Nacho Z

Wow, Scott, the chassis is a thing of beauty! May I ask what primer are you using on everything? Thanks!

The next thing that needed to be tackled was the hood vents. Technically, they are molded open but the molding is not too good. Please keep in mind that when you are looking at the following pictures, you are looking at zoomed in photos. These vents are quite small and not easy to get into. I decided that I was going to open them up and when I laid the hood decal, I was going to slit open each vent. In the first picture I have cleaned up the first two columns on the right side. Three columns done! And all four columns done. Here is how I did it. I used an X-acto blade for the initial work. I switched to a scriber hoping to remove material from both sides of the vent. I then used a fine saw blade to "square up" the ends of each vent. The chisel was used to scrape the plastic filings from the underside and the brush was used to keep the vents clean. Finally, I cut a narrow strip of sand paper and sanded both sides of each opening to try to smooth them out.

I thought I would share my build process of the Revell of Germany Lancia Stratos WRC kit. I am fairly certain this is a reboxed Hasegawa kit. When I searched for reviews of this kit I found one common theme; good luck getting the body over the chassis. It is true, but more on that later. This kit has been in my stash for years and to be honest I'm not sure what caused my to pull it out and build it. I guess it was the challenge of doing all of those decals! This is a box stock build. I did not want to add any aftermarket parts or do any scratch building. The model is already finished but I wanted to share with all of you what I did and what I went through to get her completed. Lets look at the kit. Here is what I started with. The decal sheet. It is a big one! Why do model companies run the attachment point right into the part?!?! This took a little bit of clean up! These are the rear fender flares. Test fitting of the rear spoiler showed that there was a sizable gap. I added and shaped a shim to close the gap. I attached the rear fender flares and rear spoiler. I cleaned up the parts. I had to add some filler to dimples on the rear spoiler.

I was stationed in England back in the mid 80s. One of the sergeants I worked with had bought a street going Lancia Stratos. I don’t recall much about it other than the fact that I loved the shape of the car. I only saw it a few times and his was the only one that I’ve seen in person. My local hobby store had the RoG kit, which is just a reboxed Hasegawa kit, sitting on the shelf forever. They marked the price down and I scooped it up. I’ve had it for years and finally decided to build it back in November. I finished it last Saturday. I will probably start my own thread in the Workbench section but I think this is a cool idea, Doug, to have a place where everyone can add their Lancia. i was following your build thread, Doug. I like that you added an engine to them. The RoG kit did not come with one not does any of the body panels open. Both of your Stratos look great! Did you have trouble getting the body over the chassis?

Super nice Mercedes, Anders!

Great looking build, Wayne!!

She is coming along very nicely, Doug! The Stratos is such a cool little car. As to you question, I’m going to say it is the placement of the two different headlight lenses. No big deal. Can’t wait to see it done!

That is looking sooooooo good!

Hey, Doug, they say great minds think alike! I just finished a Lancia Stratos WRC yesterday! I was going to start a Workbench thread this week...lol. I’m really looking forward to seeing yours when she is done. Getting that chassis into the body...???

That is just flat out gorgeous!!

She looks very nice, Gil. A very clean build indeed!

Ray, I am one of the original 5 members of this gig. The 57 is fine to build. I’m putting this out there for everyone who may be reading this thread, the 24 Hour Build is not a contest or competition. The rules are very flexible. They are really just guidelines. The main idea is to have fun!

Beautiful little hotrod, Marcel! I love the colors on it and the whole car just looks “right”. Great job!

You knocked this one out of the park, Scott! Everything looks so good; paint, decals, interior, chassis, etc. Just a fantastic model!

Great looking Ferrari, Peter! Such a beautiful F1 in 1:1 and you’ve captured it well!

Cancer is such a terrible thing, I am so sorry to see this Vince. My condolences to you and your family.

Oh man do I miss Dale! NASCAR has never been the same without him, IMHO. It is great seeing his car in scale. You’ve done a very nice job on this!

That is just an absolutely gorgeous color!!

Great looking Honda you've got there, Bruce! I have this kit as well as a few others in different scale. Overall, did you find Hasegawa's kit to be a good one? Again, great looking F1!!

Great job, Geoff! She is a beauty.

There’s a whole lot of coolness going on here! This really is too cool, nice job on both models!

So I gotta tell you, I was down in my hobby room the other night and I just wasn’t feeling it, so I spun my chair around and saw my Testors kit of this car. I remembered that you were doing it and so I pulled it out and looked it over for two nights. I also reread all 10 pages of this thread and got my mojo back!! I will happily and readily admit that I am going to steal so many of your ideas...??. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thank you for taking the time to share all of these wonderful tips and tricks that you do! I’m looking forward to seeing even more.

And once again we have a prime example of why this forum is so great! Thanks, Martin, that is some great info.

I think one thing needs to be noted. (I built the red and champagne two toned model from the Max kit. It is linked a ways up in this thread. I also have a workbench thread.). The bottom of the rear quarters roll in too much. This causes the rear bumper to not line up with the body. I had two of these kits and they were both the same. If you look at Tommy124’s model up above you will see that his kit has the same problem. I had to install “spreaders” to push my rear quarters out. Not a deal breaker but something to be aware of.

Lol, well we both learned something new! I was sharing this build on FB while I was building it. I was showing the grill and rear bumper/taillights. One guy posted something like “nice job but all 57 Bel Airs had a gold grill”. I’ll be darned but it looks like he was right. Now plenty of customs have all chrome grills but from what I could find, it looks like they all originally had gold grills.