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Building a Volvo F16 truck engine model & painting it for better looks

11th July 2023, 18:14 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

It is a 1:8 Pocher Kit which is quite rare as they have not been made since the mid-90s.

BHPian Jeroen recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

As some of you know I like to fiddle with things. Be it my cars, my bicycles or other things. One of the things I like is to build model engines. I have shared some of my builds over the years on the forum. They vary from simple plastic builds to complete self made metal/brass working engine models.

Just a taste of what I have done in the past, Betty the mighty V8. Next to it sits a VW Beetle Air cooled engine.

At the front, my first self built oscillating steam engine.

This here is my masterpiece, Debbie the Two Stroke engine. I did a dedicated thread on this build.

And my current engine build project. A Scuderi engine. Which means it has two pistons/cylinders. Compression takes place in one piston/cylinder, ignition and expansion take place in the second set of piston/cylinder. Coming along nicely!

This thread is about another plastic model engine I recently finished building. It is a Pocher Kit, 1:8 of a truck engine, the well-known Volvo F16.

Pocher did a few other engines too:

These kits have not been made since the mid-90s! So I was very surprised to come across one with my friend and model car collector supreme Berndt. He had bought it, because he knew it was very rare. He was kind enough to pass it on to me. Berndt is always trawling the internet for (model) cars and I have asked him to keep an eye open for any more of these Pocher model engines.

Pocher kits have a reputation for being high quality and extremely detailed. That is not necessarily true for all their kits. It is true for their famous 1:8 classic cars kit cars, all metal. But their smaller plastic kits are not all that great. But as you will see, you can still make a very nice model out of it, with some patience.

It is a very simple kit to put together.

It took me about 3-4 hours to put this engine all together. One thing is how large this model is!

Although Pocher tells you the model does not require painting, it is very clear that painting will really improve the overall look of the model. So I trawled the internet to find some ready-made and painted versions of this particular kit. Sure enough, there are several out there and I got some very good ideas for the painting, colour-wise and some other details as you will see.

I printed some of the stuff I found on the internet, to have it as an easy reference whilst working on mine. Notice the engine stand? The Pocher kit comes with four pieces of metal wire, this guy improved on it considerably. But it gave me an even better idea as you will see.

You might notice this guy had very nice details on the oil/fuel filters. After checking I found I could order these decals on Ebay! Very cheap, but as you will see it makes a big difference on the overall look of the finished model.

This guy did a phenomenal job of adding also all the high-pressure fuel lines. As you will see I have not done that, but I might give it a go later. I have already bought the correct metal wire!

So I bought myself some model kit paint and started painting.

I thought the painting did smart up the model considerably. But I did not like the shiny new look, so I decided to “dirty” up the model, to make it look a bit more realistic/used.

I came across this special paint, known as panel line accent.