XE Falcon S-Pack ** so anyway 8 years later- **

That is still amazing, no matter how many times i look at this build, just incredible detail mate.

Coming together great Shawn, your dedication to accuracy is spot on mate, cheers

Beautiful work! You continue to amaze.

You are a master craftsman its jaw dropping what you are doing,most of us are flat out putting a kit together but what you are doing is just awesome.

"You can see the nice fit of the two chassis sections and the interior tub. Teamwork."

What two chassis sections??? Looks fantastic. Yet again.

Awesome stuff buddy. Love the X series Falcons, your attention to detail is mind-blowing!

You put the god in god damn this is one incredible build.

Thank you guys.

CheersSS

For those who like scratchbuilding but haven't yet seen it, I've posted a scratchbuild tutorial in the how-to section. Check it out. It's not Falcon related I promise.

Hi guys, I'm on a good run of continuous work so here's some new things for you to ponder. I was thinking about what was missing from the chassis and I found that the lack of steering arms left a big space in the front end so I had to fix that problem. I wanted something that was going to be a separate part but was easily castable. I started by gluing a couple of different size Evergreen half rods to some square strip of the same width then after that it was a matter of cutting them to the right size and gluing them onto a bit of Evergreen sheet.

I cut it off of the sheet and boxed in the sides.

I poured the mould rubber into the box and Hey Presto I had a mould to cast some steering arms form.

I added the mounting points for the pitman and idler arms to the chassis and after cleaning up the excess resin on the part I tacked it to the chassis for effect. I will add some bolt heads later.



Next up was the wheel backs. I wanted the detail of the full detail version but I also wanted them to be castable. I made a resin copy of the front disc brake cover and found a wheel back from the spares box that was modified to suit.

I fitted the two together and cast a couple.

The rear drum backs are copied from AMTs '60 Starliner and added to a wheel back and also cast in resin.


I looked high and low for the original wheel moulds that i made ages ago but they were nowhere to be seen so I had to make new ones for them too.

They fit nicely.

Time to check the ride height. I suspected that the rear was going to be a bit high but not this bad.

After a bit of fart arsing about it's where it should be.


I also found a muffler in my spares box that was the right size and cast that. When I get around to it the exhaust pipes themselves will probably be made from solder. The driveshaft was also moulded and cast in resin.


One final thing. Whilst I was messing around with the resin I filled in the big caps in the top of the chassis.
Before.

After. Resin is the best filler for this kind of task.


All I need now is to hit the chassis sections with primer and cast them too but with the real dodgy weather finally setting in I guess it'll be a while so I will move on to some other section of the build.

Still plenty to do.

CheersSS

As always...inspiring.

Those disc brake wheel backs are great.  You could sell them separately.  The kit makers always seem to either put in 4 drum backs or make them all plain.

more awesome work.

geez. Where will this end. Truly amazing, I love it more and more everytime you update this.

Hi guys. My good run of non-stop work on the Falcon came to an end with many interuptions over the course of the month so this update is long overdue. I started working on finalising the front end details. I thought that I had the front bumper/airdam figured out but it needed rebuilding because of this bow in the bumper.

I originally wanted to keep the front bumper separate from the airdam for ease of painting but since I had to rebuild the bumper it was at this point that I decided to incorporate the bumper into the airdam and cast it as one piece.
The rebuilt bumper/airdam with some new modifications to help the headlight buckets fit and also some tabs to mount it to the body. The whole bumper is new but the airdam is only slightly modified from how it was originally.

After casting.

Unfortunately I couldn't save the grill that goes into the opening of the airdam so I cast it with just the horizontal bar.

I have made the vertical slats as an insert.



Next up was the grill for the bonnet. The original part and two resin copies.

I made the backing of the grill the same shape and curve as the back of the bonnet and it sits there nicely. Note also the locating slots for the tabs on the bumper.

I abandoned the original headlight buckets that I made when I made the body and made some new ones.

The notches on the underside of the headlight buckets sit in the notches in the top of the bumper.

The original headlight reflectors got the flick too and have been replaced by new ones.

Those sit in the buckets without much fuss.

Next was the headlight lenses. Slightly modified from the original Tamiya Nissan parts as I had to add a strip to the bottom to get the right height.
 
I cast those lenses in normal resin and added the indicator lenses and gave them a polish up to give them a nice shine. TIP: If you want crystal clear resin parts it is essential to make sure that the surface you are casting has a smooth polished finish.
 
I then cast those parts in clear resin. Clear resin is a fickle bitch in small quantities and a major trauma on a cold day that I am not looking forward to repeating. I painted the indicators orange for effect.

I had to cast the Lucas driving lights too but before that I had to figure out a way to mount them. I just added a strip to the mount that will sit flat inside the airdam.


I also cast the mirrors too.

When I was test fitting it all together I couldnt shake the feeling that the front wheels sat too far out so I had to fix that by removing the original mounting points and than cutting a notch in the upright.

I then modified the steering arm master to be more narrow and recast it.

that's better.

Test fitting. The plain resin coloured reflectors give it a blank stare.

so I threw some BMF at the reflectors.



 As usual, a little fine tuning is needed but the major stuff is out of the way. Next up will be the tail lights and also a bit more work on the full detail version. Another 3 or 4 years and I'll have some primer on it all . Seriously though, There is not much left to do on the curbside version, Taillights, rear bumper, windscreen wipers, towbar, trailer (?) and rear window louvres. The biggest pain at the moment will probably be the decals I still don't know where to start with those. We'll see.

CheersSS

This build continues to impress. I really enjoy seeing how you are working things out along the way.  

  
...I don't have words anymore, so I'll just use ..Brilliant!!!

that's some jaw dropping work again.

                                           

Thanks guys. I was looking at the pics of the assembled model and was a little worried about it looking not quite right, so I got out the masking tape and black texta and blacked out the lower sills and the chin strip. Now I (we) can get a better idea about wether it's headed in the right direction and I think that once it's all painted up and the window frames and the bumpers are black the slab sided apearance will fade. Agree? Dis-Agree?

Now I can't wait to get some colour on it.

CheersSS

It's hard to tell because not being 4m tall that's not an angle I normally see one of these from.
But it looks pretty good.

i rekon it looks pretty good, the earlier pic did look a bit square but now its been blacked out it looks better, its always hard to tell from a pic could be the way my puter displays them so if it looks right to u i would leave it as it is

Man it looks like a real one shrunk down,looks right to me.