DocRob

I decided to let the implications of the exhaust system stew for a bit and went to the rear interior area. There is an internal framing down under the tank, which is connected with the chassis as well as the body and it fits like a glove. The framing holds the tank, which I only painted in aluminum without detailing, because it will never be seen again. Next, the right and left rollcage bars were added, not too easy, but they also fitted perfectly, which shows how good the engineering is. The difficulty with these parts, it´s all black in there and you have to use an extra light for proper orientation. Now the tank got covered with a two peace (smart) flooring, which also has a lot of fittings for the seat belts and seat supports as well as rivets added. I then added the wiring for the backlights onto the rear air ducts. Unfortunately not enough yellow cable was supplied and I decided to drill a hole and let the cable end there. Last was the small oil tank with it´s tubing and now it will be time to install the spare wheel. But this will be done after some touch ups. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, yeah the tank filling cap issue, now that I counted the parts, I´m a little disappointed too . I may order some VMS CA, but usually I really like my Colle 21 very much. It´s not too thin, bonds very good with everything and has the perfect curing time for my liking. The epoxy, I have to try and I´m sure, it works great. The downside, you need it permanently, mostly in small doses so has to prepare it, while getting the CA bottle is fast. My reduced experiences with epoxy is, that it often pulls strings (don´t know of a better term in English), which can be fatal. I tried to source some metal primer. All of my usual online shops have it in their portfolio, often different brands, but none are available. I will ask a friend, who is a car mechanic and body repairman about it. Cheers Rob

Rest in peace Harv, from what I know of you, you were a generous standup guy of character. I would have liked to meet you personally. Rob

I will try to monitor the situation further on. Surely, the Cobra cries for a lot of CA everywhere. Since I´m working on the interior, I have lots of chalky residues and there were no windows hatches or doors mounted at the time, so a relatively good airflow was allowed. The residues occur mainly on Tamiya LP-5 semi matte black and yes, this type of residues show best on black background. Working on the chassis, which is along all the fairings and framework airbrushed with the same color, I didn´t had these troubles. Work on the chassis was done in the end of summer with potentially far less humidity in the air, which is now about 90-95 percent. Cheers Rob

Looking good Kevin. For larger areas yo can also use a fiber pen, which is also useful, to get paint off gluing surfaces. Cheers Rob

Thank you Chris, I´m always astonished, how long this car looks and is. I hope I can finish it without causing anymore damage. There are countless areas for touchup accumulating and especially those with body color will be problematic. I will keep the ventilation idea in mind and will experiment a bit. It is so weird, because all of the used primers, colors and glue are the same, I used for a long time with nearly no issues. Cheers Rob

Thank you Carl, I should keep your idea about the jack stands in mind, when I´m not able to install the exhausts or roll cage parts in the back , which seems to be very difficult, due to the confined space and limited accessibility, but lets see. As a "reward" for adjoining the chassis and body, I poured some champagne with self made raspberry vodka, a signature drink of the Ritz bar in Paris from the 30´s of the last century for my wife and me Cheers Rob

Today, I had the second attempt with adding the body to the chassis. Yesterday, I tried to identify the obstructing parts and gave them a little workover. This is not like you can pull the body off the chassis as often as you like. All the tolerances are really tight and it involves a lot of bending causing nasty sounds to get it right. When the body was halfway into position, I used a lot of finger force to push everything carefully into place and added screws into pre drilled holes. There were not too many damages to report, only some more scratches and one or two parts knocked off. It´s hard to describe, but there are so many elements all around, which have to fit, I expected worse, but it was no walk in the part and it´s about make or break with the Cobra. The engineering is fantastic, I don´t know how they are able to do it, this is not the average " I close the fuselage of my plane job". Attentive readers might see, there were parts removed from the firewall. This is necessary due to the preparation for installing the exhaust system, the next obstacle in this confined space. There is an additional sheet in the manual, showing the sequence of every part, but I couldn´t make it properly during test fitting. Anyway, I´m lucky, I managed to marry the body to the chassis without too much fuzz. The bonnet is only laid on and the doors need some fine tuning later on. Cheers Rob

Thank you Chris, the rims were made of near polished turned aluminum and it would have looked wrong to not polish the inner parts and having a sharp contrast between the two. Your suggestion on the fogging issue sounds good and I will try it out. Unfortunately, about everything on this build is glued with CA and this on permanently base. I have to see, how practicable the spray booth or ventilation is. Most of the fogging arose hours after application of the CA, strangely. I also looked into the VMS CA descriptions. They claim to be a bit less aggressive, but have a longer curing time, which I don´t like, because often it´s so difficult to hold the parts in place long enough. Cheers Rob

I´d like to see things finished properly, Hubert. I don´t like to have a looming shelf of doom and unfinished GB´s fell into the same category. Like you, I generally enjoy a themed group build among fellow modelers most, there doesn´t need to be a winner or prize. That is why I said, I may attend to future GB´s but off the competition, if there is one, not eligible for winning or prizes. I´m also not on FB and other social media platforms and never will be. Cheers Rob

Very nice, decaling came out great. Cheers Rob

Can´t see any Christopher Lee dental work on that squirrel, Hubert. The nut shouldn´t contain any blood, also . Cheers Rob

I finalized the rims with installing the painted and polished center parts into the turned aluminum rim. I also added the air valves, but didn´t add the tyres for now, because I fear, the CA fumes might affect them. Cheers Rob

Thank you both, this is the most critical phase of the build and I will take my time to sort it out. First thing, I had to reassemble the rear hatch again, because you cant reach it´s hinges with the body mounted onto the chassis. The hinges are hold in place with tiny screws, which wore out the resin. I had to fill the holes with CA and redrill, a task, I fear, because the body is thin, where the hinges are and I don´t want to drill through the rooftop. The glass won´t be too difficult to add later, I hope. At least, it makes no difference, when to add the windshield to my eye. The rear hatch may prove a bit more difficult, as there are more than twenty rivets to add through the vac clear part into the frame. I don´t want to pre drill, because I don´t know for sure, how the vac parts markings for the rivets align with the framings hole indicators. I will use double sided clear adhesive tape for installing the clear part onto the frame. This way, I can drill the 0,6 mm holes for the rivets and the tapes residues hold the tiny rivets in place, without the necessity of adding CA and mess things up. At least, that´s the plan . Cheers Rob

That was not meant as a critique, Carl and Hubert, I was only referring to Kevin´s post. Everyone has it´s own schedule and personal live to carry on. I also have times, where I don´t post a lot due to different distraction. There have always been busy and lazy times here. What I really criticize, is the GB handling here on LSM. I think, I attended five, but only one of these was officially finished (Wet GB) and one was preliminary finished (Twins GB) without ever being finalized. The Sandbox GB is also pending since month and I came to the resolution, not to attend future GB´s or attend but extract myself from competition. Cheers Rob

I hope, the hiccups don´t lead to not being able to join chassis to the body, Kevin. Everybody is building quietly at home, not posting their secret projects . BTW: Wasn´t there a Sandbox GB ending some month ago, without any results? Well the Twins GB wasn´t officially ended either. Cheers Rob

Today, I made the first attempt of a very crucial step, with marrying the body to the chassis. As you can imagine, there are a lots of contact points on the chassis, around the firewall, under the instrument panel, the rear body framing, the rollcage, ...., to cut it short, I failed. Now I´m inspecting everything for color abrasion, which might show problematic areas, which may need to be tweaked. Fortunately, I didn´t brake too many parts, but the rear hatch framing needs to be reinstalled. I´m very happy, that I didn´t follow the manual with the rear hatch window and windshield installed. before joining the chassis and body. It would have been a nightmare to handle the heavy kit with these mounted. Before all this, I finished the shoulder straps of the seat belts, which is an easy task with the supplied PE buckles, belt material and double sided tape, which holds the belts perfectly together and in place. I finished the steering wheel with a coat of Tamiya´s clear orange onto the dried oil colors and then assembled the PE and center knob. That was more difficult then expected, but finally it worked. The clear center part is made from resin and was not clear at all from the beginning and had some tiny scratches. I polished the lens with Tamiya´s polishing compounds and adhered it with Pledge on the decals. Next were the wheels, which were sprayed with Tamiya´s semi matte black (LP-5). After two hours of drying time, I didn´t want the paint to cure too much, I swiped the rims with cotton swabs and cotton cloth, slightly dampened with Tamiya lacquer thinner and cleaned off the polished areas. Cheers Rob

Nice finish, Scott, she will be a beauty. I like the way, you transferred the camo scheme. I originally wanted to recommend Tesa masking tape professional, which I use for this kind of jobs, as it is cheaper than Tamiya kabuki tape, but near as good, but they don´t produce the 40mm wide anymore, it seems. I have some rolls left, but there is only the 25 mm variant available. Only the "professional" variant of masking tape is up to our needs. tesa® Masking Tape Professional - tesa Cheers Rob

Thank you Chris and Carl. You can call me a liar, there are only 18 parts involved . The tank filler cap is really working, just open the tiny latch on the left and put in the juice - errr - not now, because the tank isn´t installed right now. After priming some interior parts for later stages, I had an idea about how to deal with the wheels. They are made from cast white metal and were cleaned in the tumbler polisher at the beginning of the build. I thought, I have to give them a bit more shine, to keep the eyes trained on the wheels, letting some other mistakes skip . Hand polishing proved difficult and I found, a conical head M4 screw holds the rims in place in my accumulator drilling machine. Then I sanded the wheels with fine grit sanding sponges, followed by polishing with Autosol polishing paste on a cotton rag. Now, I like the result. Later the wheels will be airbrushed in black and then I polish off the higher parts which are now shiny. Of course, before airbrushing the rims will be cleaned properly. the polished left one on the pic has a lot of dirt accumulated. Cheers Rob

I will dig deeper into the primer thing, Scott. Thanks a lot for your explanations and sharing of experiences. The primer easily lifts off the white metal parts and a bit less easy from the resin. A light sanding job might help, where possible. You are absolutely right about letting painting mistakes happen and forget about them temporarily. There is nothing you can do, when the paint is wet. I try to minimize airbrushing errors due to proper preparation, but yeah, there is Murphy lurking around the corner . Cheers Rob

Poco a poco, I grind my way through the Cobra build. Today, I assembled the tank filler cap, a seemingly small task, but it involved about twenty parts and is functionally. I polished the cap itself with Autosol metal polish and added the numerous etched parts and rivets. Then I started with the steering wheel, which got primed, airbrushed in a mix of red brown color and sand. After drying, I applied several layers of dark brown and red brown oil colors, thinned with fast drying thinner for a realistic looking wood texture. Tomorrow, I will apply a clear coat as finish. Finally, I repaired the damages to the firewall and pinned the lower side to the door fairings with brass rods for enforcement, to close the gaps in this area. Cheers Rob

Thank you Scott, always great to hear some pro tips. I have not a lot of experience with car bodies, be it in real size or large scale. I will try to lay my hand on some etch primer, being it in small bottles from Tamiya or Mr. Hobby or from my mechanic, who also does body repairs. It´s fantastic, to read about how the stuff works, I had no idea. Unfortunately, the adherence on resin isn´t great either. I cleaned all the parts with alcohol, to get rid of cast residues, but I didn´t sand the parts. I will test the etching primer for sure. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias amigos, The fumes of CA are not really trapped into the body. There are openings everywhere, there is no windshield and no rear window and the chassis is still missing. I never had an effect that strong. Maybe it has something to do with a very high humidity here, it´s about 95%. I use the same CA (Colle 21) since years for everything from wooden ships over plastic, resin and metal. Even with normal plastic kits, I often use it for ready painted parts and had no issues so far. Cheers Rob I will look into the VMS products

To do something productive and without destruction, I added details to the rear area. The rear lights were painted with Tamiya clear red, have a turned aluminum base and a small rubber ring around. Next was the feared addition of the firewall, which fitted after a lot of sanding and grinding and is held in place wit a screw. Of course, there are a lot of scratches to be repaired. I also knocked off some parts during the process, which will be added later. Then, I added the dashboard, which luckily was an easy task. Concerning CA fumes, if you are spotting into the foot wells, you notice chalky white residue. I never experience this kind of CA-fogging before and I always use the same glue and used the semi matte black often. Strangely the fogging reaches very far from the gluing area. Cheers Rob

Thank you Chris, I will respray, where possible. The Tamiya LP-5 semi matte black has a distinctive sheen and a marker would be visible. In some delicate areas, I will use a brush. Cheers Rob