Italeri's "Classic Bikes". MV Augusta 500cc Tripple. 1967
The box art says it all.
The wheels were not too bad, but the spokes looked like iron bars, a bit on the thick side. :-/
The engine head and cylinders took a long time to clean up and match parts.
I had to use these PE bolt and nut heads where that kit had failed to have them.
These are all the parts from before that I had to clean off all the flash and excess from wher the dies failed to fit 'flush'.
You can see here the massive missalignment results, and I had to get all this removed before it looked half decent.
This is the other side of the cylinder head
Every part had some degree of flash and misalignment issues, but I percevered. 🙂
With some careful cutting and scraping, I managed to get the cylinder fins looking ok.
You actually get a crank shaft with this kit. !!!
It would be ok if you had the whole bike in pieces in a workshop diorama, but it was really "Chunky" and hard to clean up. :-/
The pistons looked nothing like pistons, but I went with what I had.
But at least the fitted.
The iron bar twins, and the tyres are a true reptesentation of the Dunlop semi triangular racing rubber, the K-87's
The "Profile" of the tyres triangle looks obvious here, designed this way so that the further the bike leans into the corner, more rubber would meet the road. :-/
The front and back
The DOHC head. poor alignment issuse here too.
The lower crank case is next and the cylinders took a bit of work to have them 'sit right'.
The oil pan/reserve, clutch and all the lower end of the engine goes together now.
The rocker covers are on the head and all parts here will now look something similar to an engine.
Now comes the frame, red plastic and a ton of cleaning of the seam lines to tackle here. A LOT of plastic will come off here. :-/
Just keep an eye on the excess red plastic gather on the paper.
Everywhere you look, seam lines and flow gate luggs. Grrrrrrr
And again, more of it !!!
A dry fit to see how well it sits.
A lot of work but a fair result. 🙂
The black grips are actually rubber The brake lever and throttle grip and clutch lever are next and it went together really well. The red covering on the levers is actually 'shrink tube', and is seen on the full scale bike.
The oil pan that fits right on the bottom of the motor.
There is quite a bit of chrome on the motor and it really does look half decent once it is all in place.
The cam end covers and the distributor cover.
This is where the carbeuretors will go.
Seam lines, and more seam lines GOD, it was so hard to not lose the profile of the pipes from scraping away so much excess plastic. :-/
Flow gate lugs in the worst positions.
Almost a 'flat spot' from so much scraping. !!!!
As you can see by the scrapings, a lot of plastic had to go for a good result.
The pipes were all one piece, no two halves to glue together.
The battery, and the ignition coils
Now for the slow and tricky process of marrying all this together, so I hired an octopus to help me out. 🙂
Look closely and you will see the 'flash' on all the lugs on the guard brace.
"flash' was all over this piece and extreme care was exercised in it's removal.
So hard to keep it all neat and tidy with great lumps like this on a most obvious point.
This depression nearly caused me to suffer the same fate.
Both halves of the fairing had one
I literally 'poured' mr surfacer on to this area to bring the surfaces to a level state, many many times.
The tooling really was crappy, and so much work had to be done to compensate for all the excess.
Now, that looks a 1000% on what I started out with. :-/
And this one.
The tank was one part that needed very little work.
filled (or so i thought) and sanded, ready for painting after the base coat was applied. Ha !
The carbies are all ready and were no problem with the fit.
The two halved were bought together, only to find that NOTHING matched, so this is where I like superglue as a filler.
It looks rough, but no rougher than what I started with !!!
I polished the plastic first with Tamiya polishing 'fine' compound and the shine was just great.
mure superglue to build up the seam ready for sanding. :-0
Getting better. 🙂
Now, there it is, all smooth and no sign of the seam. 🙂
Painted "Italian Red" from a can, first decanted and then from an airbrush after I let the paint de-gas by leaving it sit overnight in a small bottle with the lid left lose.
I had allready removed all the seam lines on the frame before I got to the painting stage.
The paint went on so easily and just glossed up naturally with constant and thin coats of paint in a very short time span.
The seam is no where to be seen. 🙂
The fram is now painted and looks as good as I expected.
Horibly out of focus, (sorry) but the lower half was masked off and painted with Testors aluminium buffing metalizer.
and that's when I had my depression attack Garrrrrrrrrr. 🙁
The "Hole" i thought I had filled had not gone where I thought I sent it !
So, it was back to Mr Surfacer for some more fun....NOT 🙂
I just kept loading it up to make sure I had enough to have the depression gone.
I had to strip down all my hard work in the paint dept and start again.
I concider this a success, it's finally gone' 🙂
The repaint went well again
No sign of the dp at all and I am so pleased about that. 🙂
All ready for the fitting to the frame.
To think that tis was a mess not that long ago, but it took a lot of clean up.
The final assembly is under way, with the forks and engine in place.
A nice touch that Italeri added were the rubber "Boots" on the front forks.
The shoks, rear wheel, battery and brake pedal are now on/in.
The tank looks really nice, well, I think so. 🙂
The war paint. LOL 🙂
I useed pin heads for the bolts in the frame .
The End. 🙂
The decals were so brittle, I am lucky to have got this much of them to 'lay down, as prior to this, there were wrinkles all over the yellow disk.
Comentarii
22 July 2015, 05:08
Martijn KuijpersA great bike from the (maybe) even greater Ago, I didn't knew that this kit it self is from 1967 too!! 🙂
It looks like your doing a great job, hopefully the result will be as beautiful as the bike was at that time!!
22 July 2015, 06:35
Kerry COXI actually stood beside this bike in Melbourne in 1972 when Giacomo Agostini bought one to Australia on a demonstration/ exhibition of his bikes, and he also bought a Honda Rc-166 six cylinder 250 with him as well, and the sound was pure heaven. LOL 🙂
22 July 2015, 06:49
Steve Wilson...
MV Augusta... One of my favourite Bikes!!!
As a child my friends and I would slip away on our Bikes, (the push pedal type) early morning and sneak into the circuit to watch a race.
A hero of mine at the time rode for MV Augusta, he was Tarquino Provini... Better known as Model maker PROTAR. His MV Augusta kits are still sought after. I still have his autograph!!!
22 July 2015, 07:19
Kerry COXI have had a similar history, as my uncle, Kieth COX rode for Australia in the 60's on his JAP on all the flat track 1/4 mile circuits both here and in GB, and we would give the ticket box the slip and watch the night races at the RNA show grounds in Brisbane as a kid. Great fun. LOL
22 July 2015, 07:40
Christian MeyerhoffHi Kerry! Looks great! You did an excellent job on this golden oldie. The only thing you should repair is the yellow decal on the front of the cowling.
22 July 2015, 09:01
Kerry COXThe yellow decal was at least 35 years old and I was lucky to get it to be like it is now, and I have asked Italeri for a replacement but it is no longer in production.
Any suggestions. ? Please 👍 👍
22 July 2015, 09:41
Album info
This kit was produced by Italeri in 1967. The dies were cut and engraved in the traditional way by craftsman tool makers, before the "new wave" type of die production we know today came into being in the early 80's.
As a result, the kit suffered from huge amounts of 'flash' and dies that did not match together perfectly, creating massive seam lines that took a lot of work to clean up to an acceptable degree.
I have done my best to overcome these problems and finish with a half decent build.