Heller 1:43 Renault 4CV
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Introduction
The Renault 4CV is a small French car built between 1946 and 1961. Intended
by its creators to be a “people’s car”, it was inspired
by the original Volkswagen Beetle and was the first French car to sell
over 1 million units. Conceived during German occupation, the design team
envisioned something suitable for the economically difficult years expected
to follow the war. The 4CV was first shown to the public at the 1946 Paris
Motor Show and by 1949 was the most popular car in France. It was powered
by a rear mounted, water-cooled 760cc inline 4 cylinder engine. The completion
of this same kit by my late friend Ted Holowchuk, a true master modeler
as well as teacher, was an inspiration for me on this project. Prior to
his passing, Ted and I had talked on and off about both building the same
‘simple’ car kit and the example he built was a ‘donation’
from me.
The Kit
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This kit is from Heller’s fairly broad range of 1:43 scale European
cars originally introduced during the later 1970s. Some, including the
4CV, are still irregularly available today and it is one of the better
offerings from the range. At one time these kits were quite common and
extremely cheap, but now some of the harder to find issues like the Alfa
Romeo Alfasud, Peugeot 604, and Citroën DS can be difficult to find
and costly to purchase. All 25 parts were molded in a grayish tan plastic
that was easy to work with. Except for reworking some parts and adding
a number of small details, I built the kit more or less out of the box.
The moldings are crisp and accurate with good detail throughout. The head
and taillights are a prime example as though very small, they have accurate
scale fidelity + are molded in clear plastic versus being chrome plated
like I’ve seen on other small car kits. Everything fitted pretty
well and the way the parts where originally designed allows detailing
to be easily done. In spite of this, there are two areas that need improvement;
the wheels and the windshield.
The chassis is simplified but reflects the actual car well and the interior
floor is molded integral with the chassis. Other parts included in the
box are a pair of separate front bucket seats, a rear bench seat and package
shelf, a combination dash/fire wall, a steering wheel and column, four
individual clear windows, a floor shifter, chrome plated bumpers, hubcaps
and headlight ‘buckets’. My kit also had a small decal with
a pair of unusable “Renault” license plates. The inside of
the body shell and dash have basic detail, which I enhanced a bit during
assembly. The kit wheels are very simple, made up of two halves with molded-on
tires and the aforementioned separate small hubcaps. The issue that I
had with the wheels is because the differentiation between the rim and
tire are very subtle and must be scribed or otherwise enhanced to look
right. The instructions on my late 1970’s issue used a single exploded
view drawing. There isn’t a lot of published material on the car,
at least in English, and the box art was quite accurate, so I used it
as a detailing reference. The Internet also came in handy for amassing
a small photographic reference file.
Basic Chassis Construction
I decided to start on the smaller sub-assemblies first, beginning with
the wheels. After priming and painting two of them, as mentioned I was
not happy with the uneven demarcation between the wheel and tire since
the detail was a bit too lightly molded. After discussing how to solve
this with Ted, we decided that reworking and creating a new master wheel
to cast in resin would be the only way to get the desired result. I took
one wheel and sanded the ‘tire’ off and also removed the ‘rim’
portion from a second. After a lot of careful sanding, dry fitting, followed
by more sanding, I was eventually able to get both to mate up with a realistic
looking bead edge. Ted then went ahead and cast up several sets of the
new wheel/tire combo. That was one of the great things about Ted: he was
always there to discuss and figure out the best way to solve these kind
of technical problems when they cropped up.
The new wheels were cleaned up, primered, painted grey, sprayed with
Duracryl, washed with artists’ oils and then put aside to dry. Next
the headlight buckets were cut off and cleaned up. Doing this caused some
of the chrome to come off so I decided it would be easier to use bare
metal foil on all of the exterior trim, as it was the simplest way to
get everything looking consistent. Since I started going in that direction,
at that point I decided to rework the bumpers as well and removed their
mold-in overriders since I felt they made the car not look as ‘clean’
as I wanted it to. I also stripped the chrome off of the hubcaps.
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Next thing up was the chassis. I cleaned it, sprayed a light coat of
primer and then bent and fitted an exhaust tail pipe made from a section
of hypodermic tubing. In doing research on the car the tailpipe was quite
visible in photos yet not included in the kit. I painted it with a grime
color I use on car chassis’ and put on several coats of a thinned
down ‘rust’ to give it a more realistic ‘used’
appearance and then put it aside.
Next I went over the body shell, doing some light clean up with sandpaper
and a Scotchbrite pad. Several areas also had mold seams and other irregularities
to remove. Since the bumpers were mounted using only butt joints, I drilled
small holes in the body to insert metal pins to the bumper brackets to
mount them with added strength and much more ease of installation/removal.
I cleaned up the other small parts including the seats, shifter, headlight
and taillight lenses as well the tiny hubcaps so everything was ready
for paint.
As mentioned, the windshield wipers were molded into the glass and did
not look convincing. I was ‘lucky’ in a way as the kit windshield
had a crack that could not be fixed so I opted to just replace it for
a more realistic appearance. I used a spare piece of HO scale window ‘glass’
from a Faller building kit for this. The shape and how the windshield
is mounted in a groove to the body required tracing the old part and making
a template so it could be sanded to fit. Again, a lot of trial and error
was needed until dropped in right in all areas. Once done, I removed the
blue tape, cleaned and polished the ‘glass’ and put it aside.
I went back to the chassis, painting the bottom a weathered black, followed
by some clear to seal, an oil wash followed by another sealing. Once that
was completed, next was some light dry brushing and spraying of certain
areas with an acrylic ‘grime’ that I’d mixed up to simulate
road dirt, etc. The end result was to get a more of a typically ‘used’
looking chassis that one might see on a regularly driven car.
Painting and Detailing the Body
After some additional light clean up, I laid down some grey primer as
a base for the color coat. From what I’ve seen and been able to
determine, in the years following the war through the late 1960s, most
European cars were painted in subdued colors and I wanted this Renault
to be typical of that. While many of the actual 4CV’s I’d
seen photos of were painted lighter shades, I narrowed my own choices
down to a medium blue or green. After doing some checking on what pre-mixed
gloss colors where available and finding nothing that seem ‘right’
to use, I decided on going with Model Master Medium Green, a military
flat color. After allowing a couple of days to dry, I sanded the body
lightly to remove some roughness, first with 280, then 320 paper and finally
with an old, worn Scotchbrite pad. After I felt it was ok, I cleaned it
and later put a couple of additional light color coats on and set it aside
to dry. After a day or so, I Scotchbrighted it again until the whole body
was uniformly smooth and free of any orange peel.
I cleaned the body again and applied six coats of Duracryl clear. Duracryl
can be temperamental and I’ve ruined several nice paint jobs using
it in the past. For whatever reason, this time the planets were aligned
or something and everything went very well because the final coat came
out smooth and looked really good as it was. At this point several non-model
related things occurred, the end result being that the 4Cv sat undisturbed
in a box for around 6 months.
Generally speaking, the longer clear lacquer cures, the harder it will
get and the better the end result will be when polished as this kind of
automotive paint dries from the outside in. Since my 4CV had had a long
and undisturbed time to sit, its surface was hard and ‘ready’.
I went over it with a Millennium 2000 polishing kit from front to back.
Polishing can be a painstaking process that often takes a few days of
tedious work, so it’s best to separate it into a couple of hours
at a time. When nearly finished, a small problem struck. Having not quite
put enough clear on the driver’s side front fender, I had a slight
color rub through near the wheel opening. Luckily, it was small and not
really noticeable, and after some fiddling I was eventually satisfied
with the overall result.
Construction and Painting of the Interior
I brush painted the inside of the body with a Gunze flat medium brown
military color and used a slightly darkened shade of that same color in
my airbrush for the package shelf and interior door panels. Inside door
panels were not in the kit and I made some by cutting out clear decal
paper patterns that were then airbrushed as well. They also got a light
sealing coat of clear before being put on the inside of the shell, sealed
to it with thinned down white glue.
Body trim foiling
Once the polishing was done the final tedious step began, foiling the
trim. My normal method for applying foil trim is with a series of ‘custom
made’ toothpicks that I’ve specially modified for applying
it and doing similar fine detail work. This time application took me about
a week’s worth of time spaced out over several days to complete.
The hardest part was the delicate horizontal grille bars. I re-did several
of them a number of times until satisfied in how they were spaced and
aligned. To keep things consistent, like I mentioned, I stripped the chrome
plating off so all the foiled maintained the same sheen.
Final Assembly
As things started to slowly wind down, I attached the completed small
interior parts (steering wheel, etc.) and glass to the chassis with clear
trim glue and then mated the chassis and body together. The fit between
them was so good that I did not have to glue the body down. Then I used
clear trim glue to attach the front and rear bumpers to the body after
which I attached and adjusted the exhaust pipe to line up right. The clear
tail lamps were previously painted with Tamiya clear red and allowed to
dry. They were then installed along with the delicate front headlight
lenses. Before installed the front lights, I made a pair of clear yellow
bulb covers, something required in France through the 1980s and visible
on older French registered cars. This little addition made a big different
is the outward appearance of the front of the car to my eye. I then installed
a pair of old style French license plates and a small, period Renault
emblem to the center of the front grille.
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The final thing to do before completion was to make and attach a pair
of front mud flaps to chassis behind the front wheels. These were clearly
visible in the box art and on several photographs I’d come across.
They were carefully cut out of a piece of wine bottle foil, flattened,
painted grimy black, then washed and weathered and attached with metal
pins to several small holes drilled in the chassis. Once that was done,
I put on a final slight dusting of ‘grime’ to the bottom of
the car and called it complete.
(It is worth mentioning here that Andrew’s model not only won
its Automotive category, but also the Ted Holowchuk Award for Best Finish
at the IPMS/Seattle model contest several years ago,)
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