Modelik - Maz-543 + SS-1C Scud B

[jaffro]

Thanks Greg, that looks like the way to go. I've done my exhaust using a small copper tube, I''l just add a small piece under there instead of trying to route the whole thing through a battery box.

[jaffro]

Well, I'm not sure what happened but a heap of my pics from this next section have completely disappeared. It took me a long time to figure out how some of this went together, especially the front bumper. The instructions, as usual, were not much help. Thankfully I have a few build threads to check on and between about 3 or 4 of them, they have pics from nearly every angle covered.

First up was the front bumper, fit was pretty good, I just wasn't sure of the angles for some of the folds but got it together.



Radiator was pretty straightforward, as was the front cover for it, but this is where my build pics went missing. There's a 1mm piece representing the radiator grill here, I replaced it with 3 overlapping pieces of aluminum bug mesh.



The engine cover looks pretty straight forward on the instructions but those curved parts are a bit fiddly to put together. Overall it came together pretty well. This piece will just sit on top and can be removed to show the engine.



Unfortunately I don't have pics of the main radiator housing/front grille assembly but it went together pretty well, the "hood" or cover for this has a lot of handles I made using brass rod, I was going to make the ladder out of brass rod too but my soldering is a bit substandard and my flux doesn't appear to work well on the brass so I've made a ladder using toothpicks and may replace it with a better one later on when new supplies arrive. Tow cable was made using picture hanging wire. The hooks holding it on the bumper were made with some small eyelt things I found in a jewelery supply shop.



I tried something new for the lights that go in the bumper, there's a red and orange light on each side. I use a clear epoxy glue for headlights so I thought I'd give it a try for these, I mixed the glue then mixed a little paint in with it. I placed a drop of paint on some small circles cut from silver card. They appear to have worked, although it took a lot longer to set and they dried a lot darker than when I mixed them.



Next up are the two front cabins... Placing all the parts in front of me made it look a little daunting, but I soon got over that by looking further into the book to see what's coming up later.

[Mike1158]

I greatly admire that voodoo that you do do.

[Vinalssergio155]

Comparing with the pieces of the wheels, this does not seem so much ja.Todo our breath from here, you do great.

[jaffro]

Thank you both,

Compared to the wheels, no, not as many pieces but there's a lot of small and tricky parts to build so it will take some time. As usual I will most likely replace some of this with scratch built pieces and the usual extra detail. The main challenge I'm facing here though comes in the painting. The interior is a different colour than the exterior, but the cabin has to be built before I can paint it, I'm going to have to somehow mask the outside from the inside before spraying. Also, I do not have a paint that matches the interior colour so it's going to need a full repaint, which presents another problem, namely the gauges and controls and various other details. I aim to deal with this by scanning the gauges etc and printing them onto inkjet decal sheets but I'm having trouble with my scanner and it's not letting me send scanned images to my pc for editing.

If anybody reading this has a copy of this kit and would be willing to scan some stuff and send me the files, please let me know. If not, I'm going to have to find another solution. I think I have one, but it will be extremely time consuming, I'm open to suggestions.

[jaffro]

Originally Posted by jaffro

If anybody reading this has a copy of this kit and would be willing to scan some stuff and send me the files, please let me know. If not, I'm going to have to find another solution. I think I have one, but it will be extremely time consuming, I'm open to suggestions.

Cancel that, I managed to sort out my scanner issues by trying some older drivers then upgrading to the newer one that was giving me the issues earlier.

My issue now is learning how to scan the images I need then paste them into a new document so all the different parts I need can be printed to the decal sheets in one image, at their original size. So far my first attempts have resulted in some weird excessive shrinkage.

[jaffro]

I thought I might as well post a progress report to avoid the impending pile of parts getting too big before my next post.

I've reached what's been the most frustrating part of this build for me so far, I've lost count of the number of times I've had to walk away from the desk to avoid throwing a part at the wall, some of these cabin elements are extremely annoying to build. In particular, the tiny strips that line the inside of the doorways for all 4 doors. The cabins themselves were mildly annoying, given that the instructions are very vague, parts are mislabeled, printed backwards, missing... the list goes on.

Even looking at other builds hasn't always helped, as people have dealt with these issues in different ways, presenting me with completely different versions of the same parts.

The only part I've somewhat enjoyed so far was the doors themselves although I'm still not sure exactly how they're going to be mounted, let alone if the hinges will work.

The instructions and parts call for a set of hinges so that the upper half of the doors can fold down, I'm assuming these are supposed to work but I don't see the point in even trying to bother with that so they've been built in the permanently closed position, the hinges look like they're going to be extremely annoying to build so I'll be replacing them with something that resembles the real thing.

A good part of the frustration is also my own doing, having decided to paint the whole kit. I've sorted out my previous issues with scanning and printing decals, I'm really happy with the way that's turning out. The main problem I have now is deciding how to paint, considering the airbrush gives the best results, I need to spray the outside and the inside, which are two different colours, with open windows between them. It seems simple enough, but there's going to need to be painting done before and after the windows go in which presents a few dilemmas I won't bother to bore you with seeing as I can't seem to explain anything simply without writing an essay.

So, Pics for the sake of pics... before I move on to adding part of the interior then slopping on some paint.

[Vinalssergio155]

I have read several threads of boys with similar problems. It is a pity that this happens, it is one of the reasons why I do not dare to face a model of these. And I do not understand how it is possible that several of these signatures omit pieces or instructions I understand your frustration, but I'm sure you'll solve it on the fly. Courage !!

[jaffro]

It feels like this train has well and truly stopped at procrastination station.... but I'm still plodding along slowly.

I'm still working on interior details for the drivers cabin. Instead of building everything from the parts sheets, I've scratch built some of it from thicker cardboard and various other bits, to avoid the frustration of trying to fold tiny little parts that are barely going to be seen anyway. Just like Greg did, I don't think I'll be including all the lines and details included in the diagrams, however, I've also added a couple of things that aren't there, based on reference pictures of the real thing.

The drivers seat is incredibly well detailed and equally incredibly frustrating to build... I sure hope I don't have trouble mounting the doors, If they won't open and close, all this will be invisible when the model is finished.
Thankfully the other 3 seats weren't so bad... I've added card strips for some 3D detail on the cushions and had to leave everything half assembled, ready to paint.



I've scratchbuilt a lot of the levers and controls, some of the parts required here were ridiculously small. I've installed some stuff into the cabin, this is basically all the stuff that's going to be painted the interior colour, everything else will be painted separately and installed later. For some reason, most likely due to lighting and cameras, all the other builds I've seen of this kit show completely different interior colours. I'm going to change the interior colour to something more like the real thing in the reference shots.



I've built the headlights from scratch, using my preferred method with silver mirror card and clear epoxy glue, the pics don't really show it but they have a nice rounded front like the real thing.



So, after dealing with all the interior parts for the drivers cabin, I have also separated the parts required for the passenger cabin on the other side and I'm left with a bunch of parts that I have no clue as to what they are or where they go. They are the same colour as the interior, which isn't used anywhere else on the vehicle, yet they are not mentioned anywhere on the instructions. Just another of the many mysteries that pop up during the build of this kit.



I'm nearly ready to paint, which is still frustrating me as I don't have a clear plan of how to tackle it due to a bunch of logistical issues I won't bother boring you with.

[modelperry]

The mystery parts are the seats that go into the side control pods mid vehicle.

greg