Hi all,
Just finished this kit after 65 hours of mostly enjoyable work but there is one aspect which severely dented my ability to make a better fist of it. The glazing is absolutely abominable, there are 6 separate parts which have at most a 1 mm edge to attach them to the body and the windscreen is about 5 mm too short !!!!! - look at the images to see what I mean. As far as I am concerned this is unforgivable regardless as to how old the mouldings are. Built basically OOB but I did separate the twin exhaust system pipes, got rid of excess plastic between the torsion bars and chassis and applied some "VINYL" covering to the D posts which was achieved by using normal domestic masking tape cut to size and painted - very effective in my opinion.
This build represents my best customers car in South Africa where they were fairly common as there was a Leyland Assembly plant locally. The vehicle got caught in one of the very violent hailstorms and we repaired it and actually gave it a colour change to white, prefer the orange myself, and were going to install a vinyl roof (hence an earlier post about the subject) but my brother reminded me that we removed the headliner as the velour cloth had dethatched from the base and so had full access for proper repairs.
The failing headlining material seems to be common on these vehicles as exactly the same thing happened to one I hired n Kenya whilst on honeymoon in 1983. I can categorically state that at that time there was no other 4WD to touch it for comfort and usability on and off road, perhaps the Defender was better on really rough stuff but was horrible to drive on tarmac.
Anywat enjoy the pictures and any comments or criticism welcome.
Just finished this kit after 65 hours of mostly enjoyable work but there is one aspect which severely dented my ability to make a better fist of it. The glazing is absolutely abominable, there are 6 separate parts which have at most a 1 mm edge to attach them to the body and the windscreen is about 5 mm too short !!!!! - look at the images to see what I mean. As far as I am concerned this is unforgivable regardless as to how old the mouldings are. Built basically OOB but I did separate the twin exhaust system pipes, got rid of excess plastic between the torsion bars and chassis and applied some "VINYL" covering to the D posts which was achieved by using normal domestic masking tape cut to size and painted - very effective in my opinion.
This build represents my best customers car in South Africa where they were fairly common as there was a Leyland Assembly plant locally. The vehicle got caught in one of the very violent hailstorms and we repaired it and actually gave it a colour change to white, prefer the orange myself, and were going to install a vinyl roof (hence an earlier post about the subject) but my brother reminded me that we removed the headliner as the velour cloth had dethatched from the base and so had full access for proper repairs.
The failing headlining material seems to be common on these vehicles as exactly the same thing happened to one I hired n Kenya whilst on honeymoon in 1983. I can categorically state that at that time there was no other 4WD to touch it for comfort and usability on and off road, perhaps the Defender was better on really rough stuff but was horrible to drive on tarmac.
Anywat enjoy the pictures and any comments or criticism welcome.
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