Scale-Master

The decals are on and the windows are installed…

The vacuum-formed windows and the headlights were quite yellowed so they have been soaking in peroxide and sitting in the sun for over a week. The windows look much better but the lights have not changed as much, although they are a little clearer. I did the seat material with a light dusting of black over red as the real fabric has a subtle red and black pattern. It looks a bit harsh in this lighting but through the windows it has enough contrast to be visible. I made the shifter out of part of the oversized PE windshield wiper.

The body was shot Tamiya Italian Red. Both front wheel wells and one of the rears needed to be deepened to get the tires to tuck inside the body and to sit nice and low.

Thank you Caleb. You made my day. I've since done other different and highly detailed steering wheels.

The wheels are three piece affairs and the spoke inserts don’t fit the best so I filled the gaps with the same gold paint they were sprayed with.

Starter 1/43rd resin kit. This one is pretty simple, only thirty some pieces if you count the clear parts after they are cut out. While not a bad casting, the worst part of this kit was the taillight recesses. They needed to be cleaned up and I didn't want to make new lights so I made a tool out of brass tubing on my lathe to remove the clumps of resin and keep the lights round. Then a small chisel was used to remove the rest of the errant resin.

Tamiya's recent release of the Supra GR done up as a tribute to the 1995 Tom's Toyota Castrol Supra. I designed and printed a set of decals tailored to the newer body. Of course sizes and proportions of the graphics had to be tweaked to make them fit. Otherwise it is an out-of-the-box build.

I started with a Tamiya Subaru BRZ and adapted the iconic scheme from the Shelby Toyota 2000GT to it. I designed and printed the decals but built the model out-of-the-box. I made new chrome Toyota badges for the nose and rear end. Since it's a custom/tribute car I'm fine with the non-Toyota parts.

The kit wheels didn't do much for me, but after I painted 2/3 of the recesses on them gray I liked how they looked for this car.

Finished interior.

Finished interior.

Basic chassis. Simple engine. I used Mylar for the rotors.

The chassis was done close to stock but I painted the sway bars yellow. I used Mylar for the rotors again.

The Scale-Master decals have been applied.

Here it is with my Scale-Master decals applied.

Since I wasn't using the scheme from the Toyota 2000GT on the Supra, I thought I'd try to adapt it to a Scion FRS, however I only had a Subaru BRZ kit. No problem, I'll just rebadge it, (yes, I know the BRZ has some differences from the FRS and 86). Like the Supra, I drew all the graphics and printed a decal sheet.

Originally I thought it might be cool to use the paint scheme from the Shelby Toyota 2000GT on this body. But the shape of the front end didn't work well with the lines of the graphics. So I decided to use the graphics from the mid 90's Castrol Supra on it. (This is not going to be a race car.) I drew up all the art work and printed a decal sheet.

All finished… 1/43rd scale Starter resin kit from 1984.

The windows are in, they don't fit the best. It's an older Starter kit so it's only worth so much work with the other issues it has. Ready for final assembly.

I debated whether to clear it with the wing on or off. Being tough to hold securely I decided it was safer to mount it to the body first.

The decals were usable, but not registered well and the sizes were off on some of them; not uncommon for this era of Starter kits.

The trim and other small details have been hand painted.

I used thin chrome Mylar for the rear wing.

I shot the body with TS-23 Light Blue.

The interior is pretty basic and the seat is soft vinyl.