A Study in Patience

[Lefturns75]

Any of you that have been inside a Heller kit can follow me here and for those of you that have not, this can be your heads up.  I know now why they have that brand name--------that's what they are.  I chose to build a kit AMT re-boxed around 69-70 using the Heller kits and the AMT name.  Many years ago I attempted one of these and failed---horribly.  True, I did not remember much of the details of the kit but figured my skills should have improved by this time and I tried again.  This little kit tried every grain of patience I had in my body and nearly drove me to a slobbering, babbling idiot.  Or should I say, made me worse.  These kits have been released through the years as individual kits from Heller and Union.  This is the AMT release I built.


These are 1/25 scale but they are tiny as the real cars are quite small.  The Brabham uses a tube chassis and it is multi-piece.  There is really no location points for the rear suspension pieces and you just kind of have to wing it.  Like some other Heller kits, the shocks are three piece with one of those being a piece of wire you wrap around a piece of sprue to make a spring.  They are fiddley and make you say all kinds of words but they do look nice if you ever get them completed. 



Now I don't have hands like a Gorilla, just normal size hands but you can see in the photo how small this thing is.



If you get past all the tough parts, this kit does look pretty good when completed.  As if I didn't learn my lesson on the Brabham, I went ahead and punished myself and built the Matra that came in the double kit.  Even though it uses a Monocoque style chassis, the fragile suspension parts drive you insane.  Like the other, no location points and just a guess as to where to go with it.  Same three piece shocks. 


When you do finally live through this project, you will have two pretty cute racers.  I am not sure my patience will ever be the same and I don't think I will ever try one of these again.  There is some good detail provided and in other places it is totally left out.  I guess that is the way the French do things after a couple bottles of wine at lunch.  I am sure they don't go on coffee breaks as I understand they don't drink anything they don't stomp on first.

[Lefturns75]

I reckon I could deal with hands like that IF my hair was still that color!

[vsrn]

The safety equipment on those 1:1 cars was a pit guy holding a sign for the driver to read that said
"Don't Hit Anything"   

vsrn

[TonyK]

Your patience paid off with 2 very nice models.

I have a Heller Lotus 49B that has been "in the works" for years because of many things including the suspension pieces. Sometimes too much detail is a bad thing. And there's a missing spring and a couple of broken pieces to add to the problem.