Gecko 1/35 Bedford MWC

[Guest]

I made a start on this today, but I'm already feeling out of my depth! Lots of very tiny parts that are taxing my below-par fine motor skills and shaky hands, but I'll persevere and see how far we get :smiling3:

The Bedford truck was used in all sorts of configurations, and here we have the MWC water bowser. The box from Gecko comes packed with plenty of small sprues, assumedly so they can easily produce other version by swapping the smaller ones around.

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Again, plenty of decal options, a small clear sprue, and a decent amount of PE. I think if I do many more Gecko kits I'll need a bigger spares box!

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First up was the chassis. Plenty to go at here with some of the spring clamps & shackles being individual parts, as were most of the mounting brackets, dampers, rods & levers. It's not as good as it could be, but cleaning up many of the parts was simply beyond me.

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And I also made a start on the engine. A similar story with more parts than are really necessary, but it should look nice when finished, even though it'll be hidden from view when the model is complete.

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[Steve Jones]

Seat front and centre for this one Andy. Always good to push your boundaries. Any problems with the engine you can always close the bonnet :thumb2: . Off to a great start my friend

[Tim Marlow]

Looks like a large number of small parts on the sprues Andy. Sure you’ll wrestle them into submission though.

[Guest]

Cheers chaps, glad to have you both on board.

Maybe I should cut down on the caffeine while I build this one

[JR]

I'm in Andy, shouldn't worry about cleaning too much a lot of the parts that won't be seen anyway !
Has every confidence you will crack it .

[outrunner]

Count me in Andy, as John says no need to spend too much time cleaning up chassis parts that will never be seen.

Andy.

[Guest]

Thanks John and Andy. Great to have you along.

I'm a bit paranoid about clean up. I've left parts in the past that I thought would be hidden, only to have them smack me in the face on the finished product :smiling5:

Some will have to stay though as the parts are just too small to hold and clean. I guess it's about time I did a really muddy one...

[Tim Marlow]

Hi Andy. In some cases you may be able to cut a slice of sprue off with the part still attached. That will give you something to hold while you do most of the clean up. It’s how I do the heads and equipment on my 28mm figures....

[Nicko]

Thanks for taking us along on another of your builds Andy. Looks quite a difficult one. Can I ask what size wire you used for the HT leads?

Tim - That's a great tip - thanks.



Nick

[Guest]

Cheers Tim, that is something I've done, but it's usually the attachment point itself that proves most troublesome for me. That, or having anything small enough to get into the tiny gaps. A quick swipe with a blade on the mould line is having to suffice in many places.

Welcome Nick. Yes, trickier than I'd like by the look of it so far, but I'll try my best.

The wire is 0.2mm lead. I got it from John here, but he seems to be out of stock.

[Tim Marlow]

Hi Andy. There is also the option of sticking the small bit to the bigger bit first of course....then what you can’t see doesn’t need cleaning....you can protect surrounding detail with scraps of masking tape.

[Jim R]

Hi Andy
No doubt you'll make a fine job of this. Looks a very nice kit. I think Steve is right in that is is good to try something new and to challenge yourself.
Jim

[Graeme C.]

I'm in Andy, it does look like a lot of sprues, but you're doing fine with it.

[Guest]

Indeed Tim, a handy technique.

Thanks Jim. I'm giving it a good crack, but with more & more issues popping up I'm glad to be back at work tomorrow to give me a break from it before my head explodes :smiling5:

Thanks Graeme. Yes, I've had to take up a fair bit of bench space to lay them all out.

I mentioned earlier about sprue attachment points, and Gecko seem to add as many as they can. Here's a pretty good example with 10 on the exhaust. It also has a pretty bad seam line on it, but thankfully that's not typical of the rest of the moulds. It's also mislabelled in the instructions, but with so many sprues I'll forgive them that as it was easy to find.

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I did some more work on the engine. Since I'd added the HT wires it was glaringly obvious that the kit had no coil, so I added one using thin rod and a strap from spare PE. You can't see it but the dynamo has an etch bracket on the bottom of it. Madness really as it's almost hidden once fitted to the engine, even more so once in the engine bay.

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The air cleaner with another bit of etch. The instructions would have you fit this to the top of the carb now, but there's absolutely no way of knowing how to line it up. Thankfully I have some very good pictures of a test build and it shows it fitted to bracket on the bulkhead, which comes very much later in the build. I'll leave it off until that point so at least I know it'll be going in the right place.

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And the engine fitted to the chassis. Again there are no alignment marks for the gearbox so I fitted it where it looked best. I just hope that it doesn't bite me later on when the floor doesn't fit or the gear lever is in the wrong place.

There's a similar issue with the steering box too. A vague idea of where to put it, but no alignment marks and only a guess from the picture of what angle the column should come up at. Again, I'll leave that off until I have the bulkhead to line it up with, as long as I have room to get it in!

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So a few hiccups along the way so far, and definitely not the kind of easy, stress-free build my mental state needs right now, but since I've got nothing else to build I'll keep chipping away at it and hopefully it will all turn out well in the end. :smiling3:

[Tim Marlow]

Might not be easy or stress free, but it is looking fantastic Andy. This build will let you grow your skills and you’ll look back on it as an important way point on your modelling journey.