DocRob

Again it is cash in time, my favorite part of MFH builds, when all the necessary parts for a section are prepared, drilled and painted and ready to assemble. The gearbox received lots of the suspension parts, absolutely trouble free and relatively sturdy and good to handle. The aluminum foil on the suspension arms and axle on one side is provided with the kit as self adhesive foil. Here you can also see, how I work with semi transparent black color over metal or silver priming, to let the parts look more interesting and scale wise more correct than deep black, which to the eye nearly never exists. A mock up shot with the engine: For the first time, I used Zero Paints carbon ceramic grey paint for the brake discs and I really like the effect: Cheers Rob

That´s what I call a MONSTER SQURREL Carl, I just got infested by you and got a perfect grade Unicorn. I haven´t showed it, because I´m still waiting for the Kosmos LED set.

De nada Nick, there are no length measurements given, but a photo of the real car shows where the buckles belong and where the fasteners are. With the MFH method to glue the seat belt parts together with double sided adhesive tape, you can adjust until the last moment. Getting the belts through the top seat belt fasteners (the white metal parts) is a bit tricky, as you have to fiddle them through the holes in the seat first and then through the top fasteners. Good tweezers are helpful here. The four lower belts are glued to the underside of the rubber seat pan, using the supplied double sided adhesive tape. You can estimate the length, when you think about fastening them around a not too heavy driver. Cheers Rob

Thank you Nick, I used just a tiny bit of CA glue. If you don´t feel comfortable with CA on rubber you can always use double sided adhesive tape, which works perfect as well. Where the seat belts attach to the rubber, it´s always double sided adhesive tape, to fix them in place. Cheers Rob

You ran into a lot of trouble with that conversion, Carl. Your solution seems to work, albeit the wider fenders of the conversion kit look a bit too small to accept the huge wheels, when they are in their uppermost position. Cheers Rob

It´s easier to sign up for that Martin, you not only get around the fine, but you also don´t need to wash the car afterwards and also no tank running over your bonnet, when you stuck into the mud. Cheers Rob

Nice little dio PW and it is good to see a more unusual tank kitted. Cheers Rob

Again dirty and weathered to your usual high standards FA. You found a home in both worlds now, the clean and polished as well with your car build. Cheers Rob

Nice surgery and kit bashing, Carl. Cheers Rob

Only to show, why it takes some time for the next bigger update. These are the parts for the gearbox and rear suspension cleaned up, drilled (the most time consuming part) and ready for primer and paint. Cheers Rob

Very nice and vivid, FA. I love the contrast between body and blue interior, a beauty for the display shelf. Cheers Rob

Thanks Martin, it´s the same amount of work to get it together like with the real one, I guess . Cheers Rob

The engine is nearly done, missing only some details and some wires and tubes, which I will add later. Speaking of wiring, the manual is terrible, showing, where a wire starts, but often not, where it leads. This means permanent page turning in the manual, and often, I can´t find the receiving end. Another complain is the 0,8 mm wire which is very rigid and therefore difficult to fit. Some other aspects of the kit are a bit annoying as well, like the suggestion to butt glue 0,6 mm ignition wiring onto the 0,6 mm end of the spark plugs, impossible. I made tiny connectors from vinyl tube from my spare box. With a rest of the supplied carbon fiber decal, I applied the CF onto the airbox (?), because my reference shows it belongs there instead of being painted black. In this state, the engine is very fragile and I permanently broke some parts or wires loose. A mock up pic with the monocoque laid in front: Cheers Rob

Thank you Carl, you should try to build a MFH kit yourself and you´ll notice it´s all there. You need to put in some effort and it needs some skill adjustments from plastic modeling, but it´s not that hard to get these results with fantastic kits like this. Cheers Rob

With the recent flood of car builds here, I have to swim with, showing a little progress. In fact, I´ve been working hard to clean up, drill, prime and paint or decal all engine parts. There are a lot of parts and the assembly will be delicate. There are some drawbacks though, e.G. the black tube for the ignition harness should be fixed to the BMW MPower part with what MFH calls UV band. These are like 3D-decals, extremely brittle and nearly impossible to get them around the part and riveted into place with super tiny rivets. I will fake this later with some wine cap foil, as I broke the bands. Second obstacle id drilling numerous tiny wire connectors to accept 0,8 mm wire. They are so small and sometimes not so well cast, that it is nearly impossible to drill them without causing damage. But now, all this is done for the engine, I start to assemble it Colors are AK Extreme Metals aluminum for the silver parts, Tamiya LP titanium gold and Tamiya LP-5 semi gloss black. The lettered parts were scraped with a tiny sharp chisel, to remove the black paint on top. Tamiya black panel liner was used for accentuation and nuts and bolts were painted with a silver marker. Cheers Rob

The Landy in the back tries to hide, stop it, otherways there will be no WIP anymore. Cheers Rob

I hope you´ll build this one. I have three kits in different scales, one from MFH in 1/12 scale, another from MFH in 1/43 and one in 1/20 from Fujimi. They should display nice, when build. Cheers Rob

Three car builds on LSM at the same time must be a record Great work with the Defender, Carl. Bummer that there is no thorough documentation with the conversion kit. Love your version, but don´t like LED lights too much on classic off road cars . I opted for very good conventional lights on my 1/1 scale Jeep. Cheers Rob

Good to see another one building a car kit here. Your CF work looks great and your scratching will pay off in the end. Cheers Rob

I once tried to apply liquid mask from a marker for a similar paintjob, of course an Italian one, but it didn´t work out, the application of the mask was too irregular due to the thick medium. I used a marker then. I tried different masking fluids: ...and finally used the marker: Cheers Rob

...but you fought her back, Kevin, she´s a beauty. Cheers Rob

Nice and colorful rendition of a P-51 and also interesting, considering the story behind the Tuskegee airmen. Cheers Rob

Starting to get into a kind of building flow, big decisions block my progress, but nonetheless, some steps were finished. I added the first front part of the suspension housing, seat and seatbelts. The latter are a joy to assemble, compared to lets say HGW belts. MFH supplies double sided adhesive type for assembly and placing the belts, easily done. The seat parts are made from black rubber and there is no need for painting. I also added some PE frames for the sideskirts, which can hardly be seen on the picture. The next step would be adding the prepared front suspension, but wait, one of the arms needs to be fiddled through the sideskirts, which needs to be painted in bodycolor. I want to prepare and airbrush all body parts together, to prevent color variations and I´m not up to do that now, which means, I will start with the 1500 horsepower heart of the missile soon, plan changed. Cheers Rob

Well hombres, I had to laugh about the twanger thing , but it´s part of the tweezer reality. I have lots of tweezers and use them permantely for different type of builds. There are wooden ships with rigging, WWI biplanes with rigging and of course the MFH kits with tons of rivets to set. Strangely some well made tweezers are worse than others, which were much cheaper, there is no way, other than testing. On the right side are my good tweezers for different causes, the lower you get, the more useful they are. The ones on the left are twangers, and the lower one from Tamiya looks good and is well made, there is no obvious reason for not trusting it, but it´s a fail. These, I use permanently, with the second from above being especially helpful with turnbuckle tubes for WWI planes and for bending tiny PE parts. My relatively new kid in town is the one on the bottom, where despite the sharpness of the tip, the twang factor is relatively low. Here is where I bought it: Classy 'n Dressy Tenir Tweezers (Standard) Here is a picture, showing some of the tiny whit cast rivets of the kit. You can imagine, how hard it is to grip these, apply CA glue and let them slide into their tiny hole. BTW: I frequently hone the inside of my tweezers tips with a fine sandstone, after freeing it of CA residues with a blade. Dirty, ragged tips are the number one culprit, making tweezers to twangers to my eye. The Hasegawa small parts applicator with it´s sticky tip is not tested yet, but will soon, lets see, how that compares. Cheers Rob

Thank you PW and Paul, most parts of the MFH kits are not overly difficult to build, but as you mentioned PW, patience is necessary. The kits seem to be overwhelming at the beginning, but with some discipline and a good building process, all is manageable. I´ve built plastic models with higher swear factors, but the MFH kits are definitely more rewarding than these. Cheers Rob