jaymcminn

I'd love a Ponton Mercedes. A Heckflosse (fintail) would be nice as well.

I'm a modest watch collector myself (about 15 watches, some very good vintage pieces, mostly automatics) and even if I had 280,000 spare dollars this monstrosity would never come anywhere near my wrist. I appreciate the technical achievement but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should!

Whoa. That is exactly what I was looking for. Did you airbrush or brush the Tamiya acrylic? Was the paint still wet when you hit it with the dryer? I see that working really well with a tan base coat and a leather/brown top coat for the effect I want. Great paint on that Chevy (and the coffin, too)!

I'm going to play around with what I've got around the house to see what I can get to happen. It's weird trying to intentionally screw up a paint job. Thanks for the tips and keep 'em coming!

The holes in the body that don't have rivets in are going to have fasteners for removeable panels with safety wire. I actually kind of like the sink marks in the body at the rear since the aluminum bodywork on the real thing isn't exactly laser-straight. I next got the wheels together. The wheels build up from three layers of spokes, and look good. The spokes are a bit thick, but I'm not too concerned. Detail is nice with valve stems, and the kit tires are excellent. The knockoff, like pretty much all the kit chrome, was washed with brass acrylic and Testors acrylic black wash to replicate the look of patina on chrome with the brass starting to show through. Weathering on the wheel itself was done with the black wash and Tamiya weathering powders. The chassis went together very well and I was faced with the most fiddly job of the build... the friction shocks. These build up like the real thing, with all of the arms and friction plates sandwiched together and secured with screws and bolts. This is what you start with... And this is the end result. Attached to the rear axle... The chassis as it stands now with the painted and weathered body sitting on top. The number is a stencil from a company called Orlee. There was an actual car that ran this number, but this isn't it. I just thought it looked cool. Next up was the interior floor, which needed some help. I drilled out the side rails and used aluminum printer's sheet for the floor panels. I embossed the lines into the sheet using a pizza cutter and straightedge. I then scuffed the floorboards and aplied a thin wash of Tamiya Metallic Grey.

Now that I have some extra time on my hands for a while, I decided to get stuck in on a big, involved project... Italeri's new release of the Alfa 8c 2300 Monza. My idea for this build was a weathered, slightly beat-up car a few years into its career. I didn't want to build any specific car, instead taking inspiration from a little bit of everything. I decided on Tamiya TS11 Maroon as the color, over their red oxide primer. First was to sand the awful rivet blobs off the body to be replaced with .040 plastic rivets from Tichy Train Group.

Building the Italeri Alfa 8C kit now. The idea is a weathered car a few years into its racing career. The problem is the seat... it has no sort of detail or character whatsoever. I can do a decent faux finish to give it a worn leather look but I'd like to simulate cracking in the leather. Any ideas?

So you left those bunnies alone and they multiplied, huh? Great work on those builds!

Least favorite would be sanding ejector pin marks and filling/sanding sink marks. Most favorite is pretty much everything to do with finishing/polishing and all the fiddly little detail stuff.

Scale Hobbyist has the new 1/12 Italeri Alfa 8c for a better price than any other US vendor. Shipping, especially given the size of the thing, was very reasonable and I got it in less than a week. I'd use them again.

Beautiful. The weathering is spot on. I've got one of these on the bench myself!

That is some nice black paint going on there. Great detail painting on the figure as well!

It's right up there with what Tamiya was doing at the time. It goes together well and the engraving is top notch. I would have liked more positive locating points for the front and rear valances and headlights (fit the headlights with the hood/grille assembly in place to avoid gaps and/or interference with the grille) but there wasn't anything that a reasonably skilled builder couldn't easily overcome. Thanks!

That is uncanny. I was researching this build online and never saw this color combination, and here it is! By "turned back to stock" do you mean they removed the TWR bits? That would be insanity! This is a great kit overall, and well worth picking up. Other than the ride height/suspension issues, the only thing I recommend paying attention to is the panel lines, which definitely benefit from some deepening, and the hood fit which takes a little tweaking to get the hood more or less flush.

I think the history of this kit is that it was originally going to be a 250 SWB Berlinetta before Aurora originally released it and they bodged the front and rear end to sort of represent a GTO when that car made its debut. It's definitely an odd duck! It's rare to see one of these built, much less given the love that you have lavished on this example. Great work!

I love an E36. Anybody who turns his nose up at the thought of a curbside model needs to check out this beauty. Great work!

The 240z picture is a slot car. I can't testify if it's built from the Revell kit, but I'm guessing not. i can see the Ala-Kart and Badman (built a couple of the Badman kits when I was a kid; the original Ala-Kart was long gone by the time I started building) but the rest are pretty much nonsense. Even if the list is all about nostalgia, no Red Baron or Li'l Coffin? How about the AMT '49 Mercury? The cherry on top is the Lindberg Aerovette kit! What, no Palmers? And if they're talking about the "best models" and not mentioning Tamiya at all the article is completely without merit anyway. Weird.

I finally got time (maybe a little too much) to take some pictures of builds I've completed over the last several months and will be posting them up. This is the Hasegawa Jaguar XJ-S in TWR spec. This kit dates back to the mid-80's and is an extremely nice kit overall. Any issues, much like the Monogram Callaway Speedster I posted yesterday, come from the modifications to the original tool to produce the TWR version. The narrow wheels of the original release tuck up correctly into the rear wheelwells and the stance is correct for the standard car. Unfortunately the sharp TWR wheels are a bit wide for the stock wheelwells and the stance isn't modified from stock. To make things sorta fit, Hasegawa uses very low-profile tires that protrude from the body and make the whole thing look awkward. I found some parts-box tires with a little more meat on the sidewalls and narrowed the track as much as possible without mini-tubbing the rear end. The front suspension was lowered by a scale 3" and the rear by a bit less for a nice rake. Paint is Testors MM Dark Cherry Pearl over Tamiya Champagne Gold on the wheels and lower body. Exterior trim was masked and airbrushed in Model Master Acryl Semi-gloss black. Interior is Tamiya Gunship Grey. Although I painted the rear wing, I eventually decided to leave it off. Fortunately the TWR side skirts and valances fit beautifully, although I did add styrene mounting points to help in final fitment. I did some basic engine wiring, although to create a more accurate portrayal of the engine bay I could have just balled a bunch of wire up and crammed it under the hood! (Google XJ-S engine bay if you don't believe me...it's a scary sight) On to the pics!

The lime green over electric blue wasn't even the craziest one... there's a purple one with a pink/rose leather interior over maroon carpet. Thanks man!

I pretty much switched to acrylics years ago and never looked back. Testors Model Master Aircraft Interior Black is a great dead-flat grey-black and gets used a lot. MM semi-gloss black, Tamiya Metallic Grey and Flat Aluminum are big favorites as well.

That is really beautiful. Great color combination!

I just realized I forgot to include a picture of the "business end"...

Thanks Rick! The hood and glass fit were an absolute nightmare. This thing very nearly went back in the box due to the fitment challenges. The glass unit tends to be pushed up at the front because of interference by the dashboard, so I took a lot of material off the leading edge of the dashboard where the windshield rests against it in addition to tweaking the fit of the dash to the interior tub to get it to seat properly. The hood needed material removed from the underside at the rear where it contacts the windshield unit as well as the "valley" between the hood bulges which contacts the intake plenum. I also built a nifty sliding system to seat the front valance that allowed me to shim it for a good fit in the final assembly. I vaguely remember building the '85 coupe when it came out and it didn't give 15 year old me that much trouble, but all the changes made to represent the radically different Speedster seem poorly engineered compared to the original. Good luck on yours!

So I started a WIP thread for this one a while ago, but got derailed about halfway through the build... this is the Monogram Callaway Speedster, painted in Tamiya Pearl Green with the interior painted in Rustoleum Lagoon Blue over black flocking. The color combination is reminiscent of the box model/prototype, but toned down a little bit. A lot of work went into getting this thing to sit properly on the Fujimi OZ Futura wheels- OOB this kit sits way too high. The instrument panel was photo reduced from an Ebay ad! This kit was loaded with sinkholes and flash and the part fit was fairly atrocious, but it wound up looking pretty decent. This is pretty much par for the course for Monogram's 80's/90's sports car kits... lots of complexity and decent detail, but they require some work to produce a good replica. On to the pics!

That is epic. Absolutely beautiful.