Plastic surgery on the dash, firewall, cowl and kick panels

I was able spend many hours this weekend on the middle of the car, trying to get the parts to fit so I could build new door hinges. In the meantime I learned more about how Revell imagined the kit should go together (spoiler alert ; “badly”). In a previous episode you may have seen that I cut the cowl off the original body, and then cut the windshield frame off the cowl altogether. (Yeah that was hair-raising even for a lunatic like myself).

The reason for that is the roadster’s windshield is only about 2/3 as tall as the coupe and it has a “barely there” chrome rim across the top of the glass. Carving it all up was the only way to attack it. Fortunately you guys building the coupe won’t need to worry about that, but I think you’ll end up bitterly cursing how the dash, hinges, kick panels and doors are designed to fit in the coupe.

I filled the ugly cuts in the kick panels and door cards. You can see the underside of the cowl. It has A LOT of half-assed locating pins that are supposed to support the ridiculous kit hinges and the locate the kick panels. (Spoiler alert: I ended up shaving them all off). Then I set about gluing the dashboard onto the panel that sits on top of the center console. There’s no obvious “mounting” point for the dashboard onto that panel, so I got busy with styrene reinforcements. The mounting panel tends to want to flop about, so I went across the firewall gluing in scrap styrene to positively locate both sides against the firewall.

There ended up being quite a lot more than you see here. While I was at it I dry fitted Colin’s 3D console parts. Mine was the first one he shipped and I expected some more effort to make it fit. The vertical section drops in like a charm. I only needed to do a little finessing with a fine file. The horizontal panel that ends up holding the gearshift took A LOT more effort. It is (mine anyway) rather thick and I ended up sanding the shit out of the underside to get it to lay flat enough that I’m confident it would take glue and stay put. I didn’t take any photos of that unfortunately, but trust me it looks fine. Today I started dry fitting the kick panels and trying to make the whole thing fit…

Note the “speedo” in the 1st picture above. I was dry fitting Colin’s speedo/tacho upgrades (thumbs up) and making sure my dash reinforcement didn’t foul them. The kick panels now have supporting strips/panels of styrene, but none of the panels (or dash assembly) are glued in. Here. It was interesting to be able to look into the dash area that would not be visible (coupe or roadster) once it was buttoned up. The cowl didn’t want to sit properly so I added some support at the top of the firewall (seen above) and that helped, but didn’t solve it.

I popped the seats in to see how they would fit. And then I put the dash cowling on and put the windshield frame on top. That was the first indication I really needed to work on making it fit. First, just so you know, the dash has “ears”. They’re bullshit. They don’t exist in the real car and they’re in the way. I first tried softening (heat gun) and bending them, but that was marginal. Spoilers: I ended up cutting the ears off entirely.

I shaved off the mounting pins underneath the owl. While I was fiddling about, I made the passenger Jesus handle (the white styrene bit above). In the 3rd frame above you can see the difference between the dash top before and after. The kit part does NOT have the open slots you see here in both. I cut those out and, in the one I’m using for this kit, I put mesh behind them. I thing it looks really good. Next I discovered that the cowl was sitting too high, so I sanded both sides of the dash surround down until the cowl would sit politely.

The next problem was getting the cowl itself to behave. I made styrene wedges that the bottom edges of the cowl could “grab” as it curled under. That took a ton of fiddling to get them to fit AND fit with the kick panels. But I managed to make it all work.

The fat white wedge on the left in the 1st picture above worked great and has an identical twin on the right. Then I loosely fitted everything and it worked well enough that I am comfortable it will fit when I eventually glue it in. I also took these with the hood in place. The hood still needs a bunch of finishing work, but the louvres are in solidly and they’re completely smooth relative to the rest of the hood.

Cheers,

Chris