Tommy124

Thanks a lot, Anders and Carl!

Many thanks guys, I appreciate it! Thanks Kurt, and congrats on getting a Boomerang kit! They are very hard and expensive to come by, especially in 1/24 scale (the 1/16 scale Revell kit is easier to find but not cheap either). I remember the WIP on the Russian forum you mentioned, that guy practically cut the whole body into pieces in order to correct the shape and make a Bora V8 fit in. He also intended to 3D-print better wheels but I guess that is where the WIP ended... years ago. The Boomerang can be made into a nice kit box-stock. My build is a resto of a kit I build many years ago. I showed it on this forum back then (although the images are not great):

Many thanks guys!

Many thanks for your feedback! Well-observed, and you may see aswell in the ad that there is a different type of mirrors on the car. I read that these mirrors have been replaced by the type used on my model because of guidelines regarding the protection of pedestrians and bikers. As regards the covers over the headlights, it seems like they have been part of "plan" but to my knowledge have never been used on the production cars.

Thanks Dann! Victory...? At least the end of the battle! The build is completed. Just some shots to show how the front and rear end turned up: Pretty satisfied with the scratch-built tail lights and the exhaust pipes: And the overall result: This is the link to the images in the Under Glass section: Thanks for your attention!

Hi folks, I just finished this one. First non-US car model I built in almost 3 years. The kit itself is horrible as was the building and painting process itself. Anyone who wants to see the lengths I had to go to to make this turn out a halfway reasonable result, see my WIP here: This is the way it ended up: And a group shot with his "rare" brother, the Boomerang...

Thanks for you feedback, Mark, Nigel and Atin. There‘s been some more progress on this Sunday: I finished the process for the scratch-built tail lights. I glued them onto a thin sheet of styrene which has been covered with BMF. I used Micro Chrystal Clear for this. I then cut out the lights with a blade and painted the trim around them with a Molotow Chrome pen. The chrome front bumper parts have been painted with Molotov Chrome aswell. For the mirrors, I used another technique. I regularly use this tool (designed for punching holes into leather belts etc.) for cutting round shapes out of BMF and other materials. Looks fine to me: And I inserted the black „louvre“ parts in the front and rear hoods. The covers of the hideaway headlights have been glued in aswell. And the „arches“ parts on the rear bonnet have been glued to it. Tomorrow, I will present the last steps - and the finished model!

Thanks for your kind words! It‘s nice that this rather unspectacular version is to your liking. No, the decals were contained in the kit, I used them as they were still good (not a certainty after decades of storage) and mostly era-correct.

Thanks for all your comments, appreciated! I knew this discussion was gonna come up. 😬 Well I sanded and polished a lot of metallics without problems. Tamiya, Testors, enamels, acrylics, lacquer - you name it. But I have never encountered such a problem. As I said above, maybe it‘s this very old kind of enamel that was different or the paint had gone bad over the years. By the way, interesting link to what the „Old Man“ is saying about this subject: Thanks Gilles and yes, I agree. I didn’t seem to find a way to make this more realistic (and at some stage I didn‘t really care anymore...). As to the latest progress, today I took care of the BMF and some painted details. I finished the interior tub and did some test fitting with the body and chassis: More to come soon!

Painting the body has been the hardest part. To be honest, that's not the kit's fault... 😬 My idea was to paint the body in a nice "70's green" like this: So I used Tamiya TS-101 basecoat primer in order to cover the black plastic: Then I made the initial mistake. I decided to use "era-correct" Revell/ Humbrol enamel paint that is probably just as old as the kit. It didn't look too bad at first: Okay, just a little sanding needed, right? But look what happened then: I don't know if it's just the enamel color gone bad over the years (decades) of storage or if those old metallics just could not be sanded. Anyway, I had to move on with another color. I remembered that I had one bottle of Lamborghini Miura green (Verde Metallazata) by Zero Paints. So I gave it a try over the enamel paint. It could have worked... COULD! Whereas on most parts of the body it looks great, the Miura green has eaten through to the lower paints in the areas where I had sanded before... Too bad! Well, no more excuses now, the body had to be stripped. And the plastic did not take this nicely: After some more serious sanding, filling etc. I applied a new coat of Tamiya TS-101: If you look closely, you will find that small damages are visible despite the primer coat. I knew then that the next paint I will use will have to be the type that doesn't "show" every small detail. So I decided to go for Tamiya TS-64 Mica Dark Blue. And there would have to be a very shiny clearcoat on top of it. So I applied 2K clear on top of the body color. Given the problems I had, I will settle for this. Yesterday I prepped some more parts for painting. The interior has been painted in Tamiya dark yellow in order to have a nice contrast with the dark body color. The same is for the wheels that have been painted in Tamiya titanium gold. And this is what the interior looks like after applying some "adhesive carpet": More to come soon!

The interior tub is as "basic" as can be. Just smooth plastic, no details that might resemble door cards... The seat backs come as separate parts and they have a "hollow" back that needs to be taken care of. So I glued the seat back on a sheet of styrene, cut it out and sanded it. I also fabricated door cards from styrene, the panel lines have been made using a scriber. Finished seat backs, see the top of the image. Door cards fit weel in their place: In the rear interior, the Merak has some kind of a half-round black cover, I call it the "punchbag". I found it very hard to get the look and shape of this right, in the end I finished with this: As was to be expected from this old (1979) kit, the windshield glass had some scratches in it. I used the "Don't be afraid to sand clear parts"-technique that I learned about on this forum, using Tamiya 3000 sanding sponge and Novus 2 for polishing. The result is fine. The Merak has 4 exhaust pipes that should look like metal and not like plastic rods. I cut off the "rods", drilled the holes open to make aluminium tubes fit in (will cut them to size later on).

Hi folks, at the time I'm starting this WIP thread now, I am actually more or less done with this kit. At times I wasn't sure if I would have the nerves to finish it, so while I was taking photos through all the steps, I did not have the confidence to start the WIP before now. The reason why I'm doing the WIP is that these Maserati kits are pretty rare and hardly ever seen built. The kit itself is really horrible. Poor detailing and, what's worse, the worst molding quality I have ever seen on a regular plastic kit. The box says Airfix but after some research I found out that there have been 2 different Merak kits sold under the Airfix brand. The first and undoubtingly better one is the old Gunze kit re-boxed by Airfix: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/airfix-05412-maserati-merak--182940 The second one and unfortunately the one I have, is this one - a re-box of an old Tsukuda Hobby kit: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/airfix-07401-0-maserati-merak--183538 Let's take a look at what I mean by "poor molding quality". Believe me, I have never done so much preparation work on a model body like on this one. Sanding, filling, sanding, repairing... The chrome-plated parts were a total mess aswell, so they got to take a bath in oven-cleaner. Unlike the Gunze re-box, this kit doesn't come with clear parts for the tail lights. Instead, it has some chrome-plated part that is supposed to be painted. I opted to make my own tail lights using clear styrene, a scriber and paint. Turned out okay to me:

Many thanks guys! Thanks Nigel. Yes, I really think so. The same ad was published in English aswell...

Hi folks, in 1982, GM actively tried to sell the then new 3rd gen Camaro to overseas markets, especially Europe and Asia. To that purpose, they created a modified export ("E") version of the Z28. It was designed to better meet the taste of the overseas clientel, leaving the rear spoiler and the vents on the hood. Only 2541 Z28-E's were built from 1982 to 1985, yet those were not included in the official Camaro production figures (according to information on www.ThirdGen.Org). This was the ad used in Germany back then... (translation: "Camaro Z 28-E. It's another world.") The Arii 1/24 scale kit (initially released by the LS brand) is far from being perfect or well-detailed, but it correctly depicts important aspects like the body proportions and the specific Camaro wheels. Anyway, i tried to make the best of it. This is my result.

Hi Ludwig, well done again! Nice choice of colors, great job on paint and detailing!

Hi Ludwig, you gave this kit of a "daily driver" type of car the right treatment. Looks nice, well done!

Very nice subject, great work as always.

Many thanks Gareth!

THANKS!

Cool lookin‘ Mopar sedan. Well done, Ludwig!

Many thanks guys, I appreciate your feedback.

I'm afraid I have this kit ("10th Anniversary Trans Am") by MPC still in my stash somewhere. I like the look of the '79 Bird over the '77/'78, so I'll probably build it one day. You did well on this one. TS-53 is always a great choice, plus you did a good job on the interior and I really like the wheels and tyres!

Thanks Tom and Jesse!

Thanks a lot guys!

Hi folks, this is another VERY nice snap-kit from Revell. At least here in Europe it's very rare, I was lucky enought to get hold of one some years ago. Several examples of built kits on the internet have shown already that this 20-something parts kit can be turned into something really nice. However, none of the ones I found have added the chrome trim on the side of car, which is missing in the kit. I did so in using Evergreen strips and treated it with BMF. Speaking of which, there is a LOT of BMF to be used on this car. All paints I used were Tamiya sprays, except for the Landau top which was brush-painted with Tamiya tan color and and the cleared with Tamiya semi-gloss clear. The gauges on the dashboard have been used from Best Model Car Parts (excellent stuff from Mike as usual!) As regards the wheels, the kit contained Rallye wheels and rather boring-looking tyres with no white walls on them (no offence, it's a simple snapper after all), so I decided to use aftermarket wheels and tyres from Pegasus. One funny but very useful detail on the kit is that the ride height on the front and back can be adjusted separately from "donk" to almost "lowrider" level. I resisted the temptation to do anything funny here and went for the look that fits best IMHO... Last, not least, rubber strips on the bumpers have been made by using black stripe decals. "Golden" days of Chevy: