishes, one modeller on another F1 modelling site used static grass, which did indeed give a texture to an otherwise smooth surface, but not exactly what I was looking for. I’d almost given up and decided to go for the ‘nobbly’ effect all over (which you’ll see later) when I tried a last experiment and hit the jackpot! Be aware though that, as shown in Photo 4, at least one example of the 312T4 had smooth Ferrari Red intake floors. I suspect that this is another modern classic car shot, as the kit version is all black (when, like the top panels they could easily have painted that part in red if it was), I’m going with a black interior! Plus I didn’t notice that pic until after I’d started!
First though, a slight alteration to the wooden support. Photo 5 illustrates the car supported on the original design with the pair of top panels temporarily fitted on, this was during the fitting in of the green tubing. At this point it became obvious that the rear wheel support in the centre of the tyre, although the best position for all the work being done on the rear, was going to be a problem when the side pods went on – they wouldn’t fit! The solution was simple however, as shown in Photo 6, I just made a new centre block of wood, which moved the supports out to the outer rim of the tyres allowing the side pods to fit on later. The new centre piece is 22cm across.
So before explaining the raw fibreglass texture, here’s the nobbly one first. Photo 7 shows what I eventually hit upon – a bag of Fillite Powder I’d bought some while ago. This is an extremely fine substance, just a little courser than talcum powder composed of hollow micro spheres which are mixed into epoxy resin during the mixing to bulk up the resin and make it lighter – I haven’t actually used it for that yet!
I first tried a trial using a sheet of black plasticard as seen in Photo 8. I painted a strip with Humbrol Clear Gloss Enamel Varnish, let it go tacky and then sprinkled half of the sticky surface with a very fine aquarium sand (the browny side) and the other half with the Fillite. The resulting piles of material were then pushed down to flatten them onto the varnish and the excess tapped off. Photos 9 and 10 show the trial section after giving it a night to dry and then spraying it with a can of Poundshop Matt Black Car Primer. Photo 9 is just the primer, Photo 10 is after a dry brushing with Mig Sandgrau (Sand grey) acrylic. In both photos, the actual finish is much darker than it appears here. The finer Fillite powder gave the better finish although if I ever do a diorama with modern flat roofs that aquarium sand is a definite contender!
With the nobbly finish sorted out I carried on trying to get the fibreglass ‘matting’ effect. I tried one attempt using pva glue and some soft polyester filling material but that didn’t work – the pva just didn’t have the pulling power to stick the polyester down flat. Then I hit it – this is where I switched to the gloss varnish (this came before the nobbly one) and instead of the polyester I tried good old fashioned cotton wool! I’ll explain the exact procedure as we go but Photo 11 illustrates the first attempt, again after the matt black car primer and the sandgrau dry brushing (and also lighter than it actually appears).
The first job was to push on the half cylinder onto the front of the lower panel as shown in Photo 12. Both sides have an arrow printed on the piece pointing to the front of the vehicle, seen in the centre. I chose to add some liquid poly to the two pegs and along the sides just to be confident the thing wasn’t coming loose later and once the glue was set it was time to begin ‘fibreglassing’. The final Photo 13 shows the first stage, painting the areas arrowed with the Humbrol Clear Varnish – NOTE, it has to be gloss – matt or satin will tend to dry out too quickly giving an uneven sticky-ness when the cotton wool is applied.
In the following instalment we can get to grips (literally) with the cotton wool and transform it into the raw fibreglass texture (time consuming but very effective!)
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.

Well that has to be the most gratifying comment ever on a modelling forum!
My cheekbones are aching with grinning and thank you so very much for that! Its been a real learning experience all the way through this model but its been worth it all the way!
Its almost there now, just waiting for some last materials to arrive to correct a slight 'problem' down the line (you'll see why soon-ish). Anyway still more upgrading to come now....


So carrying on from last time, in Photo 14 the application of the cotton wool onto the now tacky varnish begins. There was a time when you could go into your local Boots chemists (now called ‘pharmacies of course) and get a good old fashioned roll of medical cotton wool as used in first aid. Now all I can find is silly little cotton wool balls used for makeup removal! As you can see down the bottom of the photo, these ‘balls’ are actually little bales or rolls of cotton wool which, with a little patience, can be unrolled to give small sections of flat cotton wool ‘pads’. If you can get the bigger medical rolls get them! It’ll be a lot less bother!
Anyway, the cotton wool is applied over the sticky areas and pressed firmly down onto the plastic. It is then left to dry – overnight if possible. Once dry, the next job is to try and remove as much of that cotton wool as you can as seen in Photos 15 and 16. This was the first go at this process and I learnt as I went that the more you can get off, the better and easier the end result will be. By the end it was a case of ‘if you can see the black plastic through the white cotton that’s about right (in other words, a lot less than you can see here!)
Photo 17 shows the right hand lower side completely covered in the cotton wool. Temporarily fitted onto the chassis via the two steel rods. The arrow is pointing to where the rear rod passes through – note there is no cotton wool applied in the moulded channel! Also note what I meant about having to widen the rear wheel wooden supports to accommodate the body work!
The next stage is even messier. As shown in Photo 18, the cotton wool now gets a second application of gloss clear varnish. This is brushed on quite thickly, working it into the cotton wool and flattening the fibres down to the plastic in the process. This is basically copying the actual glass fibre construction process but instead of glass fibres being immersed in an epoxy resin, we are immersing the cotton fibres in polyurethane varnish. As I said, later on I was leaving far less cotton wool on the parts than shown here and when the cotton turned transparent under the varnish that was enough!
Photo 19 shows the front of the side pod. This was after the red livery sections had been masked off and the newly dried fibre glass texture was sprayed with the matt black car primer. I’d added a little extra cotton wool over the glued on half cylinder to camouflage the join and had just painted over the front part with Mig Satin Black which is why it’s a little glossier in this pic, (I wasn’t going to mask everything up again just for that little spot!) The whole of the inside face is covered and sprayed in Photo 20 which just left a careful dry brushing with Mig Sandgrau to bring out the texture as shown in the close up in Photo 21, as before, the camera tends to over emphasize the lightness here, its actually quite a bit darker to the eye.
With the bottom section looking good, it was time to switch to the top half. This was going to be a ‘two tone’ effect with the cotton wool texture on the sides and underneath and the nobbly Fillite powder on the top surfaces. First though a quick look at how the top section cleverly fits around the side mounted radiator. This is shown in Photo 22. The front of the radiator is moulded with three brackets protruding from the edges, two on the front and one on the side edge. The top panel has to be carefully flexed into position with the open slot on the front clipping into place both over and under the lip of the radiator, which, as seen here, produces the effect or illusion of the brackets being fixed to the panel! That flat smooth area of black to the right of the red painted flap was left as it is, some of the reference photos do show this as pretty smooth but the rest of the panel apart from the vertical edge along the outer side and the pierced bracket sticking out towards the rear was coated (in sections at a time) with the polyurethane varnish. Photo 23 illustrates the top surface being sprinkled with the Fillite powder, this was the last section, the underside and vertical surfaces had already been cotton wooled by then. Photo 24 shows the complete right panel coated and ready for masking off and car black primer spraying. The vertical top edge wasn't textured as that part actually fits down inside the lower panel when they go together.
After the matt black and sandgrau drybrushing the finished effect was as shown in Photo 25. Notice on the bottom right of the panel that there is no texture applied, only a thin strip at the top. This section fits around the oil tank pretty tightly and only the top few millimetres are visible on the inner face so better safe than sorry! Also note the little cylinder sticking out at the bottom – this is for inserting a screw into the top to secure the top and bottom panels together – more on that one later!
Before the final addition to the top panel, Photo 26 illustrates the difference between the textured right hand panel on the bottom and the stock finish left hand one above it. One interesting thing I noticed was that the right hand panel is engineered to fit precisely to the contours of the chassis and oil tank etc. The left hand one however seems to be a left over moulding from an earlier 312T series, that curved cut out behind the side radiator fits around the radiator pipework but not tightly at all. I suspect there was a curved tank fitted to the chassis at one point and this panel was designed to fit up against it just like the right one does around the oil tank. The design changed but the original panel didn’t interfere with anything so they just kept it as it was. Even Enzio would save money when he could!
The final addition is shown on the real car in Photo 27, There are two steel bolts going through the top panel under the air intakes I have no idea if they are actually securing the panel to the intake shelf or even fixing a couple of pipe brackets for that green oil tank pipe going to the can on the rear. Anyway, they were nice and easy to manufacture, simple holes drilled down through the panel and a pair of the smallest of the steel screw bolts from my spectacle repair nuts and bolts set pushed through and super glued! They can be seen in the dry run test fit of the panel in the final Photo 28.
In the following instalment, bringing the left hand panels up to the same standard and then fitting them into place (not as easy as I thought!)
Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!

Robin.