Nacho Z

This is just fantastic, Bruce, just fantastic!

I just now took a look through the entire thread. I admire your perseverance on getting all of the details right. Can’t wait to see her done.

Great looking model, Michael! To my eye, very understated, which actually makes it so appealing to me. Nice job!

Wow, Andrew! I’m just catching up on this thread. I’m a little behind on multiple builds that I was following. Anyhow, some spectacular work going on here. I appreciate all of the work going into this. Well done!

Good looking model, Manny! I love the color combo that you chose, it really works well on it. Wheels look great too!

Very nice! All of that extra detail paid off in a great looking model!

I can’t add much to what has already been said. She is a drop dead gorgeous model, Ryan! Absolutely gorgeous!

I’m not sure which bits came from which kits but she sure does look good!

Hi, Tony! Thanks for the kind words! I chose this one for the 24 hour build due to one color paint scheme, relatively low parts count and relatively, to me, low decal count. There is a good amount of flash on the parts. I knocked off the majority of it. I didn’t fill any ejector pin marks. Normally I would have stripped the chrome and shot Alclad or AK but again, I didn’t have time. I also would have polished out the paint but that Tamiya laid down sooooo nice I left it as it was. I did make a new rear axle to push the rear tires out a bit more and I did a fair amount of grinding and cutting to get the front of the body to drop down a little lower over the chassis. Thanks, Anthony!

Big update this week!! This will be the second update of three that concentrate on the front bulkhead. As mentioned last week, Tamiya provide no detail whatsoever on the front bulkhead. Again, it will be covered by a water tank and a radiator but I just couldn't help myself, I had to add a few details. This is what I started with. I filled in various openings that were not used. I made small brackets for the front brake lines. The silver steering rack is all that is provided in the kit. Here you can see the openings that I filled in and others that I created. I made an anti-roll bar from aluminum tubing and styrene. I also made a bracket to go over the steering rack. The brake and clutch reservoirs, (from last week), clear the anti-roll bar. I fitted the bulkhead to the body and filled in the seam all the way around. Here is mounted. I made what I assume are some type of proportioning valves for the brakes, front and rear. Although it probably will never be seen, I actually plumbed the reservoirs to the proportioning valves. It was ridiculously hard to do. All of the planning, measuring and test fitting that I did paid off. Everything fit perfectly! The reservoirs cleared the anti-roll bar and fit under the water tank. More updates next week!

Can't wait to see this one, Pierre! I read your introductory post and saw that you wanted to do something with the stacks. I posted mine here a couple of years ago if you want to take a look at what I did. I bought an assortment of electrical ferrules. I removed the molded on kit stacks and replaced them with the appropriate sized ferrule. I hope this helps. Good luck on your Chaparral!

Thanks, Bob, much appreciated! Thank you, David!

It is Monday night, time for another update! The next two or three updates will concentrate on the front bulkhead. The model kit provides no detail whatsoever. The only thing provided is the steering rack. To be fair to Tamiya there will be a water tank and a radiator that will cover everything up anyhow. However, this are was just begging for some detail, and well, one thing led to another. I'll start with the brake and clutch reservoirs. I will caption each photo as needed. Here is a photo of the real car under restoration. I scratch built front and rear brake reservoirs from 9 separate pieces and the clutch reservoir from 8 pieces. A reservoir mocked up. I patterned mine off of a kit part from another kit. I had to make mine a very specific size. It had to clear other items that I will be adding and yet be low enough to fit under the water tank. Hard to tell but there are 3 different shades of metallizers on these. I also add bolt heads to each mounting flange. A different background shows the colors a little better. A quick mockup. I also added two mounting brackets for the front brake lines.

Thanks for this, Bruce! Actually, these are 2 of my 4 main sites. The guy over on F1M is ridiculously talented. I have definitely poured over his thread. I use Motor Sports Images a lot also. Anyhow, that was incredibly nice of you to post those links for me. It is truly appreciated!

Thank you, Chris! I appreciate you checking in on this one! Thank you, Bruce! Thanks, Pierre, you are much too kind!

Thank you, Marcos! Thanks, Paul! I always joke that I am an average model builder but I take cool pictures...? I'm right there with you, Christopher, I love those Ramchargers! Thank you! Thanks, Chris! Oh, man, John, it is good to hear from you, my friend! You are truly the guy I look up to for dragsters of all types. I only picked this one because it looked doable for a 24 Hour Build. It came out ok and makes me want to tackle some of the others I have.

That is a great looking Monkeemobile, Bob!

Thanks so much, Jerry! She makes a nice shelf model. Because it was a 24 hour build, I didn't sweat a lot of details. The decals went on great. The parts were full of flash and the fit was average at best. It is a typical '70s MPC kit for sure.

Thank you, Ray, I appreciate it! Thanks, Roger!

I have a good amount of sub-assemblies completed on this model and it is getting time to get the body pieces under paint so that I can begin to assemble the car. There are a total of 13 pieces that need to be painted body color. Due to the amount of paint needed for this, I used Tamiya TS-10 French Blue right out of the spray can. I applied 3 coats. What you see in the following pictures is the paint after it had cured for 24 hours. Nothing has been polished.

Thank you, Joe! Yup, Ramchargers are iconic!

I thought I would share my 2023 Annual 24 Hour Model Build. Most of you are familiar with the 24 hour build but for those of you who are not it is a FB group build that starts at Noon on a Saturday and runs until Noon on Sunday. It is always held on the weekend of the 24 Hours at Daytona. This year I stopped at about 21 hours into it. I was starting to make mistakes and getting sloppy. After getting some rest I spent about another 5 hours fixing my mistakes, repositioning some parts and polishing the kit glass, (twice!), due to some unfortunate glue placement...lol.

Very nice, very nice indeed!

I am definitely pleased with how it turned out. The clay that I used, Sculpey Premo, actually has a date on the package. My assumption is you want the newest, freshest package you can find. I found that the clay was very easily marred so it is easy to put dents and creases in it.

I see that September 26th was my last update. I assure you that I have been busy working on this model. I will try to get caught up on my progress. I also realized that I haven't been all that active on MCM. I'm not sure what happened...lol. This update will concentrate on the cockpit. The real car's cockpit was very sparse and the model's cockpit is worse. Because of it was designed to have a driver figure installed in it, Tamiya did not provide much seat detail. I wanted to add what little seat padding the poor driver had. Here is what I came up with. This is the kit part, (in blue), along with what I added for the footwell and pedals, (in white). There is some molded texture but there is no depth to the seat area. I had an idea of trying to make the missing seat padding out of clay. I made an index card template of the textured seat area. My wife was kind enough to let me use one of her rolling pins. A plastic fondant rolling pin with rings to be precise. Actually, the rings are important because they allowed me to roll the clay out in exact, even thickness. I laid the template on the clay and cut it out. After I cut out the seat padding I doubled up the padding for the driver's back, just like the 1:1. I wore nitrile gloves while working with the clay and used the gloves textured fingertips to add texture to the clay. I formed it to the kit seat and then baked the clay per its instructions. Although hard to capture in a photo, the clay's finish really looks the part. Time for full disclosure. My first attempt did not go well. I believe my clay was old and a little dried out. The first attempt at shaping the clay went sideways and then the clay cracked and broke on me. When my second attempt was finished, I realized that I did not add slots for the shoulder belts. I very carefully put them in. There are some exciting, (at least to me), updates just around the corner. I'll see you then!