Zenrat's Flying Circus

[zenrat]

Its French mon ami.  They scout with style.   

While the box design is similar to Tamiya I don't know of any link.  The mould quality isn't up to Tami\ya standards.  Detail is crisp and fit good and while there is no flash, mould separation lines are a bit heavy and there are injector pin marks in annoying places.

I primed it this morning.

[scooter]

They scout with style.   

They also eat in style.  From what I've heard, their MREs are truly gourmet.

[Rick Lowe]

They scout with style. 

They also eat in style.  From what I've heard, their MREs are truly gourmet.

(In a cheesy Pseudo French, 'Allo-'Allo-style accent) "Nom du Nom!! What else would you expect? We are not ze Ros'Biffs!"  
Tongue firmly in cheek and not meaning any insult to our Gallic (or UK) Members... well, not a lot, anyway...

[zenrat]

The real Captain Fat Hamster was in Bosnia with NATO and claims he ate his way through most of the participating nations MREs.  ISTR he was impressed with the French ones.

I have begun camo painting the VBL.  I'm using the standard camo pattern but mixing my own shades.

[zenrat]

One coat each colour.

VBL WIP 23-07-2024 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr

[Steel Penguin]

striking!

i await further pics eagerly.

[NARSES2]

Looking good Fred 

[Old Wombat]

Much brighter with light sand instead of the NATO brown of the destructions.


PS: Tiger Model is a wholy Chinese company & manufactures in China. Tamiya is Japanese but over 50% of their manufacturing is now done in the Phillipines (the rest is still made in Japan). There is no link. I can only summise that they use Tamiya paints in their instructions because they are a) widely available, & b) of a very consistent & high quality.

PPS: A check of ScaleMates & other sources shows that Tamiya don't make a Panhard VBL.

[zenrat]

Thanks guys.

Thanks Womby.

I took the doors and hatches off today, cleaned off the white glue and put a second coat of green on.

[zenrat]

VBL is slowly progressing.  Currently applying a coat of white each day to the insides of the doors and hatches.  I find, with 1/35 military builds, that I get best results if, once the main chassis/interior/body/hull is constructed I concentrate on small discrete areas.  In this case doors and hatches, the suspension and wheels, the stowage and weapons, etc.

Also coming along slowly is one of these.

I painted the body and interior a while ago, put on the transfers, and cleared it.  I also stripped off all the "chrome" as mould quality left something to be desired with flash, mould separation lines, and ejector pin marks to deal with.  As this is a show rod with the entire rolling chassis chromed this involved soaking most of the sprues in the caustic soda bath. 
The other reason for dechroming is to enable decent joints when assembling with styrene cement.
Plan is to assemble the complete rolling chassis and then hit it with Alclad Chrome.
So far i've got the Jag IRS assembled and am working on the front end.  My hope is that I can keep the flow of the glue under control and retain turning wheels and moving steering.
Of course, last time I managed to successfully assemble a model chassis of this vintage with the working features still working it got chomped by Charlie the Wonder Dog. 

Note to self, put open box on higher shelf this time...

[PR19_Kit]

Where does the Jag IRS come from Fred?

[zenrat]

The Fire Truck kit (unlike the 1:1) has a Jag IRS rear and coil sprung beam axle front end.
Rather than create an accurate new chassis MPC used the mould from the AMT Tognotti King T kit as a basis, adding additional rear radius arms.
They also chose not to replace the King T's Small Block Chevy with a correct, for the Fire Truck, Ford engine and just put Cobra valve covers on the SBC and changed the exhaust port spacing.
I probably have the parts to correct the kit but decided not to.

[zenrat]

Painted body and postcard of the original.  You can clearly see both ends have buggy spring suspension.  Not a coil spring in sight.
Fire Truck WIP 22-11-2020 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr

Assembled chassis with Jag IRS rear end and coil sprung beam axle front.  I'm not sure what the rear radius rods would do to the operation of the IRS.
Fire Truck WIP 05-08-2024 02 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr
Steering still turns (although there is a massive amount of play - I may have to glue it on position) but only three wheels will rotate.

[PR19_Kit]

Assembled chassis with Jag IRS rear end and coil sprung beam axle front.  I'm not sure what the rear radius rods would do to the operation of the IRS.

They'd help transfer the thrust to the rest of the car, but their geometry would tend to twist the rear uprights as it bounced and rebounded. The industry would just have added LOTS of rubber in the joints back then of course.

[zenrat]

One fully chromed (OK, Alclad) rolling chassis.
Fire Truck WIP 08-08-2024 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr

And something completely different.
A 1/43 diecast Ford Falcon FGX XR6 Ute.  I've made transfers for it to represent the 1:1 vehicle owned by a fellow member of the Model Car Club.
Rent a van Ute 02 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr
Rent a van Ute 05 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr
Rent a van Ute 03 by Fred Maillardet, on Flickr
With my poor eyes and fat clumsy fingers 1/43 is really too small for me to work on with transfers like these.
I drew the  designs up in Mirco$not Powerpoint.  I printed them on my new decal paper which is very thin but stretches far too easilly which cracks the clear coat allowing the water and setting solution to get at at the ink.  Consequently the transfer on the tailgate is the third one I applied.
I had been using Papilio decal paper and was very happy with it but I ran out and it proved impossible to restock. 
The new one seems to work well (better in fact due to being thinner) but the fragility means printing lots of spares and handling it with extreme care.