Toast

The interior is pretty much finished. I shortened some leftover pedals from a monogram stock car and that's a steering wheel glued to a piece of sprue. For the roll bar padding I taped off the bars and hit it with a light coat of rocker panel coating from an automotive store. Just enough to give it some texture. After that set I covered it with black and then gave it a nice clear flat coat to even everything out. Looks pretty good in there! She's coming together quick now!

I hate that I love that color so much! :-P

Wow! I hit the interior tub with clear and the red really popped! It's much brighter and deeper than even the cap which I went by when I picked it out. Here's the dash and gauges so far. going to keep this pretty simple. I'll paint the needles and the gauge panel screws but nothing more. The interior tub and seat so far. I was trying to add some roll bar padding with wire insulation. this stuff looked a little big but the roll cage sits right up against the interior tub so I think I'll just paint the padding on so everything will fit back into place.

That's a sweet looking charger! So sweet in fact, that I almost didn't notice the birthday card in the background. The orange and gunmetal is a prefect combo!

The black outline on clear decal film worked great. You can see the streaks in the ink in this picture. I printed out extras though and an application of a second decal gives it a nice solid black. You can see how much better the #1 looks than the #3. Time to dig through the decal bin and find some secondary sponsers.

Crazy? I like crazy! I'll be keeping an eye on this one.

Thanks for the compliments, this is turning out to be a pretty fun build. My first time using Bare Metal Foil. Cool stuff. I'm going to give the grille and ducts a black wash to bring out some detail. Hey, the hood pins are covered with BMF again! Mixed a couple sets of old Cup car decals from my stash, pretty good fit. Printed my decals. I'm thinking I'll have to double up the #13 decals as it looks like the ink goes on in thin streaks since it can't wick into the decal film like it does on paper. The detail in the graphics is pretty good though.

Hey i'm thinking about heading up the night before, as long as one of my friends will let me crash on their couch. Anyone have a plan for meeting up for some grub and some shop talk?

Hit it with some white a while ago and let that set before masking and shooting the red. I'm printing my own decals. I figured to get a nice black edge without having to cut out the decal so precisely, I taped off the white areas and will just print the black outline on clear decal film. Starting to look like she'll make a convincing race car. I've made some good progress on the chassis as well, I'll get some pics up of that too soon.

Thanks for the comments. Finished the hood pins tonight. The last one I applied turned slightly before the CA glue locked it down. Oh well, I'm really happy with the way they turned out. Shot one last coat of primer to check the low spots and body lines are blended smooth. Now I have to start getting color on her. I'm going to stick with the red and white paint scheme but I will be putting my Dad's company's logo on it and that is white so the car will be mostly red before the graphics are applied. till next time.

I ran a file across the hood and you can see it only filed down about half the hood pin. The rear hood pins were solid so I decided to try and reproduce a few to replace the ones on the front. I used BMF to make a nice tight mold of the pins and covered it with JB Weld to keep the shape. Then I mixed up some Milliput and pressed it into the mold. After it set I popped it out and carefully sanded it down to the right thickness. These little things are scary to work with, I almost lost my first two while sanding them. I wasn't sure if the Milliput would be too brittle when it was sanded that thin but so far it's worked perfect. Here's the first two glued to the hood.

While cleaning my Mom's house for Christmas last fall my brother and I stumbled upon a box of a bunch of our old model kits. I was surprised how well a few of them held up over the years. Most of them just ended up finally making it into the garbage but I had a little sentimental attachment to a few of them. This one in particular. I remember sitting at the dining room table with my dad and brother while we built it. It was pretty much our dad building it and my brother and I just telling him what decals to put on it. It finally slowed down a bit at work so I decided to see if it was going to be worth trying to give it a fresh new look. From what I researched online I believe it is an old Ertl kit. None of the parts are labeled with any manufacturer so I'm just guessing from what I've been able to find. I remember that it came with multiple front clips to replicate the different cars GM was running. This is how she looked when we found her. Pretty minimal cockpit, but that will make any improvements that much more noticeable. http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/wink.png At some point in it's life we got a hold of a paint marker, and with hands steadied by gallons of Mt. Dew, we attempted to add some detail to the undercarriage. After some careful prying everything came apart. I only broke one small piece of the roll cage, and I ended up having to cut the windshield apart to get it out. The front clip didn't come off very smooth but I've added the material I lost to one side and sanded the other side side smooth. Looks like new! Cleaned the decals off. All of them lifted easily except for the driver's name for some reason. Here's the fixed front clip. With the front clip glued back in place, body sanded down, ready for her first coat of primer. You can see how warped to roof is from all the glue used to hold the windshield in. This is where the fun started. These guide pins are molded right under each of the front hood pins causing the hood pins to sit in a sink hole. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v609/btoast/Monte%20Carlo%20Model/Monte-08.jpg

WOW! The wedged shape makes that car look so mean! I like!

Talking about this model got me in the mood to start working on it again. Here's how it looked when I pulled it out of the box. Stripped the paint and filed down the little spoiler. Built the ZR2 flairs. I had to trim some of the flair away to allow the doors to open. Oh well, on this beast the flairs are just for show anyway. Working on matching the bumper and interior to my Z. It's pretty cool, the model has flames molded into the door panel that resemble flames that I actually have on my door panels.

How have I missed this thread for so long? I love S-Series trucks! I got a couple Syclone kits I hope to get going on soon, as well as a few Blazer and Sanoma kits I want to combine, and a die-cast 4X4 I'm setting up with ZR2 flairs, cowl hood, bumper, and light bar like mine. So not gonna get them all done soon but now I know where to post the progress pics. Here's my rig.

While getting my Mother's house ready to host Christmas dinner this year we found a box of my brother's old model cars. This little 1969 Camaro hadn't even been touched yet! It looked like a fun kit so I took it home and dug into it. It is building up pretty nice. I'm just doing simple painting, no crazy stuff. My only problem is the decals are not cooperating. I'm assuming it's because they're so old but I'm wondering what you guys think. I used Microscale Micro Sol to get the stripe to fit around the cowl. The issue I'm having is the decal did not want to flow over the contour and on some of the flat areas became very wrinkled. I cut the decal along the cowl to get it to lay down, I can touch that up with paint, but even after I soaked the decal again to soften it still wrinkles up. Any ideas are very welcomed! Thanks.

I remember I was always told that to accurately depict a cup car I shouldn't clear coat over the decals. Reason is that they're vinyl decals placed over the paint the same way the model decals are. So I was watching Daytona qualifying this week and they actually had a segment on how much the teams worry about aerodynamics. So much in fact that they actually do lay a couple coats of clear over the vinyl decals. I think they said the decals on the cars are only 3 to 5 mils thick and that's enough for the teams to consider it drag. Ha ha the tag line of the segment was that racing used to be a game of inches, now it's a game of thousands of an inch. It sounded like this is something they only obsess over on their super speedway cars. If you're building a short track car this may not be the case.

Made some progress on the work bench today. Wasn't a fan of the Y'd off dual exhaust and the tiny tips that came with the kit so I bent up new exhaust and cut some new tips out of brass tubing. Also started on the interior. Laid down a base coat of white and masked off the inserts and matched them to the color I'll use for the body. It was the first time I used Bare Metal Foil for masking and I gotta say it's a little more tedious but the results are worth it. I only did one seat but all it needs is a little touch up and a shot of semi-gloss so I feel comfortable with tackling the rest of the interior pieces.

It's a 99 Silvy. It's the Revell kit that's already lowered and has some custom options but I'm trying to spice it up a bit more. Got the chassis going. And the engine is pretty much done. I'm in the process of removing the stock trim from the body and filling in the roll pan. Found a nice set of wheels and tires for it too.

Is it too late to enter? I've had a Silverado sitting on the work bench that I haven't been making much progress on. This could be a good motivator.

I actually got a really simple and I think honest answer to that question once. It was while I worked at a car stereo store and one of our customers was showing off all that our installers had done to his SUV. After showing where all his speakers, amps, and subwoofers were then counting all the LCD monitors I asked him, "why do you need 17 monitors in a vehicle?" "Because you don't." was his answer. Quite an arrogant answer but that's pretty much what customizing cars like that is all about. The man with the most toys wins. That's an awesome attention to detail. and the multi-colored flocking is great!

She's got color on her again! Finished priming it and sprayed on some good old Testors rattle can Sappire Blue. Got a little different sheen on the door panels as the rest of the pieces so as much as I'd like to just keep going with the SS stripes I'm gonna tape the doors and hood in place and hit it with a lite mist to even out the deference. Here's the filled in rocker panels. I just can't argue with a dark blue Chevelle. She's still rollin on the same wheel and tire combo but I have been keeping my eye out for anything that could fill those wheel wells. Starting to plan out the interior too. I'll be flocking for the first time so I'm getting excited to start. Till later. . .

Haven't put a model car together for quite a few years now and I've been itching to get back into it. Saw this on the shelf a while ago and pretty much just bought it because it was a 1969 Chevelle, my fav! These Bigtime Muscle cars are pretty cool and looking at it on my shelf sparked alot of ideas off in my head so I took it apart, stripped the paint, and shot some primer on it right away. And then it sat, slowly working it's way down on my list of priorities. Well I finally got to working on it again this last weekend and figured I'd post some progress shots to motivate me to keep making progress. So, hopefully, here is the first of many w.i.p. pics of my "improved" Bigtime Chevelle. Here she is right out of the box. The side outlets for the exhaust were pretty cool but I'm a classic dual pipes straight out the back kind of guy so that was the first thing I tackled. cleaned up the casting lines and hopefully will be putting down a base coat and color soon. gonna be blue with SS stripes. Definitely feel free to leave comments / criticism, she's not done yet and I'm always open to ideas.

My daily driver, weekend warrior, grocery getter, and occasional hotel all in one!

Thanks