Studebaker Avanti -- AMT Kit No. AMT780/12

[NOTICE -- THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2019:

I got as far with this kit as the exhaust pipes installation, at which point I decided to pack it in. The kit is not buildable.

My advice is to avoid AMT kits, across the board. They are utter trash, and into the trash is where this one ended up.]

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I normally avoid AMT kits because I've found their quality to be dreadful. However, for the sake of this subject, I decided to take my chances and see what I can make of an AMT kit.

A gold sticker on the face of the box says, "SPECIAL 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION. INCLUDES EXCLUSIVE HISTORICAL PHOTO BOOKLET"

The kit offers three build variants -- stock, custom and racing. While I'm inclined to always do stock builds, I'm tempted to do the racing variant for the sake of the decal set. I find that decals can really add life to a model, and the Avanti might really benefit from a decal set. We'll see.

The kit also features opening doors and steerable wheels. Those are challenging things to achieve in 1/25 scale. We'll see how they turn out.

Anyway, it's on with getting organized, and getting components nipped out, trimmed and trial fitted. I'll report any anomalies or special difficulties that I encounter.

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Unclear Engine Instructions

I may just not know enough about supercharged V-8 engine configurations, but I find the instructions for the optional engine build to be unclear. I can't make out how the engine is actually aspirated. I think I'll stick with the stock build.

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A Wheels Warning

The wheel rims are closely attached to their sprue trees.

That makes nipping out the rims a bit dangerous, and I messed up a little when I applied my usual nipping method.

I distorted the edge of a rim with my side-cutting nipper.

I should have cut up the sprue tree at points well away from the wheel rim attachment points first; then sawn the wheel rims free with a razor saw; then trimmed off the remaining sprue with a knife. Next time I'll know better.

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'Broke The Antenna -- MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2018

And having just learned my lesson about freeing components from close, heavy sprue attachments, it seems that I still haven't learned. I broke the antenna when I nipped its lower sprue tree attachment. Again, beware of close, heavy sprue attachments and proceed with all due caution.

Poor Alignment Of Engine Block Halves

The engine block halves align poorly from front to rear. I cut off the two alignment pins, applied CA adhesive and lined up the halves by eye and by feel. I got a much better outcome than I would have by retaining the alignment pins.

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The Engine So Far -- SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 2019

There's quite a ways to go yet.

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A Shock Absorbers Detail

The instruction sheet would have one paint the rear shock absorbers orange all over; I don't think that's quite right. I opted to paint the shocks' cylindrical bodies orange, and the rods silver, like so.

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The Engine Nearly Completed And Installed In The Chassis -- THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2019

I don't know where AMT got the idea for a chrome-plated distributor cap -- surely no such thing exists in the real world. What an invitation to spark leakage a chrome-plated distributor cap would be. I should have painted it flat black or orange or something.

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Rear Axle/Leaf Springs With Shocks And Drive Shaft -- MONDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2019

That installation is a bit tricky -- all four components must go together simultaneously, and then be glued in place.

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Exhaust Pipes/Mufflers

They don't fit. Another little surprise from AMT.

I could conceivably try heating and reforming the engine ends of the pipes. I'd likely end up with a warped, distorted mess. I may pack up this wretched kit and retire it.

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FEEDBACK

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'41 Chevy Pickup -- Revell Kit No. 85-7202

'Still trying to develop a coherent protocol for building plastic kit models. My results to date have not been great. We'll see if I can do better with this one.

I'm thinking along these lines for an orderly approach to kit building:

• Study the plan from beginning to end. Write in the colours alongside the colour code letters. I find it helpful to have the component colours spelled out.
• Nip out all components in order from their trees. Bin them in labelled bins.
• Trim sprue-joins and flash from all components in order.
• Trial fit all components to their mating pieces. Pay close attention to how final assembly will be affected by paint thicknesses.
• Trial assembly to the extent needed to confirm that major subassemblies will go together cleanly. That may require some gluing up that will later have to be taken apart -- a tricky bit of business.
• Rig all components for painting and paint all components in order.
• Final assembly.

We'll see how it goes.

Re "2 'n 1" Kit

The '41 Chevy Pickup kit offers stock and custom builds. I'll be building it strictly stock. The custom build variant differs from stock in the following areas:

• Engine rocker cover.
• Engine intake.
• Wheels and tires.
• Horn location.

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Nipping Out

• Generator: It's shown but not called out in drawing No. 1. It's item 31 on the tree with the chassis. It's meant to be semi-gloss black.
• Chrome Door Handle, item 70: There are three of them; only two are needed.
• Drawing No. 8 shows a rectangular opening to be cut in the model's floor. I can't make head or tail of that instruction. I'll just leave that be unless something turns up to give me a reason to do it.

Leftovers

If you build the stock version, you'll have left over:

• Four low-profile tires.
• Four chrome wheels.
• Four inner wheels.
• Chrome rocker cover.
• Chrome air cleaner.
• Dual carburetor.

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Trial Fitting

The model has some ambiguous, iffy fits; examples are item 56, the tie rod, and item 57, the drag link. Beware.

A particularly egregious poor fit is the spare tire carrier, item 19. There's no way to securely close it up at its rear end. I think I'll end up securing it with a loop of 30 AWG copper wire, like so.

It's appalling that I have to do that. It's the sort of kit quality that I'd expect from AMT, not Revell.

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Chassis To Fender Assembly Connection -- SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2018

The chassis does register to the fender assembly unambiguously, but holding the two together is problematic. A secure connection between those two components is a great help for further trial fitting of the cab and box.

I ended up screwing the two pieces together with a couple of 1.2mm x 4mm eyeglass screws. I used a No. 60 twist drill as a thread-size drill, and a No. 55 twist drill as a clearance-size drill. The polystyrene material is soft enough that the screws can be used as 'threading' screws -- there's no need to tap a female thread. It photographs poorly, but here's a view of the outcome.

Note the two tiny screw heads in the floor of the fender assembly. Those two screws are doing a fine job of securing the fender assembly to the chassis. They'll end up concealed under the cab's seat bottom.

To do such a screw connection, proceed as follows:

• Glue the two pieces together temporarily with minimal applications of CA adhesive.
• On the drill press, drill clear through both pieces No. 60.
• Drill just through the floor No. 55.
• Install the two screws to form the threads.
• Remove the two screws and separate the pieces. Clean up the broken glue join areas.

That leaves you with two major, fundamental components of the model that you can screw together for further trial assembly, and for secure connection at final assembly -- a very satisfactory state of affairs indeed. See this post for more on the subject of making mechanical connections in kit models.

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Tie Rod And Drag Link -- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2018

Everything is painted and ready for final assembly.

I mentioned earlier that the tie rod's and the drag link's fits are iffy -- I can't make head or tail of how they are supposed to be installed. It looks like I'm just going to omit them entirely. Here's a scan of the pertinent part of the plan.



The parts are items 56 and 57 in section 2.

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'Managed Them After All

Here they are cemented in place.

A bit questionable looking, perhaps, but all together.

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Chassis Completed -- SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2018

Here are some views of the finished chassis.

Note the 30 AWG wire loop securing the rear end of the spare tire holder.

Here's a view of the chassis with the fenders/floor attached.

Bumper-To Chassis Attachment -- SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 2019

In a word, it's dreadful. It's a nasty piece of bits-and-pieces design that's very difficult to execute well.

Between the ends of the chassis rails and the bumpers themselves, there are four small 'bumper brackets' that must be glued in place. Their fits are ambiguous, and the strength of them is iffy. I did succeed in getting them on more-or-less correctly, but the final bumper attachments will lack truth.

At the rear brackets, I added M1.2 screws for reinforcement. It doesn't photograph well, but here's a view of one screw installation.

It's impossible to do that for the front brackets, and the front brackets are misshapen, resulting in an asymmetrical outcome.

I'd say that the bumper attachment scheme is by far the worst feature of the entire kit.

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Interior Door Handles -- WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 2019

The plan orients the interior door handles so they're pointing frontwards. That's not right -- it makes for what, in reality, would be interference between the door handles and the rotating window cranks. Orient the interior door handles so they're pointing downward or rearward.

Cab Fit

There's something wrong with the fit of the cab on the fender assembly, and I could find no way to correct it.

Note the tilt of the cab; it's evident at the lower edge of the cab. That's with the radiator support correctly installed, and the hood fitting properly. My attempts to understand and correct the flaw were fruitless. I settled on getting the radiator support correctly installed, and the hood's fit to be correct and then living with the tilt to the cab.

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All Done -- FRIDAY, MARCH 22, 2019

Here are some views.

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To be continued.

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FEEDBACK

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First Generation Ford Bronco -- Revell Kit No. 85-4320

I've gotten some nasty surprises come final assembly time from Revell's and others' kits -- radiators that sit too high for hoods to close, and windshields that interfere with dashboards are notable ones.

It struck me that a way around that might be to fully assemble a kit (before painting any of it) with an adhesive that sticks but doesn't bond -- an adhesive that can be peeled off without damaging polystyrene components. That way, one could work out any misfits built into a kit, and be prepared for a trouble-free final assembly.

But what to use for an adhesive? White glue and carpenter's glue proved useless; they have zero adhesion to polystyrene. A couple of hobby shop's recommended Elmer's Tak'N Stik adhesive putty. I tried that and found it to be pretty much useless as well. It's too bulky, and it's insufficiently adhesive to polystyrene. I put the question toTamiya's tech support, and they recommended rubber cement.

So, I went to Michaels today and bought a 4 US fl oz bottle of Elmer's CraftBOND rubber cement. I'll try it out and we'll see if my idea for a trial building method will work. I certainly hope that it does, because I'm not too thrilled with the modeling results I've been getting to date, and I need to do much better than I have been.

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Well, so much for that idea -- too messy. I'll just have to carry on and try to check for fit anomalies however I can. Past experience tells me to watch out for fit trouble in the following areas:

• Engine and/or radiator height interfering with hood closure.
• 'Glass', especially windshields, interfering with interior assembly fit.
• Lack of registration/gluing-points for body-to-chassis connection. See this post for further elaboration on that.

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Progress -- SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2018

Here's the chassis with the engine and one exhaust pipe installed.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the exhaust pipe met up with its exhaust manifold satisfactorily. That tends to be an ambiguous point in a model's construction. Fortunately, it turned out right.

While fitting the exhaust pipe, I noticed a little detail that's worth paying attention to -- spacing between an exhaust pipe and a chassis.

It would have been easy to just cram the tail end of the exhaust pipe up against the chassis, but that wouldn't be right; no real vehicle has such an arrangement. So I took care to keep some space between the pipe and the chassis before gluing the pipe in place.

That's an exhaust pipe installation as it ought to be. Now I have to take care to get the other pipe in place with exactly the same spacing from the chassis.

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A Paint Mishap

I painted both exhaust pipes at the same time with the same paint, but got two different shades of 'steel'.

I guess I must have done a non-uniform paint application from one pipe to the other. I didn't notice it until just now, with the pipes side-by-side in the chassis. There's no correcting the flaw now -- I'm stuck with it. 'Something to watch out for on future builds.

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Chassis Completed -- MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2018

'Pretty good. 'Not bad. 'Can't complain.

The suspension and steering linkage details of this kit are impressive. Some observations on other details:

• The ignition coil's retaining strap begs to be picked out in silver, but I didn't feel up to the task, so I just left the ignition coil black overall.
• I painted the shock absorbers yellow overall as per the plan, but that's really not right. The shock absorbers' anchor ends ought to be black, with only the bodies of the shock absorbers yellow. That would have been a tedious bit of business to execute, but well worthwhile.
• As with most models of this scale, the wheels' axles leave a bit to be desired. They're tiny steel pins that make for pretty sloppy wheel mountings

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Interior Done And Fully Assembled -- TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2018

Note the flaw in my installation of the front seats' 'fabric' decals -- the driver's seat has a dark line where the seat back and seat bottom decals meet; the passenger seat has a white gap. By the time I saw that coming, it was too late to fix it.

A nice bit of extra detailing would have been to pick out the armrests and window cranks with paint, but I feared botching that, so I didn't try.

Next up is the dashboard.

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Major Assemblies Together -- THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 15, 2018

So far, at least, it's not an embarrassment.

There are two long white decals to go along the lower length of the body's sides. I'm thinking that now would be a good time to install those, before any further, fragile details are added. These will be the biggest decals I've ever attempted. We'll see how it goes.

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An Acceptable, If Imperfect, Decal Installation

It went better than I'd expected it to. Micro Set solution was helpful for getting conformance, though conformance remains a bit iffy around the front wheel. I'll give that a good long dry-out before I tackle the other side.

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A Complication With The Right Side Body Decal

At the rear, the lower spare tire rack hinge interferes with the decal. I had to cut away the decal there.

I can't say that I did a good job of that. Some touching up with paint is in order to try to smooth that out.

Unsurprisingly, the plan mentions nothing about this snag. Beware.

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Engine Bay Completed -- FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2018

Upper radiator hose, air cleaner, brake master cylinder and four tiny decals installed.

The upper radiator hose was a tight fit, but it did go into place as it ought to.

The plan calls for some additional engine bay paint detailing, but what's called for is beyond my brush painting skills. So, I've left it as you see it.

Grille And Front Bumper Installed

The body-to-chassis alignment/parallelism turned out very well, so the bumper's relationship to the body is as it ought to be.

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Rear End Fully Assembled And Decaled -- SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018

Note the flaw -- the bumper is out of parallel with the tailgate.

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Flaw Corrected -- SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2018

That flaw was bugging me, so I broke off the bumper and carved down the top of the left side chassis protrusion where it mates with the bumper. That let me lower the left side of the bumper, and get the bumper parallel to the tailgate. Much better.

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All Done

There are many little flaws, but it's easily my best model build so far.

On to the next ones.

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FEEDBACK

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1956 Volkswagen Oval Window Beetle By Gunze Sangyo Inc.

Here's my latest kit, the 1956 Volkswagen Oval Window Beetle by Gunze Sangyo Inc. of Japan.

The Gunze Sangyo firm is a new one on me; it will be interesting to see how their kit quality stacks up against the better known makers.

And without further ado, it's on to studying the instructions, nipping out and trimming components and trial-fitting everything to ensure that there are no surprises come final assembly. I'll report any anomalies or misfits should I encounter any.

Interior and Front Axle

The Seats Are A Bit Odd

The seats are made of the same resilient black plastic that the tires are made of. Note that the two front seats perch up on rails -- those rail/seat assemblies are going to be a delicate bit of business to assemble and install.

I was a little concerned about how well CA adhesive would adhere to the resilient black plastic material, so I did an experiment. I glued a piece of sprue onto the concealed rear surface of the back seat, and adhesion proved to be quite good; so at least it won't be a problem to glue the front seats to their rails.

The Front Axle Is Fairly Straightforward

Chassis Front, And Rear Axle/Engine Underside

Here's a view of the chassis front assembled.

The rear axle/engine underside is fairly straightforward.

The instruction sheet is a bit mystifying as regards the exhaust pipes. They're pretty easy to spot, though.

'Glass' And Interior

There's a black gasket affair for the windshield (item R5) that looks to me to be impossible to fit properly. I'm going to omit it.

The interior door handles and window cranks are tiny.

Bumpers And Exterior Bits

All straightforward enough, but some very tiny bits.

The windshield wipers are problematic -- their registration holes in the body are at the wrong angle.

Roof Rack

There are no registration points on the roof of the body for the roof rack to fit to. Attaching the rack will be a bit of guesswork. I may leave it unattached -- just perched on top of the car's roof for display.

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And here's the assembled roof rack perched on top of the car's body.

Now I'll commence painting all the components in reverse order. Once I get back to the beginning (the interior), I can proceed with final assembly of the kit.

Whoops!

I sprayed the body with Tamiya's Surface Primer(L), let it dry for about half an hour, then sprayed on a coat of Tremclad medium blue gloss enamel. Here's what resulted.

A horrific, splotchy mess. The grey primer bled through the enamel in many places and ruined the finish.

I'll leave that aside for the paint to harden for a few days before attempting a recoat. I've written to Tamiya to ask about recommended drying time for their primer. I can only hope that a recoat will work out ok once the ruined paint has hardened sufficiently.

Tamiya Got Back To Me Right Promptly

Here's their answer:

"We recommend 12 to 24 hours to allow the primer to fully cure."

So, that explains that. Nowhere on the can of Tamiya primer is one told about that drying time requirement, or the result of not heeding it. The primer coat that I had applied looked dry enough to me to be painted over, but it wasn't -- nowhere near it. Lesson learned.

Recoat

It's still a botch, really, but I'll carry on and complete the model with the paint job as it is.

That can be an object lesson to me to use only paints meant for plastic models. There's no saving money on paint; the lines of spray paint products carried by hardware stores are not suitable for plastic models. If one means to pursue model building, one must 'bite the bullet' and accept paying the frightful price of proper scale model paint products.

Interior/Chassis Done

I painted the interior components with Pincess Auto's Power Fist sandable grey primer No. 8057275. That turned out ok -- it will serve as the interior's 'finish'. So, sometimes one gets away with using stuff that's not meant for plastic models.

The seats beg to be two-toned, grey and black. That would take a skillful brush painting job that I don't consider myself capable of. My approach so far to such detailing is 'better to omit a detail than risk botching it'.

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Finished Model

A badly flawed, yet somewhat charming model.

Despite what I wrote earlier that "There's no saving money on paint...", I can't handle the cost of going solely with Tamiya's spray paints -- it's outrageous, and the nearest hobby shop is a fair distance from me.

I'll keep experimenting with what I can get from the local Canadian Tire. At least I know now not to use conventional paints over Tamiya primer, so I won't make that mistake again. I've gotten adequate results in the past with Canadian Tire paints. For the time being, at least, 'adequate' will have to do.

So, it's on to a Ford Bronco. We'll see how it goes.

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FEEDBACK

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