Finished! Pinball Themed VW Type2 Delivery Van (1967)

Cheers,

Hallöchen Jürgen!

Here's my take on the T1, also from Hasegawa - tackled it some four years ago:

https://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/4/t/172395.aspx

If I was to build a T1 again, I'd go for the one from Revell - much more detailed.

Funny thing - I used to work for VW supplier for 11 years and then for VW in Poznań before the p***ed me off and I quit the automotive sector. I've also been to Wolfsburg for a long time - if I added up all my business trips then I probably spent about five years in Wolfsburg and I kinda like the town and the villages around it - used to live in Hattorf for almost three years.

I like your modifications a lot - one can see at once you know the machine you're modelling. Good luck with your build and have a nice day

Paweł

Cool.  Looks like this will be a fun build to watch.  There's been a few VW bus builds lately.  

That van looks great and I'm sure that your daughter loved it!  I can't wait to see more of your posts because I love the VW stuff, especially the buses/vans.

TJS

Unlike the Type 1 Beetle, where the body is bolted to a center tunnel platform frame, Type 2s are unibody. The underside is reinforced with sturdy longitudinal and lateral box sections.

My plan was to expand on the curbside nature of the kit and show underside detail in a display case with a mirrored bottom. The box sections on the kit platform were wimpy, so I added some 2.5mm square styrene, as well as the four jacking posts. The beefed up torsion tubes and heater pipes are also visible in this mockup:

I fabbed a horn with a bracket and detail finished the splash pan.

The instrument panel did not include the parcel shelf underneath, so I added it as well as the two missing switches to the right of the steering column:

More to come.

Cheers,

Juergen

Bumpers and mirrors airbrushed with Tamiya gloss acrylic:

Easy scratchbuild of utilitarian door panels and pulls. I drilled 0.035 holes and filled them with silver paint for the screw "heads".

More to come.

For colour, my daughter chose Volkswagen L345 Light Grey after seeing various photos of 1:1 online.

In between resolving small parts assembly, the next challenge was finding a paint supplier. Unfortunately, the outfits that specialize in ready-to-apply OEM colours for model cars, like Gravity and Zeropaints are all based overseas and cost a small fortune to ship here.

I went out on a limb (risk?) and ordered automotive laquer touch-up paint from PaintScratch. For touch up areas where a body shop would use an airbrush or spray gum they offer various sizes of primer, base coat, laquer thinner clear coat. They recommended one-to-one thinning and a 1.0mm needle for airbrush (wow... heavy pigment even when thinned):

The instrument panel served as a good test for the paint process. I used Grey Tamiya Fine Surface Primer, two light base coats follwed by one light clear coat. The 1:1 mix and 1.0mm needle worked perfect. I added a scratchbuilt "chicken handle" and rendered the grill openings in a word document, downscaled it and printed on clear decal paper. the ashtray lid is Bare Metal Foil:  

Here's a mock-up of the primed, painted and slightly weathered undercarriage:

More to come... rocky roads lie ahead!

As with the Tamiya Beetle, I found the front wheel gap to be excessive when I did the body/frame mockups (I should have got before and after shots). I whittled away a bit of the frame section to allow the beam to sit a bit higher. I matched the gap with several pictures of 1:1 vehicles. (The multi-colour livery car pictured in the background is the Michelin Enduroseies Sport Class winning Jetta GLX race car on which I was crew chief.) 

As this would be her work truck for Logan Arcade in Chicago, I was desperate to get thier logo. I lucked out with getting clean high res .png / vector graphics of all the various logos to create my own decals. Size and location mockup (she chose the final locations). Decal test on a paint/clearcoat test spoon:

The paint/clearcoat test spoons predicted that rocky roads would lie ahead. As usual the Tamiya Fine Surface Primer went on flawlessy, but both the Paint Scratch aoutomotive laquer base and clear coats were frustratingly inconsistent with orange peel on some and okay on others. I determinhed that ambient temperature was critical here, and I was stuck between a rock and hard place becasue my spray booth with exhaust ducting is set up in my garage. My garage heater could barely get the temp up to the needed 68 - 70 degrees during early December of 2020.

With this being an unavoidable situation, I knew that lots of post-painting "elbow grease" would be needed... you know, the kind that Canadian Tire sells... in the red tube, not the blue tube

Here are the interim results of three coats primer + four coats Base (applied light to heavy & final wet sanded with 3200) + three coats Clear (applied light to heavy & wet sanded with 3200. After a few days I applied the decals and prayed that a final coat of Clear on it all would be workable:

More to come.

The final coat of Clear to seal the decals settled with only minimal orange peel, mostly on the roof. I could have used more time and elbow grease for both the final wet sanding and polishing stages, but... as most of you know, there's a fine line between not enough and ruining the finish with too much.

I used the Elmers Glue trick to mask the unpainted sections of the Volkswagen emblem before applying Tamiya gloss white acrylic:

Coming along nicely:

More to come.

Coming along nicely.  That dash looks fantastic.

keavdog

Coming along nicely.  That dash looks fantastic.

Thanks, John.

Getting the size, spacing and proper downscaling of the IP grille in the Word document for the decal took me two days of testing. My only worry right now (after a year or so) is that it might lift because I never sealed it with a thin coat of clear.

The van needed to survive UPS shipment from Michigan to South Carolina, so I focused on mounting it securely to the display case base.

In order to determine the height of the mounting pillars, I set the model on top of a dumdum platform and squeezed it down so that the wheels just barely touched the base. I used the compressed measurements to size the styrene tubes:

Last on the list of detail enhancements was to add the four rubber door stop bumpers for the side doors and make the personalized Illinois license plates:

Almost done.

Finally finished!

It survived the UPS trip without incident, and was a hit with both the staff at Marco and with my daughter's friends at Logan Arcade.

Here are pictures before I packed it up:

Thanks to everyone who followed along on this build!

Cheers,

Juergen

So, my daughter called today and said she's got a job offer back in Chicago where her pinball tech career all started.

If it works out, she'll have to move lock-stock-and kitty cat from S.C.... and her Pinball Van and the 1/24 Taxi scratchbuilt pinball machine I made for her might be "going home"!

It turned out beautiful!  Love the color and the graphics.  Your daughter must've loved it!  So glad that she might be moving back home closer to you!

TJS

Great job. I like it.

Beautifully done, Juergen!