I am scratch building BESSIE, the road paving machine that was attached to Lighting McQueen in "CARS". My thread is found at:
I am building this model to see if everything can work like it does in the movie, i.e. lights, furnace, and all the moving gear/pulley components.
Here is my progress on the lighting. If you are interested in background information, please visit the thread. This is my second build of BESSIE. The first one was made simply to learn how to build it. It was not powered or lighted.
ABOVE and BELOW: Two angles showing the fittings for the rear lighting. The light fixture itself is all plastic, but the piping is metal. I spent the better part of an hour carefully sawing the pipes as not to create closure, thus blocking the hair wiring.
BELOW: Once the pipes were cut to size (anticipating even further cutting), it was time to set the first pipe permanently. Standard TESTORS modeling cement is sufficient for small places, so pipes were placed on both starboard and port sides as shown.
BELOW: Spray painting the lighting fixture a standard grey was next. As shown in this photo, the fixture seats very well. I abandoned the metal anchor idea and simply drilled bigger holes in the assembly. It seats very tightly and nicely. A hole is drilled on the side (at an angle) to allow for the hair wire to flow through.
BELOW: Threading the wire. For this type of insulated hair wire, it is only needful to sand the edges until you have a clear view of the metal under the insulation. If it is not gone, you will not have a connection.
BELOW: Pulling/Threading the wire through all of the piping. Do this before any gluing of the piping, or else pulling wires back through will be impossible.
BELOW: And a test with the 9v battery. Never, ever forget the resistor, or all of this progress will be laid to waste. The wire is soldered before removal of the LED prongs. If you remove the prongs first and then try to solder, your chance of a successful connection is almost negated. The wires are then pulled through the piping until the LED head goes into the fixture. More
detailing to come, but at least the function is working....
BELOW: A view of the port side installation. Always checking against screen captures, it looked like the port side actually had a cable instead of piping. So, taking a common gauge wire, I took out the original wiring and inserted the hair wire.
BELOW: Installation for both sides.