1/12 MFH Ferrari GTO 250 - Finished

[MikeA]

I can't imagine what it must be like to see one of these parked in the street. We used to have quite a few Lambos and late model Ferraris near us in Australia, but nothing like this. I shall content myself with a miniature....

 

The seats are finished and installed. The rear seat brackets were a pain to fit and I had to shorten them by almost 2mm. This may have been a result of the leatherwork as the tolerances on this kit are extremely fine. 

 

The driver now has a seat belt harness. I used the MFH one, with a couple of extra parts from a generic set. The installation was slightly trickier than anticipated, solely due to my own stupidity. The inboard lap belt should have been fitted prior to installing the seats, but I did still manage to get the belt and mounting bracket into the right place down behind the seat without having it stick to everything else on its way down there.

 

I changed my mind about the passenger seat after seeing some video clips of the car's interior, and am now waiting for another harness to wing its way over from Europe. On the real car the belts would all be tucked out of the way and off the seat, but then you couldn't really see them - or all the work in putting them together.

 

The small red handle in between the seats is the remote pull for the fire extinguisher yet to be made which is fitted in the rear of the car, above the fuel tank.

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

[scvrobeson]

Excellent work on the leather seats! 

 

Closest I've ever gotten to a GTO was at the Pebble Beach Concours, can't imagine seeing one out in the wild.  Would be like someone walking around town with an original Rembrandt tied to their back.

 

 

Matt 

[Pete Fleischmann]

Very cool.

isn’t this similar to the Ferrari that Cameron killed in Ferris Buellers Day Off?
 

cheers

P 

[MikeA]

12 hours ago, Pete Fleischmann said:

Very cool.

isn’t this similar to the Ferrari that Cameron killed in Ferris Buellers Day Off?
 

cheers

P 

Thanks for the comment! The Ferrari in that film was the predecessor to this one, or at least an open top version of that model - the Ferrari 250 GT. The designers used the 250 GT as the base for this one, so it does have many mechanical and structural similarities, but lacks the long nose and pronounced curves of this one. And nowhere near as expensive these days it would seem - $17 million in 2018 versus $70 million for a 250 GTO in the same year. Mind numbing really.

 

Cheers,

Mike

[scvrobeson]

22 hours ago, Pete Fleischmann said:

Very cool.

isn’t this similar to the Ferrari that Cameron killed in Ferris Buellers Day Off?
 

cheers

P 

 

That was a 250 GT SWB California, so same family.

Although fun fact, the actual driving version in the movie was an MGB with a fiberglass body on top.

 

 

Matt 

[Oldbaldguy]

You know what I like about this build?  The chassis doesn’t look like a concours resto that lives in a glass garage.  It looks like it belongs under a car that someone loves but is not afraid to drive!  

 

[MikeA]

Thanks for the feedback. This car has apparently been raced almost every year, so certainly driven. The body will be in very nice nick though when I finally get to it.

 

Finally made some more progress on this - pretty much through to starting on the bodywork except for a fire extinguisher to make. I did a world wide search for another set of the MFH seat belts and finally found them at BNA Models in Melbourne. The label they had on them had thrown me off. Anyway I had enough points with them for free shipping and had them in NZ 3 days after ordering, which is nothing short of miraculous these days! The black belts are almost unobtainable now it seems.

 

The inner wheel arches proved a bit of a problem. No matter how I tried they didn't play nicely with the body with a bit of interference right at the top. Some judicious trimming, which cannot be seen on the finished model, sorted that out. There is some sort of oil breather box which is fitted to the right hand inner arch which was a later modification to this particular car. It did make fitting the arch in place whilst making sure the pipes connected a bit of a challenge, especially as the lower pipe snakes under the exhausts.

 

The first few photos show the finished interior with the dashboard in place. For some reason the kit didn't have the length of steering column inside the cabin, so I made this with its universal joint, which can be just seen if you peer under the dash. There is a piece of piping on the passenger seat which needs correcting - the joys of extreme close ups.

 

 

 

 

The next photos are the engine bay which only needs the cross bar support added. The first photo shows the heater valve and associated rubber pipes. 

 

 

Air horns - I see one is chipped so will need to attend to that.

 

 

 

The windscreen washer

 

 

And the overall engine bay

 

 

 

 

I've tried to graduate the weathering with cleaner at the top where it's easier to get to, although overall I think the engine bay was kept in good order.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 8, 2021 by MikeA

[Wolf Buddee]

What a freakin’ amazing build!
 

 

Cheers,

Wolf

[MikeA]

Thanks Wolf! Having been somewhat awestruck by your work, I feel most humbled and challenged to not drop the ball on this one.

 

Just a minor update. The first two photos show the complete chassis with struts and the engine bay cross bar in place. The top frame bars in the cockpit still have to be added as a frame that fits inside the roof panel. I think i will add these at the end as the body work seems to clip onto the frame work and its not something that can really be messed around with in trial fits etc if it is all glued together beforehand. 

 

The boot lid is a shocking fit, as seen in the third photo. I glued some solder onto the edge of the white metal lid and smoothed it all off to get a far more acceptable fit. The bonnet lid is not too bad, after a fair bit of careful panel bending to get the curvatures right. The doors are proving difficult to check in regard to the resulting panel lines as i don't want to repeatedly screw and unscrew the substantial hinge assembly they each have. Will have to ponder that problem. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pascal]

Stunning work !

 

I absolutely LOVE what you are doing to this kit.

 

Very clean result with the leather on the seats.

 

You can replace the boot lid with a piece of brass sheet, lot easier to remove material then to add it.

 

Sincerely

 

Pascal

[MikeA]

Thanks for the feedback Pascal! As it turned out, it was no hassle to add the material to the boot lid. After priming there was only one very minor swipe of filler needed to get a seamless transition. I suspect cutting and shaping brass sheet would have taken me, at least, a lot longer. I always need at least two or three trials before I get that sort of thing right.

 

One last change to the body work was to use brass tube to extend the brake cooling ducts through to the inner panel which forms part of the wheel arch, and then cut a hole in each of those panels so that the air could actually get through. On the real car there is a flexipipe tube which fits into the duct and runs inside the wheel arch to the brakes. I'll see if I can make some up with some heat shrink tube over a suitable former, but not too concerned if it doesn't work out.

 

Then it was onto the first stages of painting. After both washing and then wiping over with alcohol, I applied an overall very thin coat of Tamiya extra fine grey, as the inside of the shell is painted black over this. I was expecting quite a few sanding sessions because of the mods I had done, but was pleasantly surprised. There were small swipes of filler required at almost all of the areas modified, but easily resolved. One more difficult part was a 5mm diameter spot on the roof that refused to take the primer. Eventually I resorted to brushing some matt light grey enamel over it, sanding that smooth and then re-priming. Whatever it is inside the resin seems to be sealed in now. The other problem area was the bonnet lid which was covered over one half of the outer surface with tiny pin holes. I ended up using Mr Surfacer to sort those out.

 

The black in the wheel arches and other areas not in the cockpit or boot, as well as the inside of the boot and bonnet lids, was enamel thinned with turps and then roughed up with a sponge. I tried to do the same inside the side vents, but there was not enough room to get a good effect. The rest was Tamiya rattle can to match the interior.

 

I think I will do some more work on the fit of the bonnet and doors before progressing the exterior paintwork any further. The exterior will be getting pink primer followed by Zero lacquer. I've include a couple of photos of a trial fit of the body work with the wheels just sitting on their stubs - I wanted to make sure everything was lined up before committing to paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

 

 

[Brett M]

That's looking sharp, Mike. Really interesting build!

[MikeA]

Thanks Brett - much appreciated. The difficult part for me is about to start as I am not in any way well set up for painting car bodies. 

 

A small update - the masked pink panther. I managed to find some heat shrink tube in my collection which is a slide fit inside the brake cooler holes in the nose - these are a tricky masking scenario as the cut-off between body colour and black is inside the nose, almost a centimetre inside. I won't know if it worked for some weeks yet.

 

 

 

I was amazed how the pink primer has shown up some tiny defects that were not evident with the grey.

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

Mike

 

 

Edited August 28, 2021 by MikeA
Typo correction

[MikeA]

Just out of the paint shop (aka garage whilst airbrushing on my knees with a respirator on). I reverted to my old single action Paasche airbrush as the areas to be covered were quite large and used a wet old t-shirt laid out underneath the parts to keep the dust particles down. The base coat went on like a dream, except that I had a drip from the airbrush land on the nose (the paint jar loosened slightly - it's a push fit), which then lead to a spot sanding and repair job followed by a respray of both primer and base coat - but it was a successful repair of my own stupidity. The only other annoying thing was that some small areas showed various kinds of marking (dots or blemishes) which hadn't been evident before. More buffing and respraying reduced those but didn't completely eliminate them. It seems to be something to do with the resin and even came through four coats of primer. Annoying, given the lengths I went to in cleaning and prepping the resin.

 

The first photo is the base coat. There are four coats on it. Despite doing a corrective white balance on the camera, the colour is not really the same as it actually is. It's a blood red, quite bright, although I was worried that it might be too dark.

 

 

I left the base coat for a couple of days under cover before using Micromesh to sort out any blemishes etc., and then used the Zero premixed gloss coat. I stayed away from their two pot mix as it appears to dry even glossier, which was not something I wanted for this particular car. And it is particularly toxic. The gloss was amazingly easy to use - two dust coats followed by a fairly wet coat and then a final very wet coat. It stuck like glue and levelled very nicely. I've got the odd dust particle to deal with but nothing major. It's a beautiful sunny day so the photo is outside. The colour in the photo has a pinkish shade to it, but in reality it is a nice bright blood red. Makes the red on the air horns look muddy in comparison. I'm very happy with it and certainly put to rest any misgivings I had after the base coat was on. I'm not sure that I want to polish it further as, to my eyes anyway, it looks more like a restored classic at this level. And the little imperfections from the resin are now barely noticeable.

 

 

The last photo shows the kit supplied air intake covers together with replacements I scratched from plastic card. The kit's resin ones are solid blocks designed to just sit in the three upper nose intakes, whereas in reality they are flat sheet metal with a folded lip at the rear. The P/E latches are yet to be added.

 

 

I'll leave it all to sit unmolested now for a few days. The doors, which have also been painted, will then need their interiors and windows adding before fitting to the body. Then there are the race numbers and other markings to add. Decals can be put directly onto the base coat, but they go across the door and boot lid panels onto the body, so best done after those panels are fitted.

 

I will try some experimenting to see if I can get the correct red colour on the screen, as it really is a very attractive shade.

 

And a few hours later - something more like it:

 

 

 

Thanks for looking

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

Edited September 2, 2021 by MikeA
Photo added

[MikeA]

Finally got the decals on, but still a final couple of clear coats to go once the decals have throughly set. The one on the boot surrounds was a challenge to line up with the remainder of the race number on the lid itself. They were two separate decals, whereas my preference would be for one that I could then cut along the panel edge. The other challenge was getting the number on the nose to settle into the radiator access panel lines - it took a long session with multiple applications of Microsol to get there. A dark wash inside the panel line should sort it.

 

I also had my first go at chipping paint using the hairspray method for the underseal just behind the lower air intakes. Worked a treat, although it did make my garage smell like a ladies salon. I'll weather the underneath, wheel arches etc once I've finished the clear coating. The photos also show the door and window rubbers inserted and/or painted as appropriate. The headlight enclosures have been painted in Humbrol polished aluminium which seems to give just the right finish as compared with photos of the real car.

 

The first photo shows a finished air intake cover with the Dzus fastener in the open position. I used some fine fuse wire for the spring.

 

 

 

 

 

It can sit for another few days now before clear coating.

 

Thanks for looking

 

Cheers,

 

Mike