Tintin Project - the Vehicles

[strobez]

As I noted in my Ghibli vehicles build, I re-started my Fiat 500 build over from the beginning.  One of the reasons it took so long is that I was also waiting on a Peugeot 403 for my Tintin project.

As fans may know, the Peugeot 403 taxi is the vehicle that finally spirits Bianca Castafiore, the Milanese Nightengale, away from Marlinspike Hall after her lengthy stay in the Tintin adventure, The Castafiore Emerald.  Since I'm trying to to at least one vehicle from each album, this one was a bit of a challenge.  The whole adventure is more or a less a "mystery in a room", so the choices were pretty thin.  That said, I was able to locate a small, ancient plastic toy version of a Peugeot 403 in 1/72 scale.  It's a bit rough (with a huge seam for some strange reason), but the basic shape/size is there, so it should be enough to work with.

As with the Fiat 500 build, I made a silicone mold of the shell and cast some resin copies (of varying quality) so that I'd have a chance to do some "do-overs" as required.  The car will eventually feature a roof luggage rack and I'll open the trunk as well, but I'm debating the relative merits of trying to model one of the passenger doors open or not.

Should be fun.  Oh, and in other news, my brand-new resin hard-top conversion set for the Airfix 1/76 (close enough!) Land Rover kit showed up on my doorstep courtesy of JayBee.  So expect to see some updates on these vehicle mini-projects soon.

Here's the best resin cast of the lot.  I've added a tiny bit of black acrylic paint to the resin mix which gives it just enough of an off-white colouring as to make the details more visible.  The pure white on white was really challenging to work with.


First stop, clean out the flashing from the wheel wells and windows and start scribing some panel lines for the doors so I can sand down that weird ridge seam (admittedly not very visible in these pictures).

[NARSES2]

Your work just makes me go  . Amazing stuff 

[strobez]

Your work just makes me go  . Amazing stuff 

Heh. And then yesterday evening I just had to put down the knife and slowly back away from the bench.  Just one of those nights where nothing works right and you just have admit defeat in the face of plastic....

[zenrat]

Yep.  Been there, done that.  No point in fighting it.  Go inside (in my case) and watch something mindless on the idiots lantern instead.

[NARSES2]

Heh. And then yesterday evening I just had to put down the knife and slowly back away from the bench.  Just one of those nights where nothing works right and you just have admit defeat in the face of plastic....

Yup. Sometimes you just need to walk away and have a cup of tea.

[strobez]

So I think part of my problem was that I may have been trying to do too much at once.  A little reflection, workbench organization and project prioritization, and I'm back in the saddle (that and a nice warm cup of tea).

A little bit of cutting and glueing and voila, we have a chassis.  I took a bit of a chance opening up the side door before fitting the chassis, given the problem I had with warping with my parallel Fiat 500 project, but the Peugeot 403 frame is much more rigid, so there was nothing to worry about.

The one big problem I had with fitting the chassis to the frame is the fact that the engine is on the wrong side.  However, after a lot of humming and hawing and plotting to swap the front and the back ends, in the final analysis, it just wasn't worth the price of admission.  So to solve the problem, I just stopped caring.  Easy~



Luckily it still fits.  I did have to do a little surgery as the dry fit wasn't quite as accurate on the vertical plane as I'd hoped and the car started to have a bit of hot-rod tendencies. Still does a bit, but some cutting, re-positioning and re-glueing seem to have solved the majority of the problem.



Looks like I'll still have to shape the wheel wells a bit as they now give the Peugeot a bit of a low-rider look... which is actually pretty cool... but not appropriate as Senora Castafiore's chariot.

[zenrat]

IIRC The Milanese Nightingale was a larger lady so compressed suspension would be appropriate (at the rear anyway).

[strobez]

Good point. Especially when you consider her sizeable collection of luggage as well...

[strobez]

After looking at the Peugeot 403, I noticed that the rear wheel wells come down over the tires a bit more than they do on the front ones.  So, to try to replicate that I've sanded out the interior as best I could and will let the wheels come right up to the edge of the well.

As I started to construct the interior, the first thing I noticed was that the bench seats were a bit too narrow for my purposes.  Luckily, having been part of the casting mold, I have plenty of them to work with.



I was even able to find ones that had severe bubble issues on opposite sides of the bench, so that with some careful cutting, sanding, glueing and puttying I was able to take care of the issue using what would otherwise just be cast offs (or at best repair projects).



It's coming along.  Now to take care of the front wheel wells and the dashboard.

[strobez]

Meanwhile, JayBee kindly sent me the following a resin hardtop to replace the missing hardtop piece for my Tintin Land Rover project, so I was able to continue with that one.  The piece looked like this when it arrived...



And, of course, I promptly cut out some windows (including a tricky "safari" viewing skylight along the sides) and scribed in some door panel lines.  I also painted the interior grey and intended to mask off the seats and then give it a light green tinge.  Unfortunately just as I was about to mask the seats I noticed that there was a spot where the paint chipped off (right in the middle of the driver seat).  Then I temporarily got caught in a endless loop of trying to decide if I should just mask everything BUT the seats instead and then paint them green... or bite the bullet and just repaint the seats grey and them mask them.



I also sanded down the top of the windscreen a bit, so there's only a small gap between the resin and the styrene parts.  Not sure if I need a shim or if I can bridge that gap with some determined glueing and clamping...

[zenrat]

Good work cutting out the window holes.
It's looking tasty (probably the caramel coloured resin).

[NARSES2]

Good work cutting out the window holes.
It's looking tasty (probably the caramel coloured resin).

It does look rather edible

[strobez]

Just a small update, but I scratched up the double skin of the safari roof and got it in place. The wavy lines of the sanded putty must have mesmerized me though, as I didn't quite center the vents on top. Annoying, but not worth tearing them off and trying again.



Oh, and out of fears that one of you gents might try to eat my model when I wasn't looking, I tried to make sure it was as mouldy-looking and unappealing as possible.

[strobez]

The dash is in place and the shell is now sitting properly on the chassis.

[Ify]

Enjoying looking at your project Tintin.