MarkJ

Finally finished. More pictures in the finished Nascar forum, Daniel Suárez

Finished my first Nextgen Camaro and I really enjoyed it. It took 88.5 hours, roughly about 2 months. This was Daniels first cup win car. He pretty much dominated the field for Trackhouse Racing at Sears Point. I came up with a way to hold the body to the chassis without gluing it. I will post the process in the tips and tricks forum. It's a pretty easy deal and it's not visible, except when you remove the body.

Wow, Andrew. You have some real master modeling going on here. At first, I had my doubts about this project, but it's going to be through the roof Awesome for sure.

Jed, I can describe it to you but it's better to show you with a picture. It works very well though. You will be surprised how simple the fix is.

Well, my first NextGen model is complete. I will try to take the final photos tomorrow. I really enjoyed building it. It took 88.5 hours to complete. I only had to make two scratch-built parts and device a system to hold the body to the chassis without gluing it. I will post it in the tips and tricks section after I post the final photos. Its a pretty easy solution . Its seems a shame to glue the body to the chassis hiding all the neat stuff some of you guys add to the chassis .

I hope you have better luck than I had. It did not turn out well on the model and I had to end up using future after all. I thought the test with the red truck body was good but not so much. It was more of a flat finish than a satin one.

Excellent tip. Now I can see what you're talking about. I'll have to try that. what do you use for the wires?

Ouch, Pierre. I see what you did there. Very funny. We shall see. I'm sure this microscale stuff has been around for a while. I just wonder why I have never heard of it before.

Wow, Pierre. The realism of this build is off the charts. You have a special talent for weathering for sure.

Wow, Excellent build, Steve, and one you won't see duplicated very much like the Nextgens. I can see why you are extremely happy.

Thanks, Pierre. Microscale also sells a gloss and a flat in the same product. What I like is that this is specifically designed to use as a decal sealer and thinned properly, it goes on just like the future floor finish and takes about the same time to dry. On the next model I do that I want a glossy look I will use the gloss instead of future.

Jed, I think you will be pleasantly surprised by your results. You can use your airbrush if you want, but I'm not sure how much you would need to thin it for that. It says on the bottle that you can use water or alcohol to thin it. To me, distilled water is safer for the decals.

I found an old truck body that I had sprayed with testors enamel probably 40 years ago. I polished it with 4000 to 12000 polishing pads and then mixed up a small amount of microscale satin finish which I thinned 1:1 to make it flow out better with a brush. I painted it on the door and really liked the results. It brushed on smooth with no brush marks just like future does but it gave me the satin finish I was looking for when it dried, instead of a glossy finish like future gives you. I think this will be the only thing I need to coat my finished body with to seal the decals and also provide a satin finish to the whole model. I transferred some of the microscale satin to a dropper bottle so I could mix it with distilled water. below is the product and the finished door of the truck.

I have one more thing to do before fururing, and then I might try some santin finish I bought from Micro Mark, after I try it on a spare body. All of these nextgen cars are covered with wraps that are not see yourself mirror smooth glossy. Especially this car that I'm doing.

Black insulation from paper clips? I have no clue . How bought a photo of the paper clip before you make the insulators from it. Looks really good.

Looking good. She's coming along quite nicely. Don't forget to put the seat decals on first before installing the seat it's a lot easier that way.

Always loved the black and red Bud Moore big Mercs. Yours is a fine example of one. Excellent job on the build.

I think the Camaro decals are extras for this car because the Camaro decal comes on the rear bumper decal for this model's decal sheet. I also noticed that the thin white line decal at the jack placement point is not on any of the sheets that come for this model. I ended up masking it and painting the little white lines at that location.

I messed up some decals, but luckily, I have the spare decal sheets that came with the Chase Elliot kit I'm using to build the model. One that I messed up was the ethanol decal that goes over the fuel inlet. The Elliot kit's ethanol decal is just a green border decal with nothing in the middle. The one that came on the decal sheet for the car I'm building has the cap in it and that was how I messed up the decal trying to get it to form into the cap using micro sol. I will just have to paint the cap aluminum. I'm ending up with 2 Camaro decals that I don't know where they go, so, I guess I will have to just leave them off. The quality of these decals is very good just like the last set of powerslide decals I used a couple of years ago.

I have all the panel decals installed after much consternation and some don't fit like the reference pictures I found, say they should, so I had to do some trimming. Won't be too much longer now.

Enjoy. it's a great kit to build once you get into it. Just make sure you don't install any parts upside down because some will install that way but will keep you from continuing if you don't go back and correct them. I'm mainly talking about the rear suspension. I'm working with the decals right now and some don't fit like the reference pictures of the real car show they should. If there are any panel decals that border any grille or headlight panel openings, make sure you install those first. I had to do some trimming to get some of the decals to fit, that I wouldn't of had to do, if I had done them in the correct order. Good luck.

I can already tell it's going to be a winner, Pierre. That metallic blue looks awesome already and not the hint of a brush stroke.

Man, that's the exact kit I need. I could just build it OOB and be a happy guy. Only trouble is its 1/24 scale, and my Grand Sport is 1/25th.

Thanks for the heads up, Randy, Luckily, I had already installed the right door window before I started to decal. I had to trim the left roof rail decal because it is made to go with only half the left roof top strip being there. I fixed my roof strip because I couldn't leave it like that. Just didn't look right.

No more photos in the wip because it will give away the car I'm doing, if you haven't already figured it out. I'd say I've got a little less than 50 % of the decals on the model. You have to be careful because, some decals go on top of other decals. I have most of the hood done and all of the roof and part of the doors if it had doors. The hard ones will be the nose going on to the ft fenders stretching all the way to half of the top of the doors. Also, the lower rear panel decal that goes on to both quarter panels. These decals are so thick that the micro sol takes a while to work on them to get them to lay down properly. It's very labor-intensive work.