Hobbyboss BA-20 Armored Car Model 1939

Progress so far: The engine block build and chassis build are done up to the point of priming and painting. 

Top view of the chassis. As you can see, there are lots of long thin bits of plastic for me to break. 

Bottom view of the chassis. Those long linkages that run along the outside of the frame are one piece each side. Getting them off the sprue intact was like defusing a bomb! 

The engine block. As most of the weight is on one side, it took a while to get it to stand up for a photo. 

As usual for Hobbyboss, there is little in the way of information for painting. However, there's not much info on the web for the BA-20 either. I did manage to find a couple of videos on Youtube where someone poked his selfie stick inside the vehicle. I think that's the best I'm going to get. 

I decided to have a test fit of the top & bottom of the bodywork. Either I've got a tab I don't need or I'm missing a slot that I do need! The top doesn't fit low enough as can be seen. 

I think that tab has to go. As ever, there is no view of this part of the kit in the instructions. 

Yes, that's better. The tab is the remains of the casting gate and needs to be removed. 

The interior bulkhead had a few ejector pin marks to be filled. Unusual for this kit. 

I've done a quick test fit of the engine on the chassis. It isn't sitting back far enough at the moment as I've got a bit of tape masking the attachment point. 

Close up of the engine. I still have to shade and weather it. 

Front end. Needless to say, as I painted the engine, I managed to knock a couple of bits off. 

The basic engine colour is Humbrol Metalcote Polished Steel. I don't think they make it any more. 

The exhaust manifold was done with Vallejo Acrylic Butnt Iron followed by a coat of Humbrol Rust Wash which was then mostly removed with thinners. It's come out okay, I think. 

I put a few pieces of masking tape in the chassis where it will mate up to the floor pan. 

Floor pan, interior bulkhead and body test fit. As you can see, once the side covers are fitted on the front, the engine will be hidden. There is not an open cover option in the kit. 

A very rough chassis & floor pan test fit. The tape prevents proper seating at this stage, but I wanted to see how the engine looked in place. I have not so far been able to discover what colour the interior of the body should be in the engine compartment. White, black or 4BO green? Anyone know? 

Some might ask why I'm expending the effort on an engine that won't be visible later. Practice, that's why! It's an opportunity to try options with little drawback if it doesn't work out. 

It has occurred to me that I could just leave the body and floor pan unglued so that the body can be removed to show the engine & interior. You can see the nice property of the steel paint here. It sprays on dull & then you polish it to a shine as much as you want. This allows you to have some variation in the finish, polishing highlights & edges a bit more than the flat surfaces. 

I've removed the tape from the chassis and tested the fit of the major components: chassis, engine, floor pan & body. It all seems to go together okay. 

The inside is looking a bit spartan at the moment, but I'm sure it will improve with a bit of furniture in there. 

Here's the engine, as seen through the side cover opening. I've given it a coat of engine grime, but not too heavy. 

And this is the other side. I've found that the oil filler tube is very vulnerable to getting knocked off as it is only the flat end of the cylinder stuck to the flat spot on the engine that is the contact point. Not much area for the glue to hold on to! That, plus the fact that when you pick up the engine, you often are pressing one finger against the tube. 

The underside is not looking too bad. Now that I've done this test, I can see wehere the contact points between the chassis and the floor pan are with much more clarity. There are more than I thought! 

One thing that needs doing is to drill out the end of the exhaust pipe. It's 1.5mm diameter, so starting with a 0.7mm drill and working up will soon do the job. This will be followed bt a coat of Burnt Iron. 

The rear of the radiator has a good selection of ejector pin marks, as did the top of the radiator mount. Sanding took care of the mount, but the radiator is getting a piece of plasticard inserted as two EP marks are sunken & two are raised. There really should be a textured insert for the back of the radiator. It looks like the designers simply forgot to do a part for it. 

The instrument panel has come out better than I expected. Getting those tiny decals into the holes was fun. I basically had to float them on a layer of Microsol and let that evaporate and lower them in to place. 

Radiator back fitted and dry assembled to test fit. It all seems to go together okay. 

I still haven't worked out where the thin pipe goes to. It should connect to something, surely? 

Having added a few exterior parts and built the radiator assembly, I had another test fit. Can you see the problem here? 

It's these towing hooks. Now that they've been added, the upper body doesn't slide down into place as it should. 

The hooks should fit below the horizontal strip sticking out of the front fender, (and poke out of the semi-circular gap). The instructions tell you to fit the hooks before assembling top and bottom body sections. I'd recommend leaving them off until later. I'm not sure how easily I'm going to be able to get this to snap into place. (I don't like the word snap in this context either!). I was going to paint the body halves before assembly, but I'd take the paint off the hooks now. 

There's a decent view if the radiator if you leave the front flaps open, which I intend to do. I would also recommend leaving the towing hooks off until the radiator flaps are fitted as the flaps fit to the hinge points and a third part which fits into the brackets mounted in front of the radiator. The flaps are nowhere near as good a fit as the doors. If anything, the seem fractionally too large. This has helped my decision to have them open. 

Dry fitted side door. The side doors and engine compartment doors all fit nicely in place without any glue. However, a few microns of paint will soon ruin that! I intend to leave at least one of each door type open so that you can see the interior and engine. You can even dry fit the doors in the open position, but again the paint coat will stop that nonsense! 

These are the forward vision ports with working hinges. You will never know how much difficulty I had assembling these! The hinge ends are located on the plate by two tiny bumps on the strip and two holes on the plate, at least in theory. The bumps are much smaller than the holes, so it's a very imprecise fit. Additionally, I found it next to impossible to hold both parts at once in such a way that I could see the mating faces at the right angle to fit them. I had several attempts at a couple on them, by which time the cement had dissolved the bumps to nothing anyway. Fitting the second strip whilst holding the central part of the hinge in position was worse still. Four hands would have helped. By some miracle, the hinges actually function properly. More luck than anything else! 

A dry fit of the interior parts, except the steering wheel which doesn't want to stay in place without cement. Basic paintwork is done. The next step will be to mask off the interior and get the 4BO green on the rest of it. 

There's not actually a lot in there, so weathering will be key in making it look interesting. Having separate pedals would have improved the look a lot. 

Work in progress on the muffler. I think an overall rust wash to even out the effect should do it. I'm not very satisfied with the result so far, but if all else fails I can strip it & have another go. 

Much better! Now fixed in it's proper place. 

After a busy weekend, every single part is either painted or primed (the shovels). Here's the main parts of the body in AK Real Colours 4BO green followed by a coat of AK Glosss varnish. Just to be awkward, when I picked up the lower part, the fuel tank assembly fell off. 

I'll remove the masking tape later and leave it all overnight to dry. 

Next step will be to wash the interior with a bit of dirt and general muck. 

Then I'll get on to assembling the interior parts. I had to redo the doors as the tack i used to hold them in place got a bit tangled up with the gloss coat and had to be scraped off with a scalpel!
Thanks to this weekends storm, having the spray booth hose stuck out of a window has resulted in a soaking wet window ledge when the wind blew the window wide open when I'd gone to eat. Might be a bit of clean up needed there too. 

Initial shading is done on the green bits. 

It looks a bit odd at the moment, but it will improve as it all progresses (I hope!). 

Still a few tide marks here & there. I find it takes a few goes to lose them all. I seem to have gained a scratch on the door on the right. I'll just incorporate that into the weathering later on. Might as well make these things work for me than fight them! 

Coming along nicely. The trick is to get the dirt in the right places. Some black got under the masking tape when I did the running boards, but that's easily fixed. 

Next stop, interior chipping, then a bit of dust & dirt. I had to loosen the joint of the dashboard and bulkhead to realign them as the top edges weren't parallel. 

Success! I managed to fit the floor pan and body together properly. I just had to splay the front fenders apart slightly to slide the towing hooks past the blockage. 

It's starting to look like an armoured car now. 

A test fit of the interior to see how it looks so far. 

Dirt: Check, chipping: check. Next, some streaking marks and a little detailing of the seat covers, if possible. The drivers feet will wear the paint just in front of the pedals, but not on the bulkhead beyond. The passenger could put his feet anywhere; floor, bulkhead, dashboard. 

The chassis is now fitted to the floor pan and the radiator added too. The wheels are dry fitted. 

I've noticed that the engine is a little tilted to one side, but there's no helping that now. The next stage is to complete assembly of the exhaust system which includes two PE straps that need bending into shape. Wish me luck! 

An overall view of the underside now that all the parts are in place. Next steps here are shading, chipping and planty of dirt. A good dose of pigment will hide the ejector pin marks. Not that they'll be seen there anyway. 

I'm quite pleased with the way the exhaust has turned out. The two straps on the tail section of it are PE brass and were a bit of a trial. However, I'm not too bothered by the fact that they are not quite bent to the right shape. I've seen the undersides of enough cars to know these things don't stay the same shape for long! 

The seat bases are in place too. The lighter shading around the edges was done with a watercolour pencil. Hobbyboss really have done half a job on the interior of this kit. The pedals could have done with being separate parts. There is a machine gun in the turret, but not a single round of ammo in the kit!. I've seen a photo taken through the front viewports in which you can clearly see ammo drums on a rack in the back of the shot. 

Headlights done with Molotow Chrome Ink. Those two tiny bare plastic rectangles right at the front are where the front bumper attaches. I'll be doing that last and hopefully only once! Come on Hobby Boss, there must be a better way. 

Same for the tail light. I'll give this a second coat tomorrow as I've not quite got to the edge. The stuff is so reflective that you can't see what you're doing for the glare! You can also see where I've had to repair the rear suspension. It had broken on both sides and there was some damage to the steerng up front. No idea how it happened. 

Two shovels, which wil be all but invisible behind the running board storage boxes. 

The interior is almost finished. I've only got to fix the bulkhead in place. 

The seat backs prpbably won't be visible once it's sealed up. 

The big empty space at the rear is where the MG ammo should be it the kit had any! 

The seats don't look too bad for a first attempt. 

If I was doing it again, I would not stick the dashboard to the bulkhead, but would glue it directly into the upper body. That way, any mismatch would be between the bottom of the dash and the bulkhead, making it almost invisible. At the moment, it is possible there will be a gap between the top edge of the dash and the upper body. Too late to fix that now! 

I'm well on the way building the turret too, but there's not really much to it. 

Top and bottom parts are now stuck together. The wheels are still dry fittted. 

Just look at the mismatch between the dashboard and hull! Not sure it that can be corrected at this stage. As I expected, you can't see a whole lot of the interior... 

...or the engine. Whilst squeezing the top part to get it into place properly, it snapped back and broke off the headlight. I'd recommend not fitting them until after the hull top & bottom are assembled. I also spent a good 10 minutes under the desk with a torch trying to find the headlamp. Twice. It's been one of those sessions. 

Be careful when fitting the top or you just might break off those fragile front flap actuators. You have to slide them through the openings as the first step of positioning the top. 

You could almost believe it's a BA-20 if you squint a bit. 

Time to do a bit more shading, chipping and generally adding a bit of dirt. 

Shading & chipping done. 

Looks like it's seen a bit of use now. 

I've gone fairly light on the chipping... 

...because this is a reconnaissance vehicle which should be avoiding combat! 

One turret, not yet shaded or chipped, etc. 

The underside with the base coat of dirt added 

Every day it's inching closer to the finish line. 

Turret & wheel test fit. 

Next step is to fit the radiator cover flaps. 

After that, I'll finish the underside weathering with a bit of pigment. 

Lots of dirt, either from fording streams or wallowing in the mud! 

The radiator flaps are fitted. They're a bit fiddly as they have three points of attachement: two hinges and the end of the actuator. Use a slow setting cement on the hinges forst, then adjust the angle of the flap to meet up with the actuator. Let that set, then attach the actuator to the door. I reinforced each joint with some thin CA later on. It all seems pretty solid now. 

I did manage to adjust the dashboard to close the gap. I'll try and feed a drop or two of CA in there to hold it in place. 

With a little careful pruning of the paint, I found I could dry fit the engine covers on both sides. There's not a great view of the engine though. 

Here you can just see one of the radiator flap actuators attached to the inside of the flap.  

It's getting very close to done now. 

I've still got to finish dirtying the wheels on the treads. 

I noticed I'd forgotten to do any chipping on the front bumper, but that's easily remedied. 

The headlight lenses are still to be fitted. 

Then it will get a final few dings & scratches, probably with a pencil. 

Finally, there will be a coat of matt varnish to seal it all. 

Wheel work completed as per AK Interactive Learning Series Vol.3 Tracks & Wheels. 

Dirt road weathering. 

Finally finished! 

Here's a few shots in natural dayllight.