"Big Tank" Crocker OHV motorcycle - 1/9 - Model Factory Hiro

[DocRob]

Ladies and Gentlemen, lets start our engines and begin a new adventure.

Some month ago, I received my first MFH kit, after I saw some pictures of the finished model and fell in love with the bike immediately. There she was, all the great ingredients of an American bike classic minus the to my eye ugly mid section, the classic Harley Davidson models have. 

I will not tell a lot about the history of the bike, as I´m not an expert here, but it´s a pretty exclusive one. Hand built, the numbers of production bikes range between 60 and 300. The few surviving beauties are among the highest priced motorcycles of today.
The Crocker was fast, so fast, that the company complied, to give back the full price of the bike, should the driver be overtaken by a Harley or Indian on a strait road.

The kit was bought from MFH in Japan directly for a decent price and the fastest and trouble free shipping, I ever had and reached after six days on my doorstep.



Since then, I bought some more MFH kits, as simply browsing through the boxes, the absolute top quality of the kits has an addictive spell over me. The kits are multi-media, most parts are from cast white metal, some photo etch, rubber parts, different hoses and wires, some chrome plated metal parts, nice decals, ...

I preparation for the build, I read a lot about MFH kits, to get a hold onto the many new adventures, I was expecting with the build and as one result, I invested into a magnetic tumbler polisher for cleaning the white metal parts. It took my month to finally obtain one to my remote place in the world, but finally, it arrived.



After some successful testing, all white metal parts were dumped into the tumbler´s bowl, then, I added water with a drop of detergent and 200 gram of 0,3 mm steel polishing needles. The strong magnet in the base swirls the needles around the non magnetic parts and `hammers´ the surfaces very gingerly. After about an hour of tumbling the water was dark black and the parts looked like this.

 

It was not so easy to remove the tinier parts from the needles and I keep all the bowls with needles and the blackened water until, I made sure, I picked all the parts out.
For now, I rinsed the parts with water again and layed them out onto kitchen paper to dry.







The finish of the tumbled parts is fantastic, but of course, further cleanup will be needed down the road. Some parts will get polished, as the white metal looks perfectly, like steel or even chrome when polished carefully.

Next step will be checking against a copy of the manual, if all parts are there. MFH manuals include only a rudimentary parts list, but on their homepage, they have pictures of the kits parts, which will be helpful for the task.

I will add a few detail pictures from some of the parts, to show the fantastic casting quality. The tumble polishing of the parts effect surface detail only minimal, details remained sharp.

 







Stay tuned for more.

Cheers Rob







 

[Landlubber Mike]

I remember seeing you picked that kit up.  Looking forward to following along as it's a really cool subject.  

Interesting experience with the tumbler.  I have a few MFH kits that I've picked up when I could find an especially good deal.  Good to know the tumbler worked out.  One more bit of equipment to buy I suppose

[BlrwestSiR]

Great to see the results of using the magnetic tumbler. It really makes quite the difference and probably a lot less work than doing it by hand. 

HLJ did a tour of the MFH factory and it's impressive to see how they cast the parts and craft the kits. It's from a few years ago but still great to see. 

 

[Peterpools]

Rob

And the first of many adventures begin.  I've already learned quite a bit on how the tumbler works and the proper parts preparation for an MHF kit. Going to be quite an adventure, my seat is front and center row, from start to finish.

Enjoy the journey as we will be living it through your eyes and build updates.

 

[shark64]

That's a cool subject for sure

[FullArmor]

I imagine it is nice to start build with so detailed and sharp parts😮

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

I remember seeing you picked that kit up.  Looking forward to following along as it's a really cool subject.  

Interesting experience with the tumbler.  I have a few MFH kits that I've picked up when I could find an especially good deal.  Good to know the tumbler worked out.  One more bit of equipment to buy I suppose

It was my first MFH kit and after I opened the box, I was hooked. Now I have two more and one other will arrive next week, I guess. The tumbler will pay off sooner or later. I tried a rotating tumbler with steel balls also, but the result was not satisfying. The larger surfaces looked better than with the magnetic tumbler, but they don´t enter crevices and round the finer details.
Are there especially good deals of MFH kits? I buy directly from MFH, the price is ok, compared to other vendors and somehow their FedEx shipping sneaks it around our customs .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

13 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Great to see the results of using the magnetic tumbler. It really makes quite the difference and probably a lot less work than doing it by hand. 

HLJ did a tour of the MFH factory and it's impressive to see how they cast the parts and craft the kits. It's from a few years ago but still great to see. 

I think, I´ve seen nearly everything about MFH in short time, including these very interesting videos, Carl. I learned, that they mostly have no plans to measure and use photos for the purpose.
The magnetic tumbler was indeed a good invest, as I plan to build more of the MFH kits, when this adventure turns out on a positive tune.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

11 hours ago, Peterpools said:

And the first of many adventures begin.  I've already learned quite a bit on how the tumbler works and the proper parts preparation for an MHF kit. Going to be quite an adventure, my seat is front and center row, from start to finish.

Enjoy the journey as we will be living it through your eyes and build updates

An adventure it will be for sure, Peter. I´m not sure, if I build the Crocker exclusively, as there is the 1/24 Fokker DR.I waiting as a quick build and the started 1/20 McLaren MP4/6 is waiting too. 
I also learned a lot from other build logs concerning MFH builds and borrow a lot of the described ideas.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

10 hours ago, shark64 said:

That's a cool subject for sure

 

5 hours ago, FullArmor said:

I imagine it is nice to start build with so detailed and sharp parts😮

I was immediately in love with the Crocker on first sight and knew, I had to buy the kit. Lets hope, I can do it justice. Browsing through the box is another beautiful sensation, as the parts look so crisp and sharp and no sprues for a change .

Cheers Rob

[KevinM]

I'll look in Rob more for different materials being used than anything plus it's a handsome looking bike.

[Martinnfb]

Oh boy, here we go again. Doc. is about to do his magic again. I am pulling out the comfy chair

 

 

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, KevinM said:

I'll look in Rob more for different materials being used than anything plus it's a handsome looking bike.

Oh yeah Kevin, there is a load of different materials to master, mainly white metal, but also chrome plated metal, rubber, resin, some wire and tubing, but no polystyrol .

 

3 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

Oh boy, here we go again. Doc. is about to do his magic again. I am pulling out the comfy chair

Lets wait with the magic part until later, Martin . First some basic steps of preparation.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Today, I spent some exhausting hours to sort the parts, mainly the white metal cast ones, as they are the most numerous.

I made it a two step affair, first using the parts layout prints from the MFH homepage, to check if everything is there. These photos of the parts are especially helpful, as they are scaled and this helps to identify the parts.

In the second step, I sorted the parts into a plastic box with different sized trays, ordered after the steps in the manual. The tiny parts, like screws and bolts, I left out, as they are easier identified separately. Tomorrow, I will add resin and rubber parts along with screws, nuts and bolts.

Cheers Rob

[KevinM]

OK Rob once you get all sorted out it's time to put "The Patient" back together sounds like a surgery room get organized ,parts in box in order sequence  good thing it's not on my table might come out like something you see on "The Munsters"

[Peterpools]

Rob

Nothing like crisp, precision organization for ensuring the build will flow as per plan, without needing huge, time-consuming breaks trying to find a small part in a sea of small parts.  

. 

[belugawhaleman]

Oh, this will be interesting!

[DocRob]

13 hours ago, KevinM said:

OK Rob once you get all sorted out it's time to put "The Patient" back together sounds like a surgery room get organized ,parts in box in order sequence  good thing it's not on my table might come out like something you see on "The Munsters"

Tranquilo Kevin, don´t do the @HubertB gig on me, or I ask you, if the time is ready to put the champagne into the fridge for the launching of the Scharnhorst .
What I make out of these parts is still in the off, but I hope for the best.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

9 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Nothing like crisp, precision organization for ensuring the build will flow as per plan, without needing huge, time-consuming breaks trying to find a small part in a sea of small parts.  

The smaller parts like nuts, screws and bolts are the most complicated here, Peter. They are grouped on cast sprues and several are needed for different building steps. Cutting them off the casting makes them really hard to identify, so I will keep these separate and numbered.
Proper organizing is the key here, there are no sprue numbers to help the builder.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

9 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Oh, this will be interesting!

Indeed Paul, in many ways and it will definitely be a challenge.

Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

On 5/22/2024 at 5:45 AM, DocRob said:

Are there especially good deals of MFH kits? I buy directly from MFH, the price is ok, compared to other vendors and somehow their FedEx shipping sneaks it around our customs .

Cheers Rob

Check on eBay and the MFH group on Facebook.  I've found some good deals there.  The FB group in particular I was able to score a couple of kits for a really good deal.  Ebay I've only managed to get one or two at a good price, but that was likely because the seller had flooded the site with a bunch of kits and there just wasn't the demand to snap them all up at typical prices.

By the way, the parts look fantastic coming out of the tumbler!  And one of those parts trays does seem to be a must.  Trying to sort all the parts to make sure the kits were complete when they arrived was a real pain.

[DocRob]

Bummer Mike, I´m not on FB and do not intend to. Ebay, I looked a bit, but found nothing of interest so far.
Many MFH builders recommended the trays in their build logs and I do understand why, It makes life so much easier with these kits, it´s like the equivalent of the plastic sprue.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Well, first building steps are prepared. Note to myself, test fit often and understand the manual, specially where parts need to be drilled. I don´t know about the MFH car kits, but with the Crocker engine parts there are dozens of holes to be drilled and some are hard to reach in later stages.
The foot pedal and drill stand for my Proxxon mini drill help a lot to make the job faster. The good thing with drilling white metal, there is nearly no burr to be removed.

The engine block, with one cylinder mostly mounted, showing the parts of the other:



Mock assembly for test fitting of one cylinder. The ribs and heads are actually removed and primed and will be sprayed semi matte black later.





Cheers Rob

[FullArmor]

1 minute ago, DocRob said:

Well, first building steps are prepared. Note to myself, test fit often and understand the manual, specially where parts need to be drilled. I don´t know about the MFH car kits, but with the Crocker engine parts there are dozens of holes to be drilled and some are hard to reach in later stages.
The foot pedal and drill stand for my Proxxon mini drill help a lot to make the job faster. The good thing with drilling white metal, there is nearly no burr to be removed.

The engine block, with one cylinder mostly mounted, showing the parts of the other:



Mock assembly for test fitting of one cylinder. The ribs and heads are actually removed and primed and will be sprayed semi matte black later.





Cheers Rob

[belugawhaleman]

What adhesive will be used? CA, epoxy,? Any soldering?