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

[DocRob]

I continued with the glazing, starting with the windscreen. This is again a clear vacuum formed part, which needed to be cut to fit. There is a tiny sill, where the screen sits recessed into. After fitting it properly, I used transparent adhesive double sided tape of 1 mm width again (best stuff ever for these cases) and with a deep breath pushed the windscreen in.
There are two possibilities supplied with the kit for the sealings, one made by rubber (upper) and another, which the manual calls UV print. Never heard of, but luckily found a descriptive video build from Pooh´s on YT, which described it as a kind of decal and this seems to be the case, maybe like the Quinta sets.

 

After removing the protective foil, it looked like this, not very appealing.



...but it worked very well. I dampened the backing paper and after a minute, it came loose from the sheet and was easily applied onto the windscreen. Thanks again to Pooh, because nothing about the how to with this part was mentioned in the manual.



I was on a roll and added the bubbly plexy side ducts  behind the door´s windows, again with double sided tape and in this case with some rivets. Most of the glazing is done now, except for the vizor screens on the side of the windscreen.

 

Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

Looking fantastic, Rob !

Hubert

[Martinnfb]

Absolutely bananas, the textures and level of detail blows my mind. 

Cheers

Martin

[Count0]

10 hours ago, DocRob said:

Cutting them to fit can be difficult and they scratch very easily.

I used to build 1/43 scale cars. They always have clear parts to cut out and fit. Tape and sandpaper are your friends here. Tape the area you are holding to prevent scratches, then cut the part close to but not exactly to fit. Then do the final "trim" with sandpaper. It's slow, but much better for a precise fit. Stick the sand paper to a block or use a sanding stick. Go slow, and keep the block/stick 90 degrees to the plastic so you get a square edge and less likely to slip and scratch the clear.

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, HubertB said:

Looking fantastic, Rob !

 

17 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

Absolutely bananas, the textures and level of detail blows my mind. 

Thank you Hubert and Martin. My mind was blown as well sometimes during the build. I try to recover and get the Cobra over the finish line soon.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

14 hours ago, Count0 said:

I used to build 1/43 scale cars. They always have clear parts to cut out and fit. Tape and sandpaper are your friends here. Tape the area you are holding to prevent scratches, then cut the part close to but not exactly to fit. Then do the final "trim" with sandpaper. It's slow, but much better for a precise fit. Stick the sand paper to a block or use a sanding stick. Go slow, and keep the block/stick 90 degrees to the plastic so you get a square edge and less likely to slip and scratch the clear

Thank you Count, this is valuable information. I found cutting as close as possible with a pair of good scissors made a finer cut, than sanding, which caused lots of burr. Cutting precisely with scissors might prove difficult with 1/43 parts, but with 1/12, it´s preferable, where possible. Sanding was done with sponges, but the most difficult part was to get rid of the burr with a scalpel and sometimes fingernails.

Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

Wow Rob, that windshield is fantastic!  The seals look perfect.  Nice job!

[CANicoll]

That gasket around the windshield looks amazing, nice work!!  All of those clear bits have really come together beautifully, Rob.

 

[belugawhaleman]

Looking GREAT Rob! 😀

[Count0]

18 hours ago, DocRob said:

than sanding, which caused lots of burr.

You need finer sand paper then. Like 400 grit and then smooth with 600. The maybe polish the edge with really fine paper if it's visable.

Slow. I said it was slow. lol

[DocRob]

7 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow Rob, that windshield is fantastic!  The seals look perfect.  Nice job!

 

7 hours ago, CANicoll said:

That gasket around the windshield looks amazing, nice work!!  All of those clear bits have really come together beautifully, Rob

 

6 hours ago, belugawhaleman said:

Looking GREAT Rob! 😀

Thank you amigos, I´m happy that the glazing is almost done, as there is no real second chance, when something goes badly wrong. Other than many companies, MFH provides only one set of vac parts and these are easily scratched and polishing out scratches is nearly impossible.
The seal was great to work with. It was something like a 3D-decal, somewhere between stiff and flexible and was perfectly shaped to fit. I only wish, MFH would have said how to work with it in the manual.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

4 hours ago, Count0 said:

You need finer sand paper then. Like 400 grit and then smooth with 600. The maybe polish the edge with really fine paper if it's visable.

Slow. I said it was slow. lol

I know it is slow, Count, because I started with 400 grit and then went to 800 grit, but still, lots of nasty burr.

Cheers Rob

[Count0]

6 hours ago, DocRob said:

lots of nasty burr.

If that is the case I wonder if they are using something other than styrene? Maybe PETG. Which doesn't sand well.

[DocRob]

The Cobra Coupe is almost done, what a relief. 
Last steps were adding the exhaust sidepipes, adding the wheels, mounting the wiper and also doing a lot of touch up work. The exhausts were fiddly to attach, but again, clever design by MFH helped a lot and with a little wiggling they snapped in place, without breaking the manifolds loose, which would have been very bad.
The wheels were a joy to assemble and easy to attach with their turned and threaded aluminum axles and fitting nuts. The nuts also received the three winged securing nuts and a tiny PE logo in the middle.
The wiper was a multi part affair, made from cast white metal and several bended PE parts. There are only a few parts missing now, which I hope to find during cleaning the bench.
Last and most dreaded was the assembly of the hood. I cut the hinges and was only able to close the hood perfectly with a tiny bit of force. I added two tiny aluminum rivets with 0,5 mm diameter to secure the hood in it´s appropriate place, phew, done .
Some outdoor pics will follow later, when the sun is shining and all the touch ups are done.

























Cheers Rob

 

[Count0]

Beauty. Looks cool with the hood off as well. 👍

[Count0]

Fuck, now I want to build a car! Like I need another project.

[BlrwestSiR]

Looks great Rob. Has a proper menace to it. Like a shark.  

[FullArmor]

Very fine and detailed👍🙂

one minor thing...you could add little bit of panel liner to exhaus and exhaus tip to enhance contrast.

[Count0]

6 minutes ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Like a shark.

It does have a bit of that. But that's true of most 60's sports cars.

If I'm not mistaken, Pete Brock, who was one of if not the only designer of this car worked on the Dodge Viper coupe. Look at one in blue, with the white stripe's and it pretty evident he had a hand in it's design.

Edited March 27 by Count0
photo

[Martinnfb]

Stunning build Rob, just stunning.

Cheers

Martin

[DocRob]

36 minutes ago, Count0 said:

Beauty. Looks cool with the hood off as well. 👍

 

32 minutes ago, Count0 said:

Fuck, now I want to build a car! Like I need another project.

Thank you Count, guilty as charged . What car would that be?

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

34 minutes ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Looks great Rob. Has a proper menace to it. Like a shark.

It was a menace at it´s time, Carl. The Coupe was developed for better aerodynamics, which was necessary to compete on European circuits, like Le Mans or Spa, where higher speeds were reached.
Different drivers, new to the Cobra Coupe achieved immediate lap records during training sessions. My example driven by Dan Gurney and Jerry Grant in Le Mans 1965 some days after my birthday. They did not finish though.

Cheers Rob 

[DocRob]

37 minutes ago, FullArmor said:

Very fine and detailed👍🙂

one minor thing...you could add little bit of panel liner to exhaus and exhaus tip to enhance contrast.

Thank you FA, the sidepipes looked very white on the original car as well. It´s maybe hard to see on the pics, but I added a bit of depth, using two different shades of white. I haven´t used any panel liner on the outer shell of the Cobra and may find the contrast a bit too harsh on the exhausts.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

38 minutes ago, Count0 said:

It does have a bit of that. But that's true of most 60's sports cars.

If I'm not mistaken, Pete Brock, who was one of if not the only designer of this car worked on the Dodge Viper coupe. Look at one in blue, with the white stripe's and it pretty evident he had a hand in it's design.

Peter Brock designed the Cobra Coupe from a sketch on some spare paper to the final design. He developed the car parallel to the normal Cobra Roadster racers under his own responsibility. It proved, the fast development was successful, as the Coupe was much faster and fuel efficient than the Roadsters.

The Dodge Viper shown, well, there are some similarities, but it lacks all the aggressive elegance of the Cobra Coupe with it´s bulbous 90´s design. Where the Cobra looked modern for it´s time, the Dodge Viper looks like yesterdays newspaper  .

Cheers Rob 

[DocRob]

40 minutes ago, Martinnfb said:

Stunning build Rob, just stunning.

Thank you Martin, the build was a chore sometimes, but most was outright fun. I´m happy, that the beast is nearly done. I felt, I had put on a bit too much onto my shoulders with the late stages of the build. I think, it was the hardest build of my increasing MFH stash.

Cheers Rob