hot-wheels

Hope all is well with skwirls & Gunthar. This infamous thread has been silent for a while.

It has been a while since any progres on this. Holidays and such you know. Here is what she is looking like. I had great visions when I started to do a bunch of extra detailing. I have let that thought go in order to get this one off the bench. Thanks for looking.

Just dropin in to post some progress on this one. DECALS !!! Shown in a rather crappy picture, sorry! They did not lay out very smooth. Solvaset made them crinkel in places. Right or wrong the body is getting a coat of clear next. and Dunlop tire logos with some more of that home grown PE. Thanks for looking.

Just for giggles here is my second PE design and assembled using square plastruct up the center.

Thanks for the comments guys. Now that the how-to article from 1993 is re-posted I hope to see several others share their home made PE success stories. I did not follow any part of the one posted here by scaleCentral although it looks like a complete well documented solution. I did not use the micro mark kit either (I think there is a reason little has been heard about it). In short I used a two sided resist applied with a laminator and press-n-peel-wet image transfer paper. As for the etching solution I went with a much cleaner and cheaper cupric chloride solution. (ferric chloride is brown and every tiny drop stains) You can find information about cupric chloride under copper etching but since brass is a copper alloy it works just fine. The lamimator cost me $80 everything else totaled about $25 worth of supplies that should produce about 20 - 3 x 3 frets. Now that the little problem is fixed, the PE grate installed, I have given the body its color. I'm using testors enamels. I could not fine a good midnight blue to match my references so I mixed my own. It seems too dark although it is a good match to the blue in the Rothman decals. I'm going with it. I went with the louvered vents crit welcome

I think the point is to remove the chrome from a small specific area not the entire piece. I like the idea! Nice tip!

A small update but a BIG smile on my face. I have the body primed. Every thing looks smooth. But the reason I'm so happy is that I have successfully etched a replacement for the side grates that I screwed up. They are a little double exposed (the back resist did not align perfectly with the front) and I will probably take another swing at it before I attach anything to the car but I MADE MY OWN PE two styles: one rather simple the other designed to fold back louver style

Thanks for all the comments guys. As far as the torn out grate goes, I have cleared out the opening completely. I've been searching for a PE replacement and researching how to produce home-grown PE to fix the problem. So far I have not found anything pre-made. I have made a first attempt at my own PE, however several things went wrong before even getting the metal into the etching solution. Transferring the printed image to the metal with a resist backing was not as simple as my research implied. I'll have to get a picture of the final product but basically the chemical ate into the resist and what was left was a partial print and extremely thin (about .001). Here is a pic of the first attempt to transfer my print to .005 stainless steel. After the third try, still not perfect but I thought it was good enough. I'm going to try to etch one more time only in .005 brass this time, then I'll give a styrene solution a harder look. Wish me some luck. I really want the home-grown PE to work.

Here is my latest project. This is an older kit. It was given to me as a gift/hand-me-down that was slightly started. I picked up the PE set for it, stripped & disassembled the parts started by someone else and have the body almost fully prepped for primer. <img src="http://images52.fotki.com/v1566/photos/9/1473019/7876535/IMG_7010-vi.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /> <img src="http://images52.fotki.com/v1567/photos/9/1473019/7876535/IMG_7012-vi.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /> I installed the kit glass and surface sanded it to the body. Next, I will remove it and polish it back to clear with a set of polishing pads. This should level out reflections and improve the too-thick appearance kit glass has. <img src="http://images112.fotki.com/v173/photos/9/1473019/7876535/IMG_7203-vi.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /> Along the way, I intended to open this grate on the side. I used my dremmel at a slow speed and took my time but the stupid thing caught & tore out. This has caused quite a bit of stall on the build trying to decide how to repair this problem. <img src="http://images41.fotki.com/v9/photos/9/1473019/7876535/IMG_7206-vi.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" /> Thanks for looking, crits welcome.

Cool build ! Reminds me of a recent build of mine with Goodyears on the chassis & Bridgstone logos on the body. No one has called me out on it yet.

Hello to all. A friend/fellow club member told me about this site and I have been checking it out for about a week now. Very cool stuff going on here for sure. My build history goes back a steady 25 years and has always been heavily car oriented. My recent fixation is with 60's era CanAm & LeMans style race cars. I may not bring anything new to the party but I do enjoy checking out others work and finding that next cool "got to try" idea. Thanks in advance for having me.

I get into that era race cars alot, mostly CanAm & LeMans. This is a cool project. Your build technique has me more interested than anything else though. Trim & clean all parts, paint & decal all parts, assemble all parts. I'm more used to trim, paint, glue repeat. Funny what inspires a person, I'm gona try it. I look forward to the completed project.