1/12 MFH Ferrari GTO 250 - Finished

[MikeA]

Well the seats are upholstered now, except for piping which will hide the seams, especially on the sides. I ended up using Locktite "Rubbery" gel superglue. It doesn't bleed through the leather at all and allows a precious second or two for adjustment. The first seat is marginally acceptable, but then it was my first ever attempt. For some reason the piece of leather over the seat back did not want to stretch flat over the bucket curve, so I had to nick out a triangle on each side whilst fitting it. The second seat behaved perfectly, despite using the same technique and process. Just must have gotten better at it.

 

Each piece was glued in successive small sections and a sharp #11 blade was used to trim where necessary. I've got some fine scale leather piping from Model Motor Cars coming and, once that is on, the seat covers will get aged. Experiments on scrap leather suggest scuffing with a kitchen nylon cleaning pad and using pastels should work. The photos are close-up and highlighted to show the black, which is pretty unkind to the finish.

 

 

On the next photo you can see where I painted the white resin black along the joins between the leather pieces - just in case......

 

 

 

 

and loosely fitted into place........

 

Under normal light and usual viewing the sheepskin leather has a very much scale leather grain effect, so I am quite happy with them. The driver's seat will eventually get a full racing harness draped over it, whilst the passenger seat just gets a lap belt.

 

Any feedback welcome. thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[MikeA]

The screws I was waiting for from Germany finally arrived two weeks ago. Three months of waiting, but they were exactly what I needed to get the front steering sorted. So it's back into finishing off the running gear. There are some differences from the kit: the oil cooler for the diff, the dual electric Bendix fuel pumps and the master cylinder for the brakes is a twin unit instead of combined. The pedal box remained unchanged, but has a separate cylinder for front and rear.

 

On a couple of photos you can see the cable ties used for the handbrake cable. These were extremely fiddly, as they work just like the full size ones. I learnt not to finish them with superglue as it breaks the cable down. A tiny dab of white glue works fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can now move on to getting the fuel tank in place and connected up. That will be the last job before the engine gets fitted. I'm leaving that till the last possible moment as the frame becomes quite difficult to handle and fragile with a great lump of white metal at the front end.

 

Any comments welcome. Hopefully the updates will be more regular now as much of the remainder of the internals to the car have already been prepared.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[Jeff T]

Looking good Mike!

 

Jeezz there's a lot of detail in these builds....

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

[Matti]

 Nice and tidy!

[MikeA]

Thanks for the comments. As expected, there was some quicker progress now that the front suspension was completed. The boot floor and fuel tank were added to the rear and the tank plumbed in. I'll probably still do some more weathering in the wheel arches but will leave that till a little later.

 

Then it was time to take the engine out of storage and mount it. was surprisingly easy in the end, although handling the model in this state is definitely not. Basically a resin ladder frame with 0.5kg of white metal at each end. I've got it supported on the wheels until the cockpit body is screwed and glued into place.

 

The old school frame is one of the appeals for me of this car. Very agricultural, and only there to support the V12 and allow it to power the wheels - all to be clad in a marvellously svelte body. Apparently Mason's team tried stiffening up the front of the fame with a larger anti-roll bar, and popped the windscreen out in the process! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry - the pictures aren't quite as sharp as they should be. Hope you like anyway....

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

 

[Matti]

I like, I like a lot!

[dodgem37]

Very nice.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[Alex]

Gotta love those 6x2 carbs!  Looking forward to seeing this beast completed.

[MikeA]

It's amazing how much time can be spent just attaching fuel lines, oil lines and water hoses. I got lots of practice making up the PE hose clamps, and discovered they go together much easier if annealed first. Attaching the radiator took three goes. The first time, despite fitting on a dry run, it refused to sit completely in place when glued. The second time it went in place like a dream, but half an hour later I had a thought and tried fitting the top subframe. This attaches between the radiator frame and the top of the suspension units on each side. And the subframes didn't fit..... Third time I left the subframe loosely in place and everything lined up. The twin electric fans were not provided with the kit as these were a later addition on this particular car. The radiator seems very small, so no surprise that some assistance was required.

 

The exhaust manifolds went in fairly easily, despite the whole chassis assembly being incredibly unwieldy in its current state. I did put a very light colouring with pastels on the "ceramic" manifolds, although it doesn't show in the photos - just a hint of colour on the white. I am a little worried about lining up the rest of the exhausts with the manifold, but it wasn't possible to dry fit them whilst also fixing the manifolds in place. It is the thing with this kit - the tolerances are very tight and you need to check several pages ahead in the instructions to ensure that every part that will later connect with the part you are fitting will do so without any hassle. The instructions also leave much of the sequence in fitting the details up to the builder as different pictures for the same steps have different parts present. Makes it more like a jigsaw puzzle at times, but very rewarding.

 

The final photo shows the firewall. The two brake fluid reservoirs look terrible in the extreme close up, but look quite ok in real life. The chassis ID plate gave me a fright. I applied the decal only to see it disappear. Turns out it needed to go on foil first, but there was no indication of this anywhere in the instructions. Fortunately the decal is made of stern stuff and survived the transfer after being loosened by some Microset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 1, 2021 by MikeA
Duplicate photo removed

[MikeA]

Finally got the cockpit glued and screwed onto the frame. I used slow setting epoxy and clamped it in place. Apart from strength, this allowed me to manipulate the rear subframe and suspension struts into place as well as the linkages for the brake cylinders and the accelerator prior to clamping everything down. A somewhat nerve wracking experience due to the weight and awkwardness of the structure to handle.

 

I started preparing some of he remaining miscellaneous parts to sit in the engine bay which are shown in the third photo below. However I quickly came to the conclusion that, despite the sequence in the instructions, it would be wise to complete the underside before doing any further work. This is because it will become very difficult to support the frame inverted without the body shell in place, whereas at this stage it is quite easy to do so.

 

 

 

 

The nice detail on the gear selector box became swiftly shrouded in leather as this was needed to seal off the hole in the transmission tunnel where it sits. But, through use of some heat shrink tube and a short length of brass tube, I managed to make up the gear selector so that you can move it through the gates.

 

 

And an overall shot of the body sitting in place and also the engine bay.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

Mike

 

 

 

 

 

[Shawn M]

oh thats just beautiful

[MikeA]

Got the underneath finished. I ended up pulling off the exhaust manifolds and refitting them with the exhausts clamped in place so that I absolutely knew everything would line up, as it definitely didn't when I first tried. The exhaust went together like a dream. It is engineered very well with some wriggle room, although it does take some care in fitting the parts exactly as intended. I'm definitely not putting the cover plate over all this work. My story will be that it is only used for competitions.

 

The joint area between the exhaust manifold and main pipes is supposed to be covered in insulating foil on the car. I have found suitable foil, but stuffed if I can work out how to wrap the pipes in it. I  did look at preassembling the area before fitting to the engine, but it was very problematic - too many angles and not enough room.

 

I will probably revisit the weathering underneath the car, but will leave that until near the end.

 

 

You can make out the red shock absorbers in the photo below. Despite having the shelf for the springs to fit on, the springs were not fitted on this car and are apparently left off many examples to improve the rear end handling.

 

 

The next photo shows the original battery holder which was underneath the passenger seat. On this particular car, the frame has been left in place and a plate put in under the seat.

 

 

The last photo below shows the detail of the fuel tank and exhaust hangers etc.

 

 

Back to the interior next to finish that area off.

 

Thanks for looking,

 

Mike

 

 

[scvrobeson]

Excellent progress.  As pricey as the MFH kit is, it's way cheaper than a real 250GTO.  Keep it up!

 

 

 

Matt 

[MikeA]

10 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

Excellent progress.  As pricey as the MFH kit is, it's way cheaper than a real 250GTO.  Keep it up!

 

 

 

Matt 

Thanks for that. Worked out on a dollar per hour basis, it's pretty good. probably only beaten by scratch building. However the cost does lead to a few heart in mouth moments, hoping I don't screw it up!

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[Marcel111]

Love the GTO. Years ago I was in Munich just walking in the city and there stood an original, just parked by the side of the road.

 

Cheers,

 

Marcel