ENTEX 1914 Militaire 1/16 Scale

I am working on a hard-to-find 1914 Militaire. This motorcycle was, for it's era, built and advertised as a two-wheeled car.

The first thing that was necessary was to strip ALL of the chrome plating. Chrome was not in wide use in 1914 as it was a relatively new process and very cost prohibitive at the time.

Here are the rest of the parts trees...

The rather massive looking frame was, frankly, something I had not worked with before. It's rather interesting in it's construction and looks like it could stand up to a lot of abuse.

Some of the engine detail can be seen here. I still have some touchups to do but it is coming along quite nicely.

Rear wheel has been mounted into the frame. This gives the frame some scale as to just how massive it actually is in regards to the support of the other aspects of this bike.

Plug wires were added as this was not something that was included as part of the kit. Holes had to be hand-drilled using a sewing needle and done a little at a time until the wires would fit just enough to be cemented into place.

Here's the completed engine ready for installation into the frame.

The engine has been mounted into the frame. This was a bit of a task as I had added the plug wires and the fact that the plastic is a bit on the brittle side due to age. But it did seem to mount in with little issues.

It was pointed out to me that the yellow wires that I used as plug wires were far too out-of-scale for this motor. Let alone the fact that they appeared to be far too new for a 1914 engine. So these were changed to something a little more IN scale and are as close to "period correct" as I could get.

Here are the "landing gear" being painted.

These were, evidently, used as a rolling kickstand due to the sheer weight of this motorcycle. Remember, this was advertised as a "two-wheeled car" at the time.

I placed a quarter into the photo for some scale as it is a little hard to judge that through photos.

This is the rear of the bike with the landing gear installed. Far too many extremely small parts here.

Here's the tank decals after they had been added. Unfortunately, they blew apart when placed in the water so I spent quite a bit of time trying to realign the pieces. The end result doesn't look too bad.

The seat and the tank have finally been added to the frame. This is a strange tank mount as there are limited supports for it. Still, this would have been one massive motorcycle for it's day.

I'll be updating this build as construction continues.