Italeri 1/9 Zündapp KS750 and sidecar - finished

[Sepp]

Ahoy!

 

I managed to find some time to play with this heap, so some more progress...

 

Paint is on everything (except the kick starter, which I forgot ).  Spokes having been thinned, the wheels went together without drama, and the brass spindles actually fit AOK.  At first, it seems that the tyres are too wide, but if you push one half of the rim right into the hole, the other side can be glued without problem and once dry, the tyre can be massaged into position.  I found a small ridge formed all round the rim between the two sets of spokes.  This would be a nightmare to remove, so now it's a feature.  On the model, it's hardly noticable.

You have to be careful to offset the spokes.  Ask me how I know...

 

Next up was the fuse box.  It ought to look like this:

 

Unfortunately, you get this:

 

It only has two lead points (the kit's wiring is a work of fantasy), and it's way too small (approx. 3mm square) to fit the required seven leads.  I reckoned that it ought to be 5-6mm square, to scale, so I used some 2mm thick styrene sheet to make mine. Bags of room for 7x 0.7mm lead wire leads - possibly a tad oversize, but I can live with it. I took the opportunity to relocate it, too - most bikes have it on the right-hand side of the frame, possibly because they've had the rather wonderful cyclonic air filter fitted at some stage. I added a bracket from some spare PE, Anyz rivets for mouning studs on said bracket, a Meng nut on the frame and mine has a butterfly nut rather than a knob, which I put down to local expediency - I'll try to get a pic of back of the bracket next time.  Rather than try to use different gauges of wire, I stuck to the same gauge for simplicity.  I still have to add the brake light and sidecar leads, in the pic below, but everything else is as it should be. 

 

The thin wire you can see above the engine runs to the back of the ignition switch on the handshift quadrant. It's a loose fit, atm - I'll finalise it when I add the clutch cable.  Wiring on these bikes seems to always be a bit of a bird's nest, and there's a myriad of different cable routing, so at least you don't have to be too precious about that, which is a bonus.

 

Talking of the handshift, the real thing has cast-in markings for the gears, forward and rear drive, and neutral:

 

but the kit gives you nothing - hence the tiiiiny digits on the decal sheet I made.  After a lot of bad language, I managed something acceptable:

I have the other three still to look forward to.  I had to add something to suggest the ignition switch, because the kit omits that, too. I really need to redo that.

 

Another omission is the brackets/guards, circled in the pic below:

 

I made these using 1.2mm (I think) (edit: 1.5mm) lead wire and more Meng bolt heads:

I'll mount them just before I add the sidecar body, right at the end, as they just ask to get knocked off.

 

Btw, it seems modellers aren't the only ones to mount parts upside down!   I'm not entirely sure which is right, but most owners seem to agree that they should point downwards.

 

After much soul searching I decided this would be a clean, modern restoration, so in went the sidecar seat and floor planking, after adding and sealing the decals:

 

and the civvy licence plate is done, too:

 

I'll probably slip the military plate down one side of the seat, as I've also made that.

 

Slowly starting to look like a bike!

 

Next job is the decals on the remaining handshift part, then add the driveshaft, rear hydraulic brake pipe, gear control rods and the various pedals.  After that, I'll add the sidecar frame and get its wiring back to the fuse box.

 

That's all for now - thanks, as always, for looking in.

 

Sepp, out.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 17 by Sepp

[Jager]

On 3/7/2024 at 10:34 AM, Sepp said:

Back again.

 

I forgot to add in the above post re. the engine: the dynamo, which sits on the front of the engine received some work, too.  The kit's offering is a single lump, but it should have a separate cap secured with two screws - duly scribed and Archered.  I've not painted the cap yet, as I still don't know what scheme it'll wear.

 

Part 2 - the frame.

 

Before getting stuck in, it is perhaps worth repeating what others have said about this kit - namely, the plastic does not respond at all to Tamiya thin or extra thin cement, and MEK seems to frighten it into a literal jelly. "Normal" Tamiya cement, though, works fine.  Be prepared to spend a lot of time removing parting lines, too.

 

And so...  Oh dear.

 

 

Oh dear, oh dear...

 

There appear to have been two teams working on the tooling for this kit, with two distinctly different ideas of what the it should look like.  The outer parts of the rear rack are moulded to the support legs; I've removed them as it will be much easier to address the poor fit of the centre part "off the bike".  The legs seem to differ in height by around 0.5mm, too, so there will have to be some fettling when the rack and mudguard go on.  At least, despite the flaws, the frame sits reasonably square.

 

The kit would have you mount the engine before painting, but this would obviously not be ideal, so the first job was to remove the forward mounting bar, drill the frame and replace with slide fit tubing. Much care required here, as there's not much material left once the holes are cut.

 

Then it was just a case of sand and fill, sand and sand again.   Getting there...

 

The four white filled slots are where the kit would like you to locate the fuel tank - they don't exist on the real bike, so they're gone.  I don't think the people who were responsible for the throttle quadrant had ever seen the drawings for the frame. A lot of reshaping required to get the majority of the body to fit, then a lump of filler to shape the rear end.

 

Eventually, I was happy with the plastic surgery, and whaddya know, the engine actually fits. Phew.

 

The white dot rectifies another oddity; the left side of the kit frame has a hole through which various wires pass.  No such hole exists on the left side of the KS750, but does on the 600 - which makes me think again that there was some confusion between the two - understandable, they're very similar - and I've come across quite a few pics online that are mis-labelled.  Photos exist that show the welds on the upper forward part of the frame and the frame legs to vary from agricultural to completely ground away, so after much rumination I've decided not to add them*.  Whoever owns this bike has taken more care than was felt necessary in WWII.

 

And so to the fuel tank.  The kit would have you build it with the hinge on the left:

 

which I duly did. If you could kindly ignore the fact that the hinge should have five leaves, not three, that would be great:

 

only to discover - or rather notice - that in just about every pic online, the hinge is on the right, e.g.:

 

So, with a fresh blade, I removed the button/knob/cap and hinge as carefully as I was able, and swapped 'em over:

 

You know what's coming, don't you.  Yes, that's right.  While looking for something else...

 

At least there seem to be a mahoosive number of different combinations of features on these bikes. It seems that no two are completely identical in layout. Ah, well.

 

Lastly for this update, another 'wut'.  The joint between the two hinged parts of the rear mudguard is depicted with a raised panel line.... in 1/9 scale? Really?  Scriber out again.  The two required wingnut fasteners are not included in the kit, so will be added.  Again, lots of sanding to remove extraneous surface blemishes.

 

That's all for now - there will be a short interlude while I go and gently coax parting lines off 120 spokes and try to get eight rim halves to fit seamlessly. Joy.

 

Thanks for looking,

Sepp, out.

 

*At least, I think I have. You know how it goes....

 

 

 

 

 

What size drill and brass tubing did you use on the frame?

Jager

[Sepp]

13 hours ago, Jager said:

What size drill and brass tubing did you use on the frame?

Jager

The tubing through the front of the engine is 2mm, with 1.5mm (which is a slide fit if using Albion Alloy stuff) through it to act as the bearer. 1.5 is too thin to use alone; 2mm is a loose but acceptable fit in the "loop" at the front of the engine but a 2mm drill will destroy the frame mount completly.  I used a dab of varnish to stop the outer tube sliding around too much while I was trying to thread the bearer through it.  Drills used were the same as tubing dia.

You'll have to drill the left side of the frame, using the centre of the existing mount as a guide, and mark and carefully drill the right side to match. For me, it wound up just aft of the side car mounting "knob". A Meng bolt head will be needed to finish the job.

 

The rear spindle is also 2mm tubing.  I had to gently enlarge the hole in the frame, which is quite thin at that point, but it was a good fit in part 219E, and, iirc, a tight fit in the transmission hub without modification - I did dress the leading face of the tube to help it slip into place. 

 

As I wanted to mount the wheel after assembling the frame,  I modified part 219E.  As provided, the cup sits over the end the stub in the transmission housing, but this doesn't give you enough wiggle room to mount the wheel.  I cut the middle part away, using the smaller end as a bush on the left side of the wheel (see first pic in last post).  This then allowed the cup to sit flush with the right face of the wheel with a small stub projecting into the wheel itself.  The three small dia holes then give a nice tight fit and align the wheel properly - it sits square and will rotate, but doesn't spin freely - which is what I was after.  I'm pleased to say, it wasn't the drama I was expecting.

 

2mm tubing is ever so slightly too big for the holes in the forks and they're quite fragile, so I have some 1.9 and 1.8mm tubing on the way.  I'll try those for fit before attempting to ream out the front and sidecar wheel mounts, and report back.

 

Apologies for the long reply to a short question and no tl:dr, lol.

 

Cheers,

 

Sepp.

Edited June 17 by Sepp

[Shujaa]

Now that's some sweet work going on. Especialy considering that Italeri isn't the best brand on the market... 

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Kind regards,

 

Rudy.

[Jager]

Thanks Sepp for taking time from your build to respond to my question.  Great work.

 

Jager

[Sepp]

Hi again!

 

It's once more been a while, but progress has been significant.  First job was to remake the drive shaft - and here I've taken some liberties.  The real thing:

 

The kit's engine appears to have the front stub of the shaft moulded as part of the case, and the shaft slides in to allow it to be positioned:

 

However, the shaft itself is poorly moulded, and looks awfully undersized after sanding to a round profile.  The front stub is faired into the case - to be honest I hadn't noticed that, or I'd've taken a different approach.  I fudged the issue by sleeving the shaft and aft stub in brass tube and making a new front stub the same way.  It is, therefore, a bit short - but (to me, anyway!) looks way better than using the kit parts alone:

 

At this point, I decided that I really didn't like the shiny look, so after I mounted the tank and fuel tap (I said in an earlier post that the pipe wasn't included in the kit - I was mistaken. Apologies to the kit designers), I had at the engine and lower frame with pastels.  Much more pleasing.

 

Next up was making a terminal to sit on top of my Noris-ish fuse box.

 

I didn't have any round rod of the desired (1.5mm) diameter, so I reamed some square stock down using a length of brass tubing with the appropriate internal dia:

 

Then I drilled two 0.7mm holes - on one end and at the side to receive a stud and the sidecar loom - and added some styrene discs to dress up the top of the cap:

 

With the sidecar frame in place, I added the loom (still have to tidy the painting up in this pic):

 

Hopefully, not too shabby.

 

Exhaust and front-end mounted, and the saddle toned down from it's veeery shiny former self.  The lead wire  U bars definitely add something, I reckon:

 

And the front-end cabling is complete - at last.  Very fiddly, but at least the bike now has all the correct cables, going to/from the correct places, which is satisfying. I'm going to have to smooth out the throttle and clutch cable bowing, but I'll do that once I decide how to pose the forks. 

 

The front wheel was mounted using 2mm brass rod as an axle (I had to slightly enlarge the corresponding holes in the forks and the front hub) which gives a solid fit, and Meng bolt heads to cover the ends.  The headlamp lens features a made-up collector pattern.  The kit wants it mounted 90º to how I've done it, but to my eye, this looks better, and closer to at least one real lamp: 

 

Finally, for this update, I was really pleased with how the exhaust turned out.  While sanding the collector box I erased the weld seam that runs round it, so I replaced it with 0.3mm lead wire.  The fresh metallic scuffs are Uschi steel paste applied dry with a mini cotton bud. Rustiness is just more pastels.

 

That's it for now - but the end is in sight.  Last big job is dirtying up the sidecar, and I can start thinking about what to build next.

 

Thanks, as always, for looking,

 

Sepp, out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 17 by Sepp

[LSP_Ray]

Wow, that looks good!

[Shoggz]

Looks like the real thing - excellent!

[Sepp]

Hi again - last post for this one.

 

Last time it was all over bar the shouting - mainly just some dirtying up of the sidecar and final assembly left to do.  I did, however, give it one last tweak.

 

The spare wheel holder is a shaped nut fitted on a threaded bar (ignore the arrow in the second pic, it's not relevant):

 

The kit gives you a blind stump - although the nut is nicely rendered and there's even a tiny gap between it and the bar.

 

I parted the stump off (pic to show the said tiny gap - really impressive, considering the heavy-handedness present throughout the rest of the kit)

 

and rather than drill a hole, I stuck the piece in my mini drill and turned a hollow out with a no.11 blade:

 

An M1 machine screw provided the thread:

 

After cutting down to size and filing the end to look somewhat like the stud that receives the extension tube when carrying two spares, I had this:

 

After a coat of paint and some Uschi metal paste highlights (pity I didn't notice that paint smudge in juuuust the wrong place behind it!):

 

And so - a modern restoration of M705S (FAB inventory term for the Zündapp KS750) B-0148 of 2e Rgt. Inf, Forces Armées Bretonnes, just back from a dusty day at a military history show - finished.  If anyone's interested, SV on the civvy plate means registered in Saint-Malo, A5 means the earliest recorded provenance for the bike is 1945 (agrees with the military plate "B" date) and DTX are random letters.  The red/white "A" sticker shows it's a historic vehicle and not subject to road tax. 

 

If you'll forgive me, I gotta show the exhaust again, because I was chuffed with the way it came out

 

Now for the fun part that I know we all enjoy - cleaning the bench ready for the next!

 

Thank you to everyone who's looked in on this, and for the kind comments and support throughout.  A trying kit in places, but one I've thoroughly enjoyed working through.

 

Sepp, out.

 

 

 

Edited July 31 by Sepp
I must learn to type!

[LSP_Ray]

Incredible job!

[Jager]

Sepp,

  Thanks for sharing your extraordinary build with the rest of us out here. I have really enjoyed it. It has "fired-up" my mojo to start a BMW  motorcycle that has been on my build list for too long.  

Thanks Again for including the rest of us on your build adventure.

Jager

Edited August 1 by Jager

[Shoggz]

It could be the real thing. If you’d told me it was, I would have believed you!

 

Splendid work.

[chrish]

A thing of beauty 

now it needs Harrison Ford and Sean Connery sitting in it at the  “to Berlin” road sign

[LSP_Ron]

That's extremely well done.

[LSP_Kevin]

Fantastic!

 

Kev