Return to the BUILD

“With this issue, … add the finishing touches to the reactor platform of your DeLorean.”

Contents

Parts

Materials: The ends of the Cables are plastic and the middle of the cables is an elastic cord.

Magazine

• Drive Time: Model Instructions
• A Time Traveler’s Guide: Alan Silvestri

Build

Cables & Fitting the Reactor

The colored Adhesive Stickers supplied with this issue are not bad, but are not quite accurate to the ‘A’ Car. I decided not to use them and instead cut small strips of various colored electrical tape to wrap these hoses/cables. These tape wraps are as close to the real car as I could manage in color, width, and location on each cable and I will include any of my reference photograph(s) as needed.

Steps 1-3

• The Right Exhaust Vent Cable is shorter and has the angled pin on the end of the plug
• Wrap a blue Adhesive Sticker (or in my case, blue tape strip) around the flange end of the Right Exhaust Vent Cable
• Wrap a blue and a white Adhesive Sticker near the middle

Here is this Hydraflow hose on the real car:

The band they wants us to make WHITE is actually SILVER, so I used grey electrical tape for it:

Step 4

• The Left Exhaust Vent Cable is longer and has the straight pin on the end of the plug
• Wrap a blue Adhesive Sticker at each end of the Left Exhaust Vent Cable
• Wrap a black Adhesive Sticker around the middle

Again, here are some of my reference photos of the real car:

Step 5

Wrap a yellow Adhesive Sticker (tape) around the middle of this left side Pipe (111D).

Instead of the sticker, I added a piece of yellow electrical tape to this Pipe back in Issue 111 because I thought it might be easier than installing it now:

Step 6

Wrap a red Adhesive Sticker (tape) around the middle of this left side Long Cable (117A).

Instead of the sticker, I added this band using red electrical tape back in Issue 117, but here it is again:

Step 7

Find this Cable (115E) at the forward center of the platform. Wrap a red and white Adhesive Sticker around the middle of this Cable:

The red/white band colors they mention are not accurate at all. This should be a single band of orange:

I wrapped this hose back when we installed it, but here it is again:

Step 8

Retrieve your DeLorean. Wrap a red Adhesive Sticker (tape) around the middle of this left side Cable (82A).

As with the others, I wrapped red electrical tape around this Cable back when it was installed:

Step 9

For the next two steps where we attach these hose flanges, I thought big black screw heads would not look right. Since the real car uses silver hex bolts I took my Metallic Silver Sharpie and ‘painted’ all eight of these AP screw heads. Afterwards, the heads were a little bright, so I dusted each screw head with some of my Soot colored Tamiya Weathering Powder to ‘darken’ them down a bit:

Attach the Right Exhaust Vent Cable to the Right Reactor Exhaust Cowl with four (4) AP screws, as shown.

I am satisfied with the resulting look here:

Step 10

Attach the Left Exhaust Vent Cable to the Left Reactor Exhaust Cowl with four (4) AP screws, as shown:

I mentioned before that I was so impressed with the ease of use and the results of the Tamiya Weathering Powders that I was going to add a lot more. This was that moment. I used various colors such as Soot, Rust, Oil Stain, and Snow to ‘age’ and color many of the components and hoses on my reactor. I had no plan of attack; I just subtly dirtied things up a bit to add some depth and contrast all over. Here are my subtle, yet effective results:

Step 11

Bring the Reactor Platform to the back of the car and connect the plugs for the reactor lighting (cables 56I and 113E).

In my case, I connected the EL Light Mod cables:

Steps 12-13

As you slide the Reactor Platform forward onto the back of the car, tuck the lighting plug and extra wiring down through the notch in the Engine Surround.

There are four pins on the bottom of the Reactor Platform that engage with matching holes in the Engine Cover to align this. The rear edge of the Reactor Platform should sit down flush with the top of the Rear Bumper like you see below. However, on my model, the front edge did not want to sit down flush due to some circular protrusions on the bottom of the Reactor Platform. This did not seem to make much difference anyway:

Step 14

Push the straight pin on the plug of the Left Exhaust Vent Cable into this hole of the Front Body Rear Panel:

Step 15

Push the pin of the black plug on the free end of the Long Cable (117A) into this hole of the Front Body Rear Panel:

Step 16

Push the pin on the free end of the Cable (115E) into this hole of the Front Body Rear Panel:

Step 17

Push the angled pin on the free end of the Right Exhaust Vent Cable into this hole of the Front Body Rear Panel.

The hole that this goes into goes straight towards the front of the car (even though it is on an angled panel). Rotate this plug until it fits right:

I could not get a very good picture of the hole this plugs into with all the stuff in the way, so I found an older photo that shows this hole:

Thoughts

This was a nice big issue that finally brought our Reactor Platform into place. It has given the exterior of our car that iconic mad scientist look that only ‘Doc’ Brown (and the Universal production team) could provide!

Next Up

 Issue 126 – Reactor: Rear Vent Cowl Uprights/Bases