Pelican Parts Forums - Engine Porn

I'm not sure where to put this, but it IS an engine, so here goes:

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268054.jpg

Vicki bought me this functioning model VW motor from right here on Pelican to keep me busy while I recovered from back surgery.

Things got off to a rough start. I took the lid off the box to check it out and left the bottom, with all the parts in it, on the dining room table for a few minutes. The parts inside the box were all in plastic bags, at least a dozen of them. It looked like trash to Vicki so she threw it away. She was able to retrieve it, but that was a tense hour or so going through the trash.
For the first two months I didn’t feel like doing anything at all , but I did enjoy putting it together once I got started on it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268054.jpg

Many of the internal parts were molded in blue plastic. An odd color choice if you ask me. Nothing in a VW engine is blue. It took a fair amount of time just to break all the parts off the sprues and file off the sprue tits.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268330.jpg

I could have snapped and screwed it together in a day if I'd just followed the instructions, but I took some time to make it look a little more authentic. I bought satin black, flat steel, and dull aluminum model paint to detail the motor and added a couple of other touches shown below. I ended up working on it for a month.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268330.jpg

I don’t know why I took this picture before painting the rods, but they and all other internal “steel” parts got painted flat steel. Aluminum parts were painted aluminum.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268330.jpg

The parts either snapped together or were held together with screws. This left gaps in places and it looked cheap and toy-like. In order to eliminate the gaps I broke the snaps off the parts that snapped together and put a line of model cement around the joint. Model cement melts the plastic and makes it soft. I clamped the parts together hard enough to extrude the soft plastic into the gap. This left a line of plastic standing out like in the picture above that I could then sand off and make a smooth joint.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268438.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268438.jpg

A couple of little touches I added to make the motor look better was to fill the back of the flywheel with spackling compound. It looks like there was supposed to be something that snaps in to cover this mess up, but there was nothing in the instructions about it. After filling and painting it turned out that it was barely visible once the engine was assembled.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708268438.jpg

I also made wire bails to “hold the rocker covers on” even though they were held on by screws. I also drilled holes in the engine block where the transmission would bolt on. Silly, I know, but I had lots of time on my hands.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1708269261.jpg

The box says the scale is 1:4 but it looks a little less than that to me.

This being the 21st Century and all, it didn't happen unless there is a video of it, so here's your video.

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