R. Thorne

More small steps. Used the acrylic black marker to touch up the hood and under hood area. Much easier (and quicker) than painting. Then super glued and “kicked” the windshields in.

Baby steps. Got some letters/numbers on the windshields.

Some personal stuff going on, but back trying to finish this thing. Thanks again, Daniel for your input. Much appreciated. My friend, Bob Michael, here in Div 3 (land of winners), also has a 62 Pontiac with a 389 in stock class. Started a model of his a few years back (gee, wish I could finish more of my builds). Anyway, got the tach, steering wheel, dash, and shifter installed. Sure would be a lot more tedious without super glue and kicker.

Steering wheel and Tamiya panel line grille work.

Sanded and cleaned up some racing seats I casted. Put some primer and paint on them. Used those great markers to “paint” and detail the tach.

Cut off a piece of chrome, applied a “spear” cut with scissors. Looks a little better. One of the deficiencies of Hasegawa is the thickness and subsequently, less conformability . Used Elmer’s thinned with a few drops of water applied with a brush for the embossing powder. Didn’t want to mask everything off again in order to spray paint as a base for the powder. Next time will try paint as Daniel suggested.

Your comments and suggestions are always much appreciated, Daniel. Thank you. While that paint was drying, I worked on the chrome trim. I used Hasegawa, BMF, and Flysea pens. The BMF looked the worst, so took it off. The trim around the windshield(s) is extremely thin. Mostly, Hasegawa was used, but chrome pen used on some areas. Not thrilled with the results. Got some clean up to do(if I can stay motivated). I am gonna try to cut some spear headed Hasegawa for the front of the side trim.

Cut the back seat out and replaced it with styrene.

Wow, I’m stumped. I love Tamiya TS spray cans and have painted 5 or six cars in the past year with stellar results. Orange, maroon, black (my favorite) and the last one ts42 gunmetal gray. I put gloss ts13 on the last one, but rarely do. Temperatures range from 71-74 degrees and humidity around 50 %. Is that extremely low 5% normal for you? I sincerely hope you find a solution. Also, I sometimes use a primer base, but, mostly straight to the plastic. Normally I use 2 medium coats perhaps held a little closer than you.

You might consider one of the thin slot miter boxes. This one comes with a saw.

Put some marker on the tubing I will use for the roll bar. This will save me from removing it to paint after I have bent it in position. Could have painted the straight tubing, but the marker was easy to do and less likely to crack or flake off during bending. Put some putty on the original shifter area after trimming it off. Going to try some embossing powder for carpet. Will probably use Elmer’s first.

Yeah, I guess I suffered from burnout and hurry up and get it done on this one. Note the lack of master cylinder, also. I couldn’t come up with one that looked like this. I am still looking.

Thanks, guys.

After finally finishing one of my 65 Dodges, I am back on this one. A pic of what ceramic coated headers look like. Glued the calipers/rotors/wheels/tires on. Couldn’t resist some more pics of Norm Warling’s car.

I built this car loosely based on Todd Hoven’s car. Moebius kit, aftermarket headers, Tamiya spray can paint (no primer), Goodyear 9” slicks modified to resemble Hoosiers, kit wheels, Chief Joseph carbs, scratch built roll bar and sub frame connectors, Shapeways Caltracs modified to fit kit rear end. Biggest issue was windshield fit (probably because of relatively thick Hasegawa chrome). Not a fan of externally mounted windshields. Aftermarket cheaper letters and numbers didn’t please me very much. Front end sits too high, etc., etc. Critiques, suggestions, comments, are always appreciated and welcomed. Have a good day.

Wrapping up. Used my new markers to “paint” the coil. Installed it and shortened and glued the coil wire end on. More photos in the finished section. Again, all critiques (positive and negative), suggestions, and comments are always welcome.

Class letters and numbers. Forgot these have a film over the whole sheet and not just the letters/numbers, so should have been cut closer. Cheaper price, but more tedious to work with.

Glued on front tires, headlights, masked and painted under hood area, then glued rear tires on. Close to the end (I hope).

Grrr!! Popped the windshield out, sanded the edges to try to make it fit better. No good. Then, took a new windshield out of another kit, and it fit a lot better. Placed it in position, put some Tamiya thin glue around the edges, letting capillary action do the rest and succeeding in applying a finger smudge at the base of the windshield. While letting that dry, tried the ill fitting windshield on the new, unpainted, unfoiled, body from the new kit. Oddly, it seems to fit pretty good. The lesson to be learned: on externally mounted windshields, consider painting on the chrome, or, possibly, bmf.

Glued on tailights (probably should have had another coat of stop light red, but, I am moving on) and rear bumper. Then, proceeded to fight the front grille, trying to sink it in further, withe no success. Cut off aligning pin, sanded and scraped some. Gave up and glued it on. Took hood off, (always paint body with hood lightly glued on). Will mask hood and body and fog some paint on it tomorrow.

Thanks, Dan. Much appreciated. Subframe connectors (made from styrene square stock) painted and glued. Next is driveshaft loop.

Put some panel liner on the grille(s) and painted the tailights with a microbrush and some Modelmasters paint. The windshield fit was terrible and my clumsy fingers messed it up good with superglue. May have to make one. Made some subframe connectors and will install later tonight. Not my best day.

The side window numbers are reversed. Used some Bsi super gold and a soft type pencil to help install the windows. The windshield fought me (possibly because of the thicker Hasegawa foil. I may have to redo it. The spec of white on the windows is from the pencil and will wipe away easily.

Okay, this build has gone on long enough. Gonna try my best to find time to finish it this week. Got the roll bar finished and installed the tach.

Trimmed the right rear window area with no extra lighting and it worked ok. Started to trim the lower area, but decided against it. On the next car, I will cover the Hasegawa with some blue or Tamiya tape first to eliminate the glare.