Dave G.

Just get the paint stripped and see how bad the plastic actually is, it's likely not/hopefully not as exaggerated as the paint. I'm thinking a little sanding then glazing putty and re-sanding should get you out of the woods. Then prime again and go from there. Go easy laying on hot lacquer lol. Everything I've read on the Zero colors is they dry flat or maybe satin, so you just need enough color to cover the body evenly. Clear coat is your gloss coat and final finish.. It's then really a base coat clear coat system which is fine but you don't need to bury the car in color coat. That said I'm not a fan of using hot lacquers on models to begin with and the plastic in this kit seems especially vulnerable. A couple companies would mix your color in enamel which is plastic friendly.

Sorry, didn't even notice the quote or rather whose it was .

Oh I do wet coats too, just generally not with hot lacquer on plastic. The new hybrid lacquers you can about pour on. Tamiya acrylic goes on nice wet too but that itself is more hybrid lacquer itself. And enamel I always did wet. And actually at that with the .25 it's still a wet coat but thin due to the fine spray with hot lacquer, can't say by any means it's a dry coat..

The medium is good too but that .25 is exceptional to me. You probably get the same paint job in the end but to me the .25 is just sweet. Another thing I do is use the fine needle with medium tip, the transition from light to heavy spray is slower. You wouldn't think so but it is.

In my case 200 but the same tip fits the 100. I use the 200 with side cup. I also use the .5 tip but my main one is the fine. My 200 is the old style with screw in tips. Listen, I'm not saying go out and buy one lol !! You should be able to get a nice finish with what you have.

Usually with lacquer any tip try is melted away as you go to paint again. But you could keep a Qtip handy and a little lacquer thinner to do a little swab out of the tip if need be. Usually just wetting it with the thinner will do it.. If you're doing mist coats though I bet this isn't even an issue. The sides of the cup shouldn't dry, especially if you use a cap on it. When acrylic dries it dries hard, I use Liquitex retarder in my thinner blend for acrylics and it pretty much stops tip dry. Also with acrylic paints you can force flash dry with a hair dryer or even just straight air from the airbrush that quickens the flash off to a minute or two. I would think the .35 would be fine but then again I use Badger and Paasche Brushes. I think probably my favorite lacquer tip is my Badger .25, beautiful atomization from that tip. I can cut it back to where I don't even see the mist but it magically collects on the surface or do some broader coverage too. I love that tip been using it for some 45 years now. But I'll cut back the Paasche #3 tip too and get good results. Practice is my biggest suggestion.

Having not shot Zero specifically but plenty of lacquer, I too shoot base coats at under 20 psi and in closer than 6 inches ( that depends on the thinner used, not sure what Zero uses).Your goal is nice thin even coats, they dry flat anyway so you don't want heavy wet coats that might remain glossy.That's not the goal, you want even but smooth coverage. If I bought some Zero paint I'd do several tests myself before shooting a body with it so I knew what to expect performance wise. I've shot some lacquers under 15 psi fwiw. So I say experiment with air pressure and distance on a test subject before re-shooting the bodies.

All I can say is it goes over chrome parts well and over acrylic color coats well.

Nix that, was thinking of a different kit so I edited out what I wrote earlier. Either way there is just one rear axle.

For Folkart I use the same thinner combo I use to cut the paint for spraying from an airbrush just more of it. It has some Iso alcohol and water, some Liquitex retarder and a trace of Dawn dish soap in it ( the thinner that is). The thinner blend is about 70% water and the paint is thinned to where it wants to flow real easy. I use the same thing in Liquitex Soft Body acrylic artist paints too. The artist paints probably stick to chrome better but I actually use either on chrome. As to the dish soap you just need a little on a mixing stick put into 3oz of thinner, it takes very little to improve flow. I say that because I think people over dose it. By no means am I saying you have to do it this way, I'm just reporting how I do it is all. I also use water clean up oils.

MCW can now also match a chip with his spectrometer camera and come up with a formula via computer programing. Give him call or email, he's a friendly guy. He is also mixing enamels now so you can ask about that too.

Hot water is safer than a hair dryer. If you get too close thus too hot with a dryer you can make the plastic brittle. The key though is to get some tension in the plastic beyond center, so if it's warped or twisted to the right put in tension to the left as it heats. When it cools and you release whatever means was holding it while heat it will hopefully come back to at least somewhat neutral. Enough that it won't fight gluing up.

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It's nice to buy with assurance even if it costs a few bucks more ! I hate junk tools.

Looks great Sam ! Heck I'd get the kit just for the Y block Ford.

Sam that rod is Exactly what I meant in my earlier post ! It came out awesome. Congrats !

You also can build a really nice low chrome rod too. Nice filler work, nice paint, Molotow spray with an airbrush relevant chrome or polished aluminum as the case may be for just a few items. A deliberately low chrome rod but nice, never was a fan of a bunch of chome anyway, except the 50's factory cars.. To that theory comes opposing kickers. Kicker #1. I'd still prefer the Monogram. Kicker #2. The Lindberg sells cheaper.

Just fwiw, I've never built a Monogram model with seriously bad fitting parts. I built the Monogram original release of the Big T back in 1963, I was 13yo and I don't recall any issues getting it together, nor the Big Deuce a couple of years later. But given a choice of just one to build today and as much as I like the stance on the Big T, I'd save the extra money up for the Deuce personally, just would love to see a Firedome hemi available to put in it. Lindberg to me is not in the same class, ever. But that could just be my impression. I've never built the Lindberg T but I prefer the Monogram anyway. Then lately there is the issue we've seen here of gray chrome parts trees in the Lindberg, that is to say they didn't get plated.

Did you get the H working ?

Micro Mark sells the carousel stand of high speed steel ( should be better than carbon steel) bits with clear dome cover for $30 . They also sell the tubes of 6 replacement bits in each size for $7 or so. I was at their site yesterday looking for no.76 bits and they had them. I trust them to sell decent quality tools and they claim these are sharp precision bits made from HSS. That's important because there are many cheap knock offs that aren't precision nor sharp and made from plain carbon steel.

It only took me several decades to figure out because 1/1 is painted on it's wheels a plastic model doesn't have to sit there on a tray or cardboard or whatever. It doesn't weigh 3-4k but can be picked up and shot at any angle. Plus the air pressure doesn't kick BLAH_BLAH_BLAH_BLAH up into the paint. We really are creatures of habit.

It's a rough 1/32 scale. 16ft3" divided by 32 is 6-3/32" so pretty close.

Ya I think that potential exists. But I don't really spray vertical on models. It's a little plastic body, I take a plastic cup with a loop of tape on the bottom and shove that up against the underside of the roof inside the car. Now I can hold the body at any angle I want to shoot at, obviously preferably down onto it. That's my latest method, could be different tomorrow.

Mike it's pretty hard to screw that stuff up ( humid warm weather might blush it when spraying). It's thin but not really runny. 4 coats is about right. Me being me I'd probably polish that without sanding, the finish looks great at least from here 1000 miles from your home more or less ! No idea if the color is what you had in mind but it came out nice.

Hopefully you are well supplied with Tamiya over there, here in the US the supply has diminished for whatever reason. The Omega is quiet. The only real down side is it runs continuously and bleeds air when max pressure is reached vs shutting down. It uses basically a refrigerator compressor, so it's quiet minus the air bleed function. But even bleeding air it's only in the 40db range or so. And really that's about all I know about it except it too has a 1 liter tank. A tank is a good thing. Others can take it from there.