Finally, time for another update.
My orginal plan was to paint the body sections as well as the intake Lotus Gloss Black, which I had a nearly 8 year old bottle of Zero Lacquer paint, but was never opened. Zero paints come pre-thinned, so you just shoot it straight as is from the bottle. I opted for a flow rate of 20 psi with what I call even, light coats. Well, to put it midly, the first few coats came out looking more like lizard skin. Just not up to my expectations. i tried to rub it out, but for the most part only the clear cockpit combing and intake looked the part. So I stripped the paint using Denatured Alcohol, then checked the Zero site for any info. they don't recomend keeping their paints after 1 yr, and this bottle along with 6 others are nearly 8 years old. Makes no sense as there is no epaoration that I can see in the level of the paint in the bottles, but so be it.
I then ordered several bottles of paint from Gravity of Spain. From date of order to my front door is 5 days, as DHL emailed me that my package will be deliverd the next day. Amazing that it takes about the same time for a domestic delivery as it does from Spain, and it only costs $10 with tracking. Go figure.
So my attention in the mean time turned to the 3.0 liter Ford Cosworth V8 engine. Ebbro did a fantastic job of engineering the engine. the finished unit looks fantastic. I'm not entirely convinced at to their color callouts, but I've got more then enough reference pictures to create a race engine, not a display engine.
Case in point is the intake trumpets. The kit has them in chrome, as that's the call out on the instructions. the Trumpets are made from aluminum and come sort of shiny, but very quickly turn a dull, dirty Aluminum color. I should know as my race MG-B had two of them, and the several race cars i pitted for all had them. Certainly none were chromed, but on show cars they usually are. So I stripped the kit parts with plain old bleach, and the raw plastic is a milky color.
I just primed them with Tamiya X-1 Gloss Black followed with a few coats of Alcad II white Aluminum. A slight shine, but not chrome looking.
Then I installed the combination distributor and coil assembly, painting both caps a Redish Brown, and wired the coil to the center of the cap. I then wired the spark plugs on both cylinder heads. So far no big issues except that with just one eye, close up work like this is not exactly the easiest of things to do.
Now my attention turned to the fuel injectors and the fuel lines. Each of the 8 injectors needed to have the little plastic nubs cut off, and a hole drilled through the injector to accept a fuel line. Ok so I just took my time and got it done. Then I glued on the injectors. I have the proper size clear tubing instead of the more tradional yellowish tubing that reflects the effects of the fuel flowing through the line. Next time I'll go that route. To get the 4 lines per side to each injector through the drilled hole, and then snaked below the intake manifolds seemed like a fairly straight foward job. Well, it took this old half blind modeler literally 3 hrs to get it done!! talk about being frustated.
the Lotus ran with a massive by the standards of the day intake, so I dry fitted the one for Emmo's car, which has a smaller intake then the one for Peterson's car. It's only painted and rubbed out with 3,000 grit at this point, but you'll get the idea of how it will look.
Not much time this coming week to model as unfortunately, I have to be in the hospital Wednesday and Thursday morning for some heart tests, as I didn't do so well on my last physical. Such is life for me these days.
thanks to all my friends for stopping by and checking out my progress to date. As always it's much appreciated.
Joel
