SterlingStang13

Looking great so far! Are you going to leave it matte, or clear coat it?

It's been a while since I've updated this, but I'm still working on this project. I've been working a lot lately so I haven't had time to update this thread. Since my last update I have modified the wheels to fit the kit tires which I preferred the look of, and the kit tires are also staggered which is the setup I'll be going with on my 1:1 here shortly. Here is how the wheels looked before I modified them with the kit tires mounted on. And to modify them I taped off the wheels as a guide, and used my X-Acto saw blade to cut them down and sand them smooth. After that I used a dremel to grind down the center post of the wheels to adjust the offset to my liking, and here are the results. After I got the wheels mounted I moved onto painting the interior parts. The seats, steering wheel, pedals, and emergency brake handle are all painted Tamiya TS 29 semi gloss black, and the door panels, center console, dash are all painted Tamiya TS6 flat black. I also worked on the window surrounds. I started with the rear window, but unfortunately while I was cutting the mask I cut too deep and went into the plastic, and I wasn't satisfied with my result. So I wet sanded my rear window using 220 grit paper until the cuts were gone, polished it out, and then used my mask again to get it right this time. Here is the result. For the front I learned from my mistake in the rear and just used a sharpie. It came out just as good and I didn't almost ruin the windshield in the process. And here is how they look in an overview shot of the car. That's all the update I've got for now. It's coming along nicely I think.

Thanks! Haha, I think I have a touch of OCD. I have a storage spot for everything, and I don't like messes so when I'm done working for the day I clean up and put everything back in it's place before I leave the work desk. Thanks! You should. It's a fun experience, and very satisfying to build a unique model of a car you own/owned. I'm sure it'll also be a good conversation piece, and a good display piece to take to a car show.

Thanks! Yep, it's my first model. My parents bought me a couple kits when I was younger, but I never had the patience to build them. Thanks! It's not perfect. There are flaws, but you have to look at odd angles in the right lighting to see them. I'm happy with how it's coming out so far. Still got quite a bit of work to do though.

Looking good so far. I don't see many new edge Mustangs being built around here. I wish someone had released an 03-04 Cobra. As for the clear, I've read that Tamiya TS13 is good, and it would be good for you to keep the same brand clear coat as your paint.

It's been a while since I've updated this. I've been kind of lazy lately, but I'm still working on this when I get time. As you can see in this picture I've painted the wipers with Taimya X18 Semi Gloss black, interior tub, battery, and fuse box with Tamiya TS6 Flat black, and I painted the engine bay body color and clear coated. Here you can see that I have painted the chassis with Tamiya TS6. Detail painted the heat shields with Tamiya XF16, and the straps holding the gas tanks and the piece under the spare tire with Tamiya X18 Semi Gloss black. The K-Member was sprayed with Tamiya TS29 Semi Gloss black. After painting the chassis I started work on the custom grille. My plan was to cut the ends off the fog lights, remove the fog lights, and then glue the ends back on to the spears. Hopefully my pictures demonstrate what I mean by that. I would then lay that piece on top of the ridiculously priced MCG diamond mesh that I bought. I now wish I had gotten the honeycomb variant instead, but this'll do. After I finished the custom work on the grille I painted the outside of the pony with Tamiya X18 Semi Gloss black. Painting around the pony by hand wasn't working so I did some searching and found that rubbing alcohol will remove acrylic paint so I just painted the entire area and took a q-tip soaked in alcohol to remove the paint and reveal the chrome pony. I think it turned out great too! I've since painted the upper and lower grilles black, but haven't got any pics of those yet. I'm currently working on getting the offset of the wheels correct. Anybody have any tips on how to sand down the posts on pegasus wheels? I've been using a dremel with a grinding wheel attachment, but I can't seem to get them straight. My wheel is always slanted.

Looking forward to seeing more of this build! I've been looking for some pictures of this for a while. Does the engine come as separate parts, or is it all one piece?

There doesn't seem to be much late model Mustang model car accessories. I've been trying to find window louvers for my 2013 duplicate of my 1:1, and haven't had any luck. Have you thought about making your own decals?

Thanks everyone for the kind words. It really means a lot coming from such talented people. Thanks! The colors are pretty similar. Yours is a bit darker I believe. Thank you! For the AMT 67 kit I plan to make it as I would make a 1:1 67' if I could afford it. I'm probably going to go with black paint, BMF the trim, and probably go with Torq Thrust, Weld Pro Star, or Weld Draglite wheels. Not sure if anyone makes either of the Weld wheels in 1/25 scale as I haven't really looked yet. One project at a time for me, haha!

I like what you're doing here. I am primarily a muscle car guy, but also enjoy a clean import. Like Ace, I recommend smoothing out your filler more. From my own personal experience with filler it is a very time consuming process. Any slight bumps, or waviness WILL show up when you go to paint it.

Thanks! I've got some Ultimate Polish as well. They're a great combo. And the compound definitely can burn through paint. I found that out the hard way, haha. At least the couple edges that I burned through to primer are inconspicuous areas. Thanks! I thought about doing that, but the Boss intake manifold is completely different. If the kit had the regular 5.0 Coyote I may have been able to make it work. I have a small update of my progress this past weekend. It doesn't look like I did much, but what I did was time consuming, but also totally worth the effort. I started detail painting the body. I painted the cowl area, window trim, and side mirror bottoms with Tamiya XF63 (german gray). I taped off the window trim with Tamiya tape. I also painted some rubber trim on the roof of the car where the sides meet the roof. I taped these off and painted them with Tamiya X18 semi gloss black. Here's pictures of the results. This weekend I plan to paint the wipers, and hope to start painting and assembling the chassis providing we have better weather.

Thanks! I even impressed myself with the paint job, haha. Wait till you see the picture I took after wet sanding, and polishing everything. Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. To be fair I've always been a naturally crafty person, and I did a ton of research before I started this endeavor so I was fairly prepared. With that said my model is far from perfect. I've already made a few mistakes, and discovered some things that I should have done differently. And here is what I managed to get done last night. I spent close to 5 hours wet sanding, and polishing everything. This picture doesn't do the paint justice. It looks amazing in person! It's probably slicker, and deeper looking than my real paint, haha! I used 2400-4000 grit micro mesh pads to wet sand, and Meguiars Ultimate Compound which I've used on 1:1 cars (detailing is another hobby of mine) to polish out the scratches from the wet sanding.

While my paint is curing I started to paint and assemble the engine, and other miscellaneous suspension parts. I decided to go ahead and use the boss motor even though mine is only a V6 because I've already spent way more than I had intended, and finding a kit with a modern looking V6 is nearly impossible it seems. I'm using Tamiya TS-6 Flat Black for the sprue with the air box, intake manifold, valve covers, etc., and also the radiator. Everything else was done with Tamiya TS-29 Semi Gloss black. There's not as much of a difference between these two as I thought there would be. I'm not 100% sure they were worth the money compared to what I could've got at Walmart, or Autozone. Here I've cut off, sanded smooth, and touched up the parts that I currently need to put the basics of my engine together. You can't see the oil filler cap very well in the picture, but I've already glued that in place. I needed to do that so I wouldn't lose it as it is tiny! Also, the engine block, heads, and transmission are all brush painted Flat Aluminum with Tamiya XF-16. I love this paint! It looks like a near perfect match to Fords all aluminum engines. And here is the basic completed engine. There's still a couple small parts that I need to get painted and added like the oil filter, starter, AC compressor, and headers, but here is how it looks so far. I'm very happy with how it's turning out! That's all I have for now. Thanks for looking! With any luck I'll get to wet sanding the paint, and finishing up some of those engine details later on tonight.

So I've done quite a bit of work on this in the past few weeks, and I'm finally getting around to updating this. This project is going to take longer than I expected it to, but thats ok, I'm not going to rush just to get it done. Picking up from where I left off in the last update I started shaping the bondo on the rear bumper cover. Here is the 1st coat of primer which showed me what areas needed to be corrected. It took a few applications of bondo, sanding, re-sanding, and priming to get the curve the way that I wanted it. Here is the final result primed. Next I moved onto prepping for paint. I deepened the scribing in the panel lines using the back of a broken tipped #11 xacto blade. The rubber trim area under the side windows needed a lot of work as the line was almost nonexistant. This proved to be harder than I'd imagined to get a straight line. It didn't turn out perfect, but I'm happy with it and am glad I did it now. You can't see it real well in this picture, but you'll see it better when I get it primed. Here all of my parts that will be painted body color are prepared for priming. I wet sanded everything before priming with a 1500 grit polish pad. I'm using Plasti Kotes Spot Filler primer. After 3 coats of primer on everything I wet sanded the primer again with a 1500 grit polish pad to remove a few specks of dust/debris, and create a smooth surface for my paint. Now it's time for paint! This is one of the big moments I had been waiting for. I'm using paint from Automotivetouchup.com. OEM matched Ford Sterling Gray paint, and their clear coat to ensure compatibility. I didn't take many good pictures between the coats of paint, but here are a couple mock up pictures which show the paint job well. I did 3 coats of the Sterling Gray base coat, and 4 coats of clear as I plan to wet sand everything to remove orange peel and I wanted to make sure that I had enough clear coat to do so. And a note to anyone who may decide to use this paint I highly recommend you get a respirator as this stuff smells awful. That said, I love this paint! I know my 1:1 car doesn't have those wheels yet, but they are what I am buying for my 1:1 in a few months after we get out of the winter months here.

Looking great! Can't wait to see more! I'm a huge Mustang fan so I'll be keeping an eye on this one.