Scale-Master

The resin wheel centers for the front fit very well. The photo-etched rears on the other hand took a good amount of sanding and shaving of the rims to fit as deep into the rims as they should. Decals are provided for the fronts. The Dunlop tire lettering is included too.

The tires are soft and rubbery, which on the other cars I've built in this series works out as a nice feature. But these rims are a larger diameter and the tires look to be the same stock as used on the smaller wheels. Unfortunately they don't stay concentrically round when stretched over the wheels. Additionally they began to split after being on the rims overnight. So I machined a new set of tires.

1991 Le Mans winner. This is a 1/87th scale LeMans Miniatures resin kit produced in '91. The bodies on all the kits in this series I've seen were pre-painted, which makes touch up of the fluorescent colors a bit of a challenge. (And it does need touching up.) The kit is packaged like a multi-blister Hot Wheels card and the clear vacuum formed plastic was super brittle. So the first step for me was to cut out the windows and headlight covers from the exact same material to see where that went. Thankfully the kits usually provide two sets of those parts. The clear was equally brittle as the packaging and the windshield split in two places while I was cutting the side windows out. So I used the second pull for the windshield. The headlight covers were surprisingly the easier parts to trim to fit. Before installing the clear parts the interior and headlight buckets needed to be painted. The clear fits pretty well especially considering the size. The kit even provides a decal for the dashboard.

I textured and finish painted the valve covers. These are also fully scratch-built items.

The left bank of carbs has been installed and the linkages made and hooked up. Connecting them to the bell crank wasn't too hard, but getting the tiny keepers on the carb ends of them was a challenge. I also added the fitting for the vacuum advance line.

That was fun. Now it's done:

I had this Tamiya GT-4 kit that had been cannibalized for another project. Except for those missing parts it is out-of-the-box. The decals are a combination of custom designed and printed, parts-box left overs and some readily available off the shelf Warbird/Scale-Master stock. Mostly Tamiya paints were used, plus some very old original Alclad metal finishes. WIP Thread: http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/172142-p-51-mustang-gt-4/

The mirrors were painted Fluorescent Red and Clear Green over silver as a nod the wingtip lights on the plane. The wing tips were sometimes red, so I painted the cove details to reflect that.

I used NATO Black instead of the "proper" black for the window surrounds. Then I sprayed the clear sections Clear Blue and then a few more coats of Smoke.

I connected the throttle cable (more stainless…) to the bell crank and made the primary return spring. I made an eyelet for the spring to attach to the bell crank from stainless too. Next I installed that subassembly to the manifold, along with the two right side main carb bodies, and added the linkage for the right bank. I also installed the ¼ inch synchronizing adjuster screws to the inboard side of the linkages and added a few other machined details to the carbs.

The kit decals were used for the C/F on the front winglets and I left them semi-gloss for the time being. I went with red for the grille since a red spinner was common.

I designed decal sheets for over a dozen Tuskegee "Red Tail" Mustangs, so it was only fitting to me to make the rear wing red with the yellow stripes commonly used on the aircraft wings. The stripes are from an old Scale-Master / Develotech McDonald's T-Bird sheet. I just cut off the black pinstripes. Colored trim tabs were common on the rudder, so I went with yellow end plates and some more custom decals tied to the theme. The taillights were sprayed TS-74 Clear Red before being sprayed with TS-71 Smoke for a blacked out effect. The Red Tail theme was carried onto the center panel too.

The wheels were done in a blue tinted silver shade. I made a few more custom decals too. One for the gas cap; I used the same design as on a P-51 filler. It needed an appropriate name and numbers to follow the theme. The 88 is from the Tuskegee P-51 Little Freddie, but I beefed it up a bit. The numerals are tied to the name of this project.

I painted the middle set of louvers the same green as the anti-glare panel. The outside hood louvers were done in another old Alclad exhaust shade to represent the exhaust pipes on the planes.

I made the invasion stripes using white and black Warbird/Scale-Master decal stripes from sheets SP002.

The insignias came from an old Testors/Scale-Master sheet. This era of planes did not have the red bars. I also Dullcoted the checkerboard nose.

Thanks guys! I airbrushed some AS-17 green on the rear emulating a scheme on some P-51s. (Yes, it is not exactly the right shade, but then this car is not the right airplane shape either.) I also sprayed an anti-glare panel on the center of the hood.

I drew up and printed some tailored checkerboard decals.

The suspension and drivetrain was done with other deviations from stock colors. I used mostly old original Alclad colors from the 70's. The brakes were done with Tamiya acrylic clear colors for an anodized look.

The front of the hood and the nose were shot with Tamiya LP-8 Yellow.

The chassis was painted Zinc Chromate as the internal panels of a P-51 would be. I mixed the color from old Testors and Tamiya enamels and did some mild shading.

I've played around with this idea of doing cars with warbird schemes before, and I've done it using a few different Hot Wheels over the years. I'm using a Tamiya GT-4 kit that I cannibalized for other projects so it's perfect for exploring this concept in a larger scale. I have a general idea of what I think it should look like. After tinkering with TS-17 and AS-12 silvers from the cans and not getting the look I wanted, I found mixing them together and airbrushing them made what I was looking for; a bright satin silver with mild flakes.

After missing the wire loom hold down, I thought it was prudent to machine the fuel line hardware for the carbs before moving forward. A dozen fittings later… I still have more to do and more parts to machine for this subassembly.

Thanks guys! I've machined and installed the carb mounting nuts, washers and bolts to the top sides as well as a few other hardware parts. The linkages are set up on the carbs too.

I got a little ahead of myself when I was adding the manifold bolts and forgot to install the wire loom hold-down bracket. (It protects the loom and the linkage from rubbing or hanging up.) I made it from annealed brass. I pulled two bolts and installed it under them. Now I'm back on track…