MarkJ

Thank you, Carl, for stopping by with a comment. By not leaving the hood open I will be able to finish quicker than first expected. I do need to make a window net and add the gauge decals to the dash. I will also have to make a shifter. Somehow I lost the one that came in the kit. Thanks again.

I glued the hood shut and heard that the African dust cloud is coming for most of next week so I real quick got the body ready for the tamiya x-22 clear and shot it this afternoon. Came out glossy enough that I won't have to polish it. if you look closely, you can see the reflection of the gum cleaner brush in the sides of the model. I can't get over how good the acrylic gold paint turned out. Really happy with it. The tamiya clear works really well too. You can get really close and shoot it wet but not enough to let it run and it dries glossy with the home-made flow improver I added to the mix. a little dawn dish detergent and a little acrylic retarder. just 10 drops added to the 10-gram mix of clear.

I've come to an epiphany. I was thinking how I ended my last take above and I believe I will just glue the hood shut paint the belts that are on the seat and just add the oob stuff to the interior and finish this thing as quick as possible. I really have no idea what the actual interior or how the belts look or anything about how it looks under the hood. So, I'm basically just wasting a lot of time. Main thing is to get the stance right, clear the body, decal it and future it. Then I can move on to my next build that I have always wanted to do and I will build it the same way. Hood glued shut and no extra extraneous stuff that takes a lot of time.

Did some brush painting of various parts that can't be airbrushed. The 1/4 glass fairings , the rear bumper fairings and the door handle depression covers. Also, the windshield and back glass moldings and the rear glass blow out straps. Also had to paint a bar on the interior floor where the cage attaches to the floor. Painted the pads and headrest on the cage flat black to differentiate them from the cage. Need to finally get around to the engine and also need to do the seat and shoulder belt harnesses and hardware. I probably should just glue the hood shut, clear the body and put this baby together and move on to the next build.

Thanks for dropping by, Donato. I really appreciate that you're staying in tune to the build.

I missed a touch up spot on the right side next to the right headlight cover. Will fix it before I clear the model.

I'm going to say I'm finished with the grille /bumper assembly. The fit is not perfect by any means but a lot better than you get making the model oob. If you do it that way you get a huge gap between the hood and the grille when the hood is completely shut on the sides. Really bad engineered kit but I don't think they wanted you to build a real Nascar cup car from 1972. More like a local track Saturday night special. For that purpose, it is just fine. On to the engine and eventual completion of this build.

Just need to add the park lamp covers to the bumper and I will be ready to paint the grille/bumper assembly. Then I can start on the engine.

Just a little more to do and grille/front bumper assembly will be done.

Got back to the grille. Looks like it will be a complete do over.

Thanks for the tip, I will look into that.

Thank you so much for stopping by and making a comment, Mike. It's always great to get some encouragement on these journeys. I just wish Hobby Lobby had a larger choice of colors to purchase. I see some colors on YouTube videos that I would really like to get my hands on, and they don't keep up with the stock that they do have. I'm afraid they will just up and stop carrying the Createx at all. Be just my luck now that I have found what a wonderful product it is.

Todd, now that you mention it, I was supposed to remove that button before I painted the car. I think they meant that to be a fuel overflow tube for the fuel tank but his cars was in the left taillight, but I'm not real sure. I will have to check my ref pictures again. Thanks for pointing that out to me before it was too late.

Got the touch up done and took the photos. Missed a spot on the front of the hood that needs a touch of paint. Thats the beauty of air brushing with a bottle of paint the paint will match with a bristle brush if a little dab will do you. If you have to touch up a rattle can paint job you have to decant some of the paint into a little cup which can be a messy process. Now on to the grille again to get that right.

Thanks, Pierre. I always have to touch up the line between the two colors on a 2-tone car because I blank at it. As soon as I get that done, I will post the results. I'm thinking the clear will be the saving grace on this build. But I'm pretty happy with the results so far.

I went ahead and sanded the whole body and hood with the pad first and then used the 6000,8000, and 12000 small square polishing cloths. I then reshot the whole body and hood and have a lot more cohesive look to the paint job. The body was looking a little bit lighter than the hood and I knew if I just repainted the hood that would really make it look darker, so I painted both and I'm glad I did. Again, I really like this Createx Wicked paint. It has a really nice sparkle and I don't think I will need to sand it before I shoot the clear which I may or may not polish.

Got the wicked gold on the body yesterday but I had the wrong recipe at first and that ended up my messing up the back of the hood. So, I will try to repaint the hood today. should turn out okay when I get the clear on the body. The wicked gold has a nice depth to it and sparkle as well that is not that evident in the photo below. Most golds are pretty dull and almost look like beige. For an acrylic paint the Createx paints are really good and easy to use even in humid weather.

Jack and Gerald. Thanks, but that's not the Southern 500 car that I'm doing. I know what it looks like I just have to fix it. The car changed a lot all through the year. It's the only one with red bumpers, red interior and a completely different door number font. It's also the greatest victory he had that year beating David Pearson with 8 laps to go after slugging it out with him all day.

I just realized by checking some front YouTube photo's of the real car at Darlington 500 that the center of the grille did not have a border down the middle of the grille. bummer. I just thought I was through with the grille. I will have to completely re do it. Oh well, if I don't it will bug the heck out of me. I still have plenty of mesh and styrene to fix it. Better to find it now before the build was completed.

I noticed in my photos that the mesh material pixilates funny depending on what angle you take the picture. I added borders to the grille mesh material, and it looks much better. I just need to prime the borders and paint them aluminum trying not to get any paint on the mesh. I will need to touch up the red paint on the bumper due to all the handling I've had to do to add the mesh. I should finally be finished with the grille/bumper assembly.

Got the body completely masked for the gold. Hoping for sunshine and a breeze this afternoon.

I was looking through my stash for some q-tips and found some mesh material that is the correct color so I won't have to paint it, and the holes will remain open. I installed it but need to work on the fit a little more and add a border around it to hide the rough edge from cutting it out. Don't know what the original purpose is for this mesh material, but someone sent it to me many moons ago and I don't remember who it was but thank them very much for doing so. Looks like I might get a window of opportunity this afternoon to paint the gold on the body.

Daniel, those wheels and tires are a great improvement over the originals. Black and gold is always a great two-tone combination because of the nod to Smokey Yunick.. He had a number 22 65 Chevy that he campaigned in late 1965 early 66 before he switched to the Chevelle. You've done a great job on this build and should be proud of it.

Got the black stuff painted and body masked for gold. Black turned out kinda glossy which I did not expect because I mixed the paint exactly the same as the red which came out a matte finish. The only thing I can think of is the humidity might have been a little higher, so it made the flow improver more active in the mix. It had rained a lot that day before I went out to paint. Whatever the reason it will be okay.

I agree, Keven. Pierre's grille is awesome. If I can get mine anywhere close to that I will be happy.