Cobra Coupe - Le Mans - Model Factory Hiro 1/12

[CANicoll]

5 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Looking great Rob. The decals really bring the care to life!

About 20 something years ago I found myself looking into

The factory Five Coupe ...yes, it was available back then. I even

purchased the assembly manual ..I decided it was a project way

beyond my abilities.

I did the same.  My father had a three bay-two lift gas station.  But looking at those instructions, I thought better.  But man I love that body style...

[GusMac]

2 hours ago, DocRob said:

It´s unbelievable how precise a trained eye can measure and evaluate, Phil. That is specially true, with a curved object like a car body, where measuring is not so easy. Decaling was more of a challenge than thought here, because MFH forsees, that the decals conform around the edges of the body and wrap around the borders of air intakes and delicate cut off´s on the rear spoiler. It takes time, but looks better than simply put on decals.

Cheers Rob 

I always emphasise to our medical imaging students that, no matter what the manufacturers claim in their glossy brochures, no medical imaging system has yet been invented that can come close to reproducing the performance of the human eye. Mother Nature is bloody clever sometimes....

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Thanks, actually I was speaking of the full-size Factory Five replica car of the cobra coupe that

uses full size Ford components.  You are doing an excellent job

on your Coupe....very impressive!

Thanks Paul, I understood that, I had looked at some videos from Factory Five during the build. The more "classic" builds look good, but I don´t like the winged monstrosities some made out of it.
Nonetheless, the FF Coupe might be the bigger project, but the MFH Cobra isn´t piece of cake either, at least modeling wise .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, CANicoll said:

I did the same.  My father had a three bay-two lift gas station.  But looking at those instructions, I thought better.  But man I love that body style...

Yes, its a beauty Chris. I had to have the kit, when I first saw it. I mean the MFH one, naturally. The Real size kit wouldn´t ever pass the German TÜV or Spanish ITV for technical acceptance.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, GusMac said:

I always emphasise to our medical imaging students that, no matter what the manufacturers claim in their glossy brochures, no medical imaging system has yet been invented that can come close to reproducing the performance of the human eye. Mother Nature is bloody clever sometimes....

The human eye is a fascinating organ, Gus, specially coupled with a working brain and stored experiences. Hard to beat, even by modern cameras, when it comes to certain light conditions, like harsh backlit objects. You can count my relatively smart camera to the fails as well, as it is not capable to render the blue tone of the Cobra´s body correctly, where my eye does a good job .

Cheers Rob

[belugawhaleman]

29 minutes ago, DocRob said:

Thanks Paul, I understood that, I had looked at some videos from Factory Five during the build. The more "classic" builds look good, but I don´t like the winged monstrosities some made out of it.
Nonetheless, the FF Coupe might be the bigger project, but the MFH Cobra isn´t piece of cake either, at least modeling wise .

Cheers Rob

Oh I see, I couldn't do the MFH kit either😀

[DocRob]

Have you ever had that modelling moment, where you wanted to rewind time for a minute. I had one today.
After checking, if all the decals settled perfectly, I cleaned the body with soapy water, to get rid of any residues from the decaling phase. Then, I applied a first coat of Zero Paint clear gloss, with maybe 20% added leveling thinner. The first layer is only misted, to seal the decals in and due to rapid drying time (relatively high air pressure and low thinning ratio) reduce the risk of harming the decals with hot liquids.
After about an hour, I applied the second layer of clear, this time more liberal with about a third of leveling thinner  and after another hour, I applied the (planned) last layer thinned with ca. 50% of leveling thinner and sprayed on wet. So far so good, until, I took out the airbrush out of it´s holder, to blow the body color dry a bit and didn´t notice that some goo was on the front of the airbrush casing, which squirted onto my just finalized paintjob 
Now, I´m really frustrated, as everything went well since days of prep work, until the final seconds. I was about to bin the kit instantly, as I absolutely hate these kind of mishaps. I usually prepare my work thoroughly, trying to think ahead of everything, but when something goes seriously wrong, I´m impatient, restless and uncompromising.
I´m not sure what to do, leaving it as is or waiting (again) for the clear to dry completely and then carefully try to sand the dots away and re-clear, risking of ruining everything or finally binning the kit.

Here are the pics, it looks not too bad, but it is not acceptable. The orange peel look is due to the lighting of some hundred LED´s, the paintjob itself is near perfect and will be perfect after polishing. The dots on the roof´s stripes are the worst, but there are some more.





Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

Bummer !

You’ve gone too far to bin it now, Rob. I’d try to lightly sand away the dots (maybe with a fiberglass pen), then, if they are gone away, go for a polishing round …

Hubert

[BlrwestSiR]

Don't bin it!!! It would be an absolute shame to do so. I know with the Beat I was tempted after all the problems I had with dust but that's a $20 model, not a masterpiece like your Cobra. 

Try some very fine sanding sponges. I have some that start at 1000 grit and go up to 12000. Wet sand the spots and go gently. 

 

[belugawhaleman]

That's too bad Rob, but like the others said, the project is worth saving.

[CANicoll]

Rob, 

FULLY understand your frustration but agree with everyone else.  When I have something like this happen, (more often than I care to admit) I put it down overnight and sleep on it.  Come back the next day and think again about what my options are.  Time doesn't cost you anything and I'm willing to bet that you will come up with a few thoughts on how to address.

Good luck!!

Chris

[DocRob]

Thank you for your thoughts, guys ( @HubertB, @BlrwestSiR, @belugawhaleman and @CANicoll). I did one thing some of you recommended at least, I let the Cobra where it was and went to bed and in the morning, I had a long two kilometer swim in the ocean, to get rid off the frustration.
Maybe tomorrow, I will look, what I can do and I will try fine sanding, like Carl recommended. The fiberglass pen seems a bit aggressive to me, as it scrapes into the material relatively on spot, where sanding is easier to blend with a clear coat.

@BlrwestSiR: Carl, I cleaned the body parts very thoroughly with warm water and some drops of detergent, using sponges and brushes. After all the sanding, drilling and prep work, the resin parts sported a lot of static and it was nearly impossible to get rid of dust. The proper washing helped to reduce that a lot and I had nearly no dust in my paintjob (only splattered blobs in the end .

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Phew, I think, I have saved the Cobra from binning for now. After carefully sanding the splatter dots. first with 1500 grit, then 4000, 6000 and finally 8000 grit, there was one culprit left, the most visible unfortunately. I carefully dotted heavily thinned Tamiya LP-2 gloss white with a fine brush into the tiny crevice, building up the spot, until the color looked right. After drying the same sanding treatment like the others. 
After all was wiped clean, I applied two coats of Zero Paints lacquer gloss with about 50% of added leveling thinner and an hour of drying time in between.
I think, I have a 95% solution achieved and later, when everything is properly cured, I will sand very carefully and polish until it´s an absolute high shine finish.





Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

I'm just catching up with your log after a long weekend away.  My heart sank when I saw your earlier post, but am glad you figured out a solution!  Looks great!

So where was that gunk from?  The Zero clear?  After using Zero paints on a couple of inexpensive Gunze Triumph builds where it crazed the plastic, I'm not sure I want to go down the road of using their products.  I had a little better luck with their paints the second time around on my Morgan 3-wheeler, but the clear was a little tricky.  Likely user error on my part, but I noticed that it tends to almost get what looks like oil residue spots  - at least it seemed that way before putting it in a display case.  It might just be it's very prone to show finger oils, but it was a bit of a weird thing for me.  Hope it all works out on your model!

[Count0]

It might just be gunk worked loose from your airbrush. Hotter paints/ thinners can loosen stuff that's caught if you're are not scrupulous with cleaning your airbrush.

Glad to see you saved it. You also could have gone for a post race weathered car, as a save from the bin. I really love that look. 

Edited Tuesday at 10:49 PM by Count0
spelling

[belugawhaleman]

Rob, glad to see that you have continued your build and solved the

issue. The Finnish in the pictures looks reall good,  nice work.

[CANicoll]

Rob, Super recovery!  I can't see what you do, but this looks perfect to me.  That shine is unreal.

[BlrwestSiR]

Nice save Rob. Glad it's not landfill. 

I think you're right about the static issues with the model. I'll have to remember that for the next one. 

[DocRob]

16 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

I'm just catching up with your log after a long weekend away.  My heart sank when I saw your earlier post, but am glad you figured out a solution!  Looks great!

So where was that gunk from?  The Zero clear?  After using Zero paints on a couple of inexpensive Gunze Triumph builds where it crazed the plastic, I'm not sure I want to go down the road of using their products.  I had a little better luck with their paints the second time around on my Morgan 3-wheeler, but the clear was a little tricky.  Likely user error on my part, but I noticed that it tends to almost get what looks like oil residue spots  - at least it seemed that way before putting it in a display case.  It might just be it's very prone to show finger oils, but it was a bit of a weird thing for me.  Hope it all works out on your model!

My heart was sinking too, Mike. I couldn´t have lived with that result, given there are more dents and bruises to come during continuing the build. It just has to look good from the beginning and then hopefully stays like it.
In this case, the used paint was from Number Five, only the clear coat was from Zero. I had absolutely no issues, while spraying these colors, they behaved perfectly, thinned with leveling thinner. The Cobra has a resin body, which causes no issues with hot colors. 
I experienced difficulties with Zero Paints during my "plastic" McLaren MP4/6 build, where the Zero white body color ate through the primer and affected the plastic. I solved this issue, after a lot of sanding and re-priming with only misted coats of Zero white airbrushed onto the primer and let dry for some minutes. I also use a higher air pressure (about 1,6-1,8 bar) for quicker drying. With the coats slowly building up, I had no more issues spraying the later coats "wet" for archiving a nice surface. 
I had no spots or don´t feel a higher sensitivity to finger prints with the dried paint.

 

16 hours ago, Count0 said:

It might just be gunk worked loose from your airbrush. Hotter paints/ thinners can loosen stuff that's caught if you're are not scrupulous with cleaning your airbrush.

Glad to see you saved it. You also could have gone for a post race weathered car, as a save from the bin. I really love that look. 

Thank you Count, the goo was from my airbrush holder, an old piece, where the thinner dissolved some old paint, which waited until the very last second of airbrushing to run in front of the nozzle. I keep my airbrushes very clean, specially when spraying car bodies, but the goo blob had escaped my attention.

The post race look was one idea, the other was a barn find, but when I start a project, I render an image in my head, how everything should look in the end and the Cobra was supposed to look brand new. I´m not good at changing ideas and see it more like an epic fail, having to do so and I don´t live easy with fails.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Rob, glad to see that you have continued your build and solved the

issue. The Finnish in the pictures looks reall good,  nice work.

 

12 hours ago, CANicoll said:

Rob, Super recovery!  I can't see what you do, but this looks perfect to me.  That shine is unreal.

 

10 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Nice save Rob. Glad it's not landfill. 

I think you're right about the static issues with the model. I'll have to remember that for the next one. 

Thank you Paul, Chris and Carl, it´s a 95% recovery and that´s barely enough. Given, there is a lot of further assembling to do, there will be more dents and bruises, I guess. I want to start as clean as possible, as it becomes harder to solve body color probs later on.

@BlrwestSiR Washing the parts before priming seems to erase a lot of static. I had to constantly wipe or brush the Cobra´s body parts during the prep process with drilling and sanding. It was like a dust magnet, which bettered with the claeansing.

Cheers Rob

[Count0]

16 hours ago, DocRob said:

I don´t live easy with fails.

I don't either, so I understand. But I also don't live with junking expensive models, or other projects for that matter. I don't like the SoD idea. Never have. Sometimes there just has to be a plan "B". For me, anyway.

[ScottsGT]

Nope.  Looks pretty bad from what I see.  Might as well box it up and ship it across the pond to me for disposal.  
 

😇

[DocRob]

16 hours ago, ScottsGT said:

Nope.  Looks pretty bad from what I see.  Might as well box it up and ship it across the pond to me for disposal.  

I like the badness of it´s looks momentarily, Scott. No chances for a transatlantic Cobraism right now .

Cheers Rob

[Martinnfb]

Now, that’s what I call automotive finish. 
Blinding

Cheers

Martin 

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

Now, that’s what I call automotive finish. 
Blinding

Thanks Martin, it´s not finished yet. I will wet sand the paint with 4000, 6000 and 8000 grit and then polish the surface. But this will be done after another week or so, for completely curing of the paint and clear. Meanwhile, I started to detail the firewall, pictures will follow.

Cheers Rob