Save your money and go for the
Hiroboy version...you know you want to!
Stop it Max!
Too cold for spraying in the garage so the Fort GT has gone on the back burner and I've cracked on with the Alfa. Painting it will be a lot less complex than the Ford and I've been able to more or less assemble the whole thing without the need to paint anything. Here's the rear axle prop shaft and springs.
Assembly is a mix of gluing and screwing.
Here a start has been made on adding front suspension.
And both sides complete. Anybody know what those gizmos outboard of the springs are? Some sort of damper perhaps?
They are assembled from these 14 pieces.
Here's a view of the springs and hangers before the gizmos were attached.
After that I just cracked on with the rest of and got to here. It's only screwed, taped and blue tacked together for now and will be stripped down for airbrushing. The bonnet will be openable to show the engine, the front wheels steerable and the wind shields can be raised or lowered. Here the glass has been masked off ready for spraying the frames.
The wind shield brackets are etchings and are supposed to be superglued to the body. They come with holes etched in the bases so I drilled through into the body and added some brass rivets to make the bond stronger.
A view from the t'other side showing the exhaust. The seat looks like a two seater sofa when out of the cockpit. A sofa in your car - luxury!
There are lots of chrome detail bits to go on after painting and I'll be adding a few extras that are not included in the kit.
Heres a view of the underside showing the bottom of the engine and brake details. I'll post some pics of the engine before painting once I've stripped it down. There's a tank to go under the floor on the left hand side that can only be added after painting.
Here are the wheels after assembly of the three laminates. The tyres will be removed for painting as I'll be doing them in red same as the body. The spokes are a little on the thick side and although I've see a few videos on YouTube on how to replace them, I've decide to live with them.
Heres a closer look of a wheel in place on the car. The inside of the wheel will have the outer face of the drum brake added after painting and then the wheels will be permanently fitted.
The piece de resistance of the kit is the etched front grill and Alfa Romeo signature. The etched grill is super glued into the chromed plastic surround with the signature super glued to the grill. At the minute it's just blue tacked into the front cowl and will be removed before spraying. The mesh on the radiator behind the grill will be black after painting so the signature will show up even better. The front lamps are just push fitted to the brackets for now as they will be painted separately so that I can then paint the chrome bezel around the perimeter and also chrome paint the interior. I'll be using the Molotow chrome ink for that, probably by brush, although I may offset line the bezels using a spring bow pen.
The engine is a nice little model in it's own right and I'll post some pics of that later.
Cheers,
Peter