If you want to ask me any questions, you can reach me at [email protected].
Time marches slowly while working on the body. The nice thing about the body being cast in black is that black, being the least forgiving of all colors when it comes to imperfections, will actually enhance any irregularities in the panels and makes it easier to determine where to focus your efforts. There were a number of flaws on the coachwork that I wanted to try to eliminate; some big problems but mostly small dimples, waves, odd depressions, mold marks and other imperfections that would make the end result look less than nice. For most of the small irregularities, I sprayed a coat of primer, waited for it to dry, wet-sanded it away until I started seeing some of the black plastic on the areas that were not indented, then sprayed another coat of primer and repeated. I continued this process until the irregularities were filled in with primer. What took the longest about this process was that I want to make sure that the paint was completely dry before I start to sand away at it (usually overnight). This means that I spend about an hour carefully sanding away unnecessary primer just to hit it with another coat. It then sits and dries till the next evening. I figured I would start with the area that would be painted blue first incase I ran into problems. Blue is more forgiving than black and errors can be more easily repaired than with black. Fortunately, thanks to Craig, I had some extra body panels to practice my painting skills and techniques on before I tried them on the panels that came with the kit. Turned out that those panels came out just fine (except for the shade of blue I used). After about five or six coats of primer, I have some panels ready for the color coat.
The problem I ran into with the color coat was the surface didn't come out glossy smooth (probably a result of my technique). So, I sprayed several coats and wet sanded the areas until they were smooth. The biggest problem I had was around the edges of the body panels. Due to the nature of the edges being more exposed and having less paint on them, I was constantly plagued with too much paint being removed from the edges. I ended up having to re-spray around the edges and sanding back down again (more time than I want to admit).
Anyway, being that this process is taking MUCH longer than I thought, I figured I would scan the instruction book.
It has come to my attention from Manieri Gregorio that the chassis recreated in the Pocher model is incorrect for the actual car. I had already figured as much by going over the owner's manual. But, Mr. Gregorio actually went so far as to track down the current owner of the actual car, a Mr. Elliot in Austria, to arrange a photo session. Mr. Elliot has not returned Mr. Gregorio's letters. Mr. Gregorio also contacted Rivarossi - Pocher in Italy to discuss this with them and they disclosed to him that they in fact had never seen the actual car and therefore didn't use it as the actual prototype to model. For those of you that want the details, the correct chassis for this car is chassis Number 80MY. If you want, you could contact Rolls Royce ltd. and order a copy of the original documentation about this chassis.