The door hinge saga rolls on

Ok, during our last episode, I had butchered at least three or four attempts at workable door hinges. In the process I realized that I need to make a solid front door support in order to have any hope of lining up the doors. My first attempt at that was, shall we say… “close, but no cigar”. Since then I’ve spent time re-thinking it. I can’t just glue it in now because I need the footwells clear for installing trim. And I have to have the cowl in place so I can see where the doors will go … and I don’t have enough hands to hold them all in place. So I need to put styrene blocks in place that will “capture” the parts for now, but can easily be removed for paint and trim. Easy right?

The first attempt at the “locked in” footwells looked pretty good at first glance. Unfortunately they were a smidge too small (I based them on the kit ones) and they didn’t really “lock” in place. I had them slide between the edge of the bottom of the dash and a piece of styrene on the outside edges. That worked when the dash was in, but they still flopped about when I put the cowl on. I partly solved that by building a “thing” to capture the center of the cowl. There’s basically a “tongue” that slides into a slot, which prevents the whole thing from sliding forward/back or side to side.

The thing that’s glued to the underside center of the cowling slides down into the rectangular opening in the center of the firewall in the photo on the left. I used my jewelers vice to hold the piece while I sanded it down to match the curve of the cowling. That was when I discovered my first attempt at new footwells was too small. So I did some careful measurements and made them all over again, but this time I added a narrow styrene strip to allow the new footwell to slide down and lock into place. The footwells in the above right picture re just sitting there to measure for fit.

So now they’re locked in solidly and I can work on them, but also, I can easily remove them when I need to. You can (hopefully) see how well they fit now. I put the masking tape in place on the sills this afternoon while waiting for some glue to dry. The idea is to butter some Tamiya filler down into the gap between the body and the floor. After it sets I will have a pretty neatly finished edge that I can apply chrome to later (yes, go look at the real car)

I’m really pleased with how well these things fit. I will get back to the hinges next…. I have already tried using the R/C hinges, but they are made of nylon and they laugh at super glue. I read that they need to be scuffed/sanded to allow the superglue to grip. I’ll give that a shot, but if that doesn’t work out at least I know what the real hinges look like and I know I can make them myself.

Anyway happy modeling

Chris