Brabham BT52b - The Guided Missile - Model Factory Hiro - 1/12

[DocRob]

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
 

[DocRob]

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

[BlrwestSiR]

Your work is on another level to what I'm doing. So a little progress on your build is the equivalent of me finishing a model. 

Great work by the way. 

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Your work is on another level to what I'm doing. So a little progress on your build is the equivalent of me finishing a model. 

Great work by the way.

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

[DocRob]

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

[Martinnfb]

That looks like the real deal Rob.

 

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, Martinnfb said:

That looks like the real deal Rob

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

Cheers Rob