Beetle van complete and lessons learned

Well, it's done and I don't think looks too bad.

The glazing was "interesting" in the way that trying to cut bits of plastic to fit slightly irregular resin holes can be. Fixed with Deluxe Materials Glue'n'Glaze, the lesson learned here is that a sharpened and slightly damp cocktail stick will remove excess glue, but you have to work at it.

I won't say this is the greatest model in the world, but I have finished it and along the way learned a bit.

• Start with the best car body you can. This was OK, but the Revell original was better. Chopping the back off it and scratchbuilding the rest would have given a sharper result - if I could blend the parts, especially the roof and gutters.
• Car paint is lovely, but too thick and you can't match it for touch-up. I should have used some nice enamel. I know you can squirt aerosol into the cap and apply it with a brush, but the paint is very thin and pain to use.
• I should have scraped the side trim off and replaced it. The body has an odd mix of correctly raised trim and sunken stuff at the front. The bow pen I used to paint it didn't like that much. Another reason to use paint that can be touched up. 
• Humbrol Clear is very good and easy to use.

However, I'm not unhappy with my model and I'll know better in the future.

Clear!

The car spray paint is a bit thick, and far too shiny. I knew this, but always planned to tone it down a bit once the transfers (from ModelRailwayScenery) were fitted to the white area on the body.

Humbrol Clear is their take on the famous Clear floor polish from Johnson & Johnson. It's more expensive and a touch thicker, but still goes through the airbrush neat. It sprays well, not running or misbehaving in any way.

Still gloss, it's a lot less gloss than the car paint and looks nice in a car modeller sort of way. It didn't lift the metallic enamel lines, always a bit of a risk. Those things have given me enough grief already, still not perfect after several attempts, but now close enough I can live with them.

Inside, I've painted the dashboard with a close enamel match and the rest black. The seats have had their headrests removed and filled. The load area is blocked off with a wall. I know this wouldn't be there in real life, but you won't see it and it hides the gap around the inner wheel arch and outer ones which you could just see through the windows.

I can't work out if the axles should be very slightly longer. It's not much if they should. The Airfix "stock" wheels are slightly narrowers than the Revell custom ones, but not very much.

Considering colour

Thinking about the colour to paint my van in, I dug through the collection of transfers for a suitable decorative name. Ideally, I'd go for a Porche dealership, but the only photos I can find, on VW Type 2 vans, show white text and logos on a blue base. The blue I can do, white transfers I can't.

I did find an option that pleases me however and it needs a white base to sit on. On the shelf in the garage is a can of Peugeot Ice White spray and since it would save me firing up the airbrush then I decided it would work well.

Until I had to decide on car colours, I had no idea how many different shades of paint were available. Hundred of oranges for example, handy when touching up a faded orange car. Then there are whites. When choosing the paint for my van, we went through many options and Ice White was perfect to go with a Rover blue. Pure white was too stark but the not-white (see it compared to a white piece of paper above) worked harmoniously.

I'm not using the Rover blue this time. I can't find it, but I do have some Ford blue which is the perfect match for RNLI lifeboat hulls. I don't have a lifeboat build imminent, so I blew some of the remains of the can over my model bug. OK, it's too shiny and a bit thick, but I think it will be OK when toned down. I hope so anyway.

Beef up those hinges

The resin van body didn't come with any details, so it's time to improvise. Starting at the front, I'm using the Revell bumpers, but with a strip of plastic down the centre and a lot of sanding to make them look a lot less like the Europa version and more like the classic blades.

The moulded hinges aren't really big enough but a bit of microstrip stuck on with superglue beefs them up. While I'm there, the door handles need an extra layer so they are prominent enough. I remember the joys of sticky-out handles that became cold enough to freeze up. Lock de-icer (kept in the house) usually cured it, although I'm told peeing on them would work in an emergency...

Around the back, there weren't any hinges, but there are now. A door catch also goes on. Since I can't find any photos of a van variant that looks like this I'm making the best guess as to what I need.

I don't need a bumper as no van seems to have one and in this case it would stop the door opening. I do need tail light through and so some custom flat ones are the best bet as the slope of the body would preclude standard VW items.

Test fit

Held together with Blu-tack, I think this is going to work. The resin body is a little precariously balanced on the Revell chassis, but with a bit of bodgery involving nice, thick epoxy glue, I think the two can be held together.

The Airfix kit wheels fill the wheel arches nicely enough ad look right to my eyes. Things will be even better with proper hubcaps fitted. Revell axles can just about be forced into the centre holes. A bit crude, but I can't be bothered to build a full front beam - the body kit isn't sharp enough to justify that. I'd only end up making my own using the kit body front and this is to be a quick project!

Inside, the four-seat body will need a bit of trimming. I'm not sure what goes in the back of one of these things, but I doubt you can see much through the windows anyway. The seats are wrong, those are from the 1970s and only the racier versions of the car, but I can modify them.

Talking of windows, fitting the one from the kit looks to be the most painful job, but as the Beetle has very nearly flat glass in the front anyway, I can trim some clear sheet to do the job with a bit of luck.

Bug bodies

Looking for a fairly painless project to take my mind of Covid worries, I pulled a plastic kit box out of the cupboard. Inside were this collection of 1/32nd scale VW Beetle bodies.

From left to right: Resin van, Airfix bug, Revell bug, custom bug.

I've fancied building a Beetle van for years and when I spotted this resin kit, snapped it up.

VW never made a van version of the bug, but several coachbuilders did and there has been at least one custom kit offering fibreglass joy for anyone happy to hack the back off their car.



One problem any builder faces, and the reason VW didn't bother, is that the engine is still correctly at the rear, messing with loading through the back door.



And I know someone out there is shouting "Fridolin" but we will ignore them as it's not pure Beetle.

Anyway, the resin body is designed to fit the Revell VW Beetle kit which I happen to have handy. The only issue with this is that the wheels are trendy alloys, and in my mind, I'm building a period car.

No worries, as the Australians say, in the box is an Airfix Beetle kit too and I think I can nick the wheels out of this. That kit is destined to be a donor for the custom bug also shown above. That one is a nice moulding, complete with a bonnet air scoop presumably for a V8 at the wrong end of the car. However, it would look better sat on some fancy-pants alloys so a swap is in order.

All I need to do is work out if this all goes together.