OldNYJim

Very nice Shay! What color? Got any pics? I agree - the Tamiya body looks a little nicer (and would probably take less prep)...I wonder if the Revell chassis would fit under the Tamiya body? I can't believe neither of them did the pop up headlamps - they're the best bit! Tiny update, seeing as I'm replying anyway - started the paint process! Just a very light coat over all the hard to reach spots and in the cracks and crevaces...but it's gonna look nice in this red I think! The CLASSIC Miata color!

Ohhh, I never knew that! I had the manifold off my NB and had it in my head that the NA was the same too...live and learn! Thanks Shay!

Thanks Ray!

On a stock NA? Mine was cast iron I think - same on my NB too...

Those disks look OUTSTANDING! Beautiful work!

Some more cool stuff from in and around New York this past week or two: Saw a TV shoot for an FX show with a load of old 80s Fords and Chevys and so on: This was near my place (in Brooklyn)...looked ok from this angle: Significantly worse from this side though Some kind of Lamborghini in Chelsea: Super clean! Less clean, but I'd totally lower it and roll around in it all summer: And if this thing is QUICK, it would probably be a blast to drive around in!

Absolutely JC! These wheels too:

Thanks fellas! I had to move shortly after I started this one, so it ended up packed away...until I saw this at the NY Auto show this week: I took a bunch of reference pics (including laying on the floor to try and shoot underneath it from behind the rope )and got home and pulled this thing out again. Shot some filler primer on there to give me something to sand through to get it smooth and nice: Followed by white Createx sealer: I've been deliberating for a few days about what to do for the color inside of the body panels and bumpers. I've seen Miata NAs shot with some kind of black underseal inside the panels (including inside the plastic bumpers), and I've seen them with grey primer, bare plastic bumpers (in black AND white plastic) and various combinations of all three. Not being able to take the bumpers off the show car, I carefully masked the bumpers and body and went with a flat black...and when I airbrush the red I'll be letting it pick up a little overspray (which I've also seen on a few of these) - kinda like you see on a Mopar chassis! Not much progress, but excited to have it back on the bench!

This one was for a Tom Daniel Rommel's Rod group build on The Coffin Corner...I wanted to do something to kept the long wheelbase of the original kit, but really strip it down and test my scratch-building muscles - make something wild with weird proportions a little, kinda like an old 70s chopper. I used the front wheels from the kit, the cowl, the grill shell and the headlamps and pretty much built everything else! Thanks for looking fellas! Rommel thanks you for your attention!

I did some experimenting on some spoons that I airbrushed some Molotow onto...Tamiya clear, Future and Createx clear all dulled it significantly, but Future dulled it the least. That said, I discovered all of those results will give you a really bare-aluminum color that's obviously much more handle-able than, say, Alclad

Good tips everyone, thanks!

Same here - dry sanding works great, but wet sanding results in a rubbery paint which will probably start peeling.

That one above makes me think of a baby Rolls Royce with that big grill!

Still has the UK licence plates under the NY plates too!

I've been making coil springs lately to improve on the cheesy molded ones you find in most kits...but it would be cool if there was a place to actually buy them, and have them look the same every time rather than having to make 10 to get a good pair like I have to ? Anyone got any good leads on miniature springs, off the shelf?

Thanks Mark! Got a few more bits done on this thing..it's getting close now! Got the body cleared, polished, and the interior in... ...fitted the fan belt: Painted the rad, and got the rear tires on the wheels: Oh, and before mounting the body on there flocked the floor and added that grenade shifter that I made: More soon!

A few more from NYC this part week or so...

And as if by magic, someone renting one of them on my street this morning. The app unlocks it somehow, and you use a keypad to start it with a unique number generated by the app: At 40 cents a minute I think I'd rather just take a cab, but whatever works for people I guess! And a shot of the app, in case anyone's curious - you just pick the blue dot nearest to you, and tap it to reserve the car and start using it. There's more of the little suckers around here than I realised!

Also, a Peterbuilt front grill looks mighty big when it's 6 feet away from you at speed and all that's protecting you from it is a thin cloth roof and a squidgy plastic bumper ?

I see a lot of them here in downtown Brooklyn - mostly rentals that you can hire with an app...they're about 40 cents a minute as I recall. They're always parked for weeks on the streets around me until someone else rents them The NYPD have a bunch too - those and Priuses. I had the use of one of these as a company car for a couple of months - I used to commute 40 or 50 miles each way to work and the boss gave me the company's little runaround Smart to use for that. It lasted 7 weeks of 65mph freeway cruising before the trans gave out and I went back to my regular car. It was a drop top too - awful car for long rides but kinda fun around the city as long as your friends don't see you When it would snow the primitive traction control would kick in all the time and make it impossible to get it out of my drive - but with the fuse removed it would donut pretty well on a slippery parking lot!

Ahh, I didn’t consider that this would be about printing decals - for stuff like gauges and licence plates and so on I’ll use printshop on regular photo paper or thinner...but yes, printing on decal paper might be tougher

Got a CVS or a Rite Aid near you? My local store prints photos for 35 cents...and their printers are WAY higher quality than about any desktop machine. A UPS Store or a Staples can do it too...but they're usually more expensive...

Really inspirational work Rick - very cool! Can't wait to see more!

Here's a fun little resin piece that I picked up - I figured it would be fun to show the steps I'm doing to paint this...despite it only being one piece there's gonna be a decent amount of work in getting this painted really nicely I think! There's also going to be a lot of waiting for paint to dry so this won't be the most action packed thread, but I did the first couple of steps at least so here goes... First up, I gave this thing a GOOD wash with some Dawn dishsoap. There's a lot of little nooks and crannies for mold release to get stuck in and I didn't want any surprises when it came to painting and masking this thing. Then, I shot with some Walmart grey primer, checked and cleaned a couple of little mold separation lines and so on and then shot with Createx white sealer as a base color: Next, I thinned down some Createx opaque black (that stuff seems to take forever to dry if you don't), and added some shadow detail in the places where shadow would naturally fall: And on the back too! As you can see, there's a tonne of little details that you can give some attention to on this - the skull guy's tongue hanging out, the hand's nails, the various rings, the stitches on the hand...lots of detail to mess with! It's a really nicely done piece! Once the black had dried, I thinned out some clear yellow and built up at bone-color tint to the skull. The clear yellow will allow the black shading to show through still, but I also like to build up the yellow some more in the darker areas and leave it a little lighter in the high spots: I'm not worried about getting some yellow on the hand at this point - the entire skull part will be masked off when I'm done with it so I can paint the hand separately...I think the hand is going to be a creepy Frankenstein green of some shade perhaps? Anyway... more soon, hope this wasn't boring so far!

Beautiful work Art - this is the best one of these I've seen built, I think! That wood looks AMAZING, and I like the candy red on the frame. The Alclad came out great on the motor too, really nice job!