CabDriver

Unless you’re looking to flip them for a profit, I’d pick the ones I actually liked I think. Sure, it’d be annoying to find you missed out on the ONE $1000000 model in the batch, but if they’re for building/restoring anyway I’d totally be inclined not to worry too much and just pick my favorites!

Yep, donks. There’s a couple that I see on the road occasionally near me. Impalas on 30 inch wheels with stock brakes peeking through - seems safe 🤪😂 I think @JollySipper is right with his ‘neo traditional’ observation - there seems to be a lot of builds in that style right now...hot rods that use the right parts and general look where they COULD have been built back in the day on paper...but probably wouldn’t have been. I’m noticing a similar trend in custom motorcycle builds a lot lately - tonnes of retro-influenced but definitely-modern bikes with some really cool ideas: I’m finding a lot of inspiration from bikes lately, thinking how I could use some of the ‘flavor’ of what they’re doing, but for automotive subjects instead. I’d definitely like to see some hot rodders takes on the bikes above, would definitely be fresh and interesting I think!

Oh wow! Nice start! That paint looks GREAT! I love the color!

Absolutely outstanding bodywork! Great job!

Beautiful Steve! Love the color!

Thanks all! Hopefully the step-by-step was useful I forgot to post the inner fenders earlier - these will barely be visible on the finished car, but I gave them their own flames too just in case anyone were to ever peek behind the brakes to see if anything’s back there: This angle of the body really shows how much that red portion changes color with the Pearl overlay if you compare to the pink flip you can see in the previous set of pics - I love it! Beacuse I can’t help from rotating the paint stand round I figured I should get a coat of clear on there before I ruin something by playing with it...more soon!

I was really excited to do this next bit...the flames! Took three tries to get some flames I was happy with, but got there eventually - cut some masks on my Silhouette and laid them down over the paint I shot yesterday: And then shot black (and crossed my fingers that I didn’t ruin it somehow...) Then a half hour of careful de-masking later.... I need to seal them in some clear next to protect the black - the humidity’s REALLY high here this week so it’s not an ideal time to shoot the ‘real’ clear coats but I’ll put a barrier coat of Future over the whole thing to stop any damage in the meantime. More soon!

Thanks buddy! The thing that used to hold me up a lot on builds was waiting for the clear to set-up properly on the body before I can polish it out, so I’ve started the habit of doing the body first and then letting it sit for three weeks before doing the next part. The Testors gloss enamel I’ve started using dries to a touch in a day or two but you can’t get a REALLY nice shine unless you really let it set up right (or use a dehydrator, which I don’t have...) So, I get to do the fun bit first! I wanted to have this thing black with some pearl red-into-pearl-purple flames. Rather than paint it black and then try and layer enough paint up over that to get vibrant colors for the graphics, I’m going to do it backwards - bright colors first then mask the flames and hit the rest with black. Picked some colors out... First up, pearl red: Then the fade into pearl purple: Then a little thinned-down neon pink just to add a little fade to a lighter color at the ‘front’ of where the flames will go: I’ve been wanting to play with my new PearlEx set and this seemed like a good place to use it (like it’s not ridiculous enough already), so I mixed up a clear coat with their red-blue flip pearl and shot three coats of that, followed by a couple of coats of clear plus their bright pink powder. After letting that set up I shot it with a barrier coat of Future so I can mask over the top of it tomorrow and not have to worry about damaging the paint or pearl coats: Got some nice flip-flops going on there, especially coupled with the fades too - I like how from the angle in the pic above the first pearl coats are giving some red and blue highlights over the base colors, and then on the top surfaces the pink starts to come through. Of course, when I lay down the masks for the flames and shoot them almost all of that paint will be covered anyway and you’ll never see it again, but hopefully we’ll get some really cool color-flipping flames out of all this! More tomorrow!

Epic post dude! 😂🤪👍🏻

Haha, as I posted that I thought “actually, they might well have been in the same room at one point!” Still, it made me chuckle to see that listing though - the OTHER famous Boyd!

Outstanding news! Which project will be getting your attention? Always enjoy seeing your work Ace!

Haha, the word that rhymes with ‘stick’ that begins with a ‘p’ is censored huh? Ok, “perk up it’s ears” then 🤷‍♂️😂

Not following trends is the new trend! 😂. I read something once that said something like “the internet lets anyone with an interest in the most obscure, weird, narrow subdivision of any possible subject or hobby find millions of other people just like them” I think that luxury that we have now makes it possible to build what you like without thinking “I don’t really have anyone to show this to who will GET it”. Not that I worried too much about that anyway, but it’s cool that even if I build the most hideously dated and unfashionable thing I can imagine someone will say “I LOVE it! I’m gonna build one just like it!” All that said, I wonder what the next big trend in hot rodding will be? Something will happen in 1:1 sometime and then, like rat rods and TRoGsters and street rods and custom vans and whatever else before them will make the modelling community BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH up it’s ears and start to build stuff to replicate the cool full-sized stuff that has gripped their imagination.

That’s SUPER helpful, thanks buddy! Exactly what I needed! I really appreciate you taking the effort to help me out there! Huh! Interesting!! I ordered a kit today knowing that they’ll work for what I’m looking for, and I knew I could cast the wheels once I modified them to my liking but I’ve never cast tires before...good to know that I might be able to raid my spares stash if I need to, or just get the Flintstone ones and save myself the trouble! Appreciate the info!!

Man, I’m gonna have the coolest streetrod from 2004 with this babies 😎😂🤪