Scale-Master

And the black is done... (I drilled the mounting holes through the plastic first.) The top one is the one piece 3D printed plate; below it is the new, more in scale, (37 piece) one. Maybe only a subtle difference, but worth the effort to me. A thin coat of clear and it's done. I'll add tags closer to the end of the whole project.

I made the license plate light housing and added it to the holder. Just loosely assembled…

The license holder is made of brass too. I had to anneal it to get it to conform to the tight U-channel shape for the bottom section.

The interior is fairly simple. The seats are molded to the chassis. I used some old Testors for the blue on the seats. The shifter is a straight pin cut down to fit; provided by the kit. The dash has some nicely molded in detail, so I hand painted it with silver and gray and used clear gloss for the gauge faces. I didn't see the need to make gauge decals since visibility is limited through the windows. Getting the dash to line up with the windshield opening was fun. A tiny drop of 5 minute epoxy was used to tack it into place while the body was on the chassis so I could slide it around until it was properly positioned. Then it was reinforced with CA after it was dry enough to remove. I did the wood grain on the steering wheel a bit heavy to show up through the windows when it is assembled.

I decanted and airbrushed Tamiya TS-47 Chrome yellow for the color. I built it up in four light coats spanning two days to get an even but not heavy finish. I'm not worried about the orange peel on the left front fender; it looks worse than it really is, and it will get cut and buffed before clear coating.

Thanks Jason and Ray. The backside was done with 11 more "backwards" pieces and drop-outs to create the stamped effect. It will be silver so I started building the color up in light coats to help hold the pieces in place. Now that the characters have had the fillets added to them and a coat of primer, they are starting look presentable.

After a day of chasing tiny pinholes I primed the body for the yellow with a nice even coat of white. There's a better than 50/50 chance that most of the pinholes would be filled in by the paint, but it wasn't worth the gamble.

The same plastic was used to make the "raised" face with dropouts for the tags. All the tiny letters for the state and the main characters are individual pieces. There are two layers for the larger ones. They were arranged by hand with a scalpel and tweezers and held in place with clear gloss. (That's 25 pieces.) That "assembly" was applied as a single piece to the brass. I know it looks a bit rough, but once I add the fillets to the letters and numbers it will look better.

You got that right Andrew.

FWIW, today is the three year anniversary of when I started this project. I designed and 3D printed a license plate for it; even started painting it, but I didn't care for the way it looked mostly because it was too thick and had no back side detail. So I made another one from scratch. I've used similar processes to this to make other plates. I started with some 0.005 sheet brass. I cut this blank and drilled some holes. And then I cut a plastic "rim" from .005 sheet plastic and attached it with clear gloss paint.

Looks like I got lucky; after some searching I found a pair of Precision Miniatures Ferrari Lusso knock-offs I can donate to replace the missing ones.

The kit comes with these nice preassembled wheels and tires. Unfortunately two are missing the knock-offs…

I machined these knobs to mount the Wink mirror to the brackets.

You'll have to take up the year issue with Vroom, but yes it will be the yellow #24. Ironically the black #124 250 TR I recently built was referred to as both a '57 and a '58 depending on the source.

The windows were vacuum formed as one piece. I cut the rear window off and was able to make the sides and windshield fit as one piece. The four headlight covers are molded in the piece on the right. The headlight covers are less than a quarter inch at the largest point, the driving lights are less than a tenth of an inch.

Turns out this resin actually is quite nice to work with; not as brittle as it first seemed. It is relatively hard, but it takes scribing well. I had to remove a good amount of material from the insides of the right window area to get the windows the fit properly. All the panel lines, louvers and trim were scribed in. The little fissures were sanded out with no need for filler. I also drilled holes for the wipers and the filler caps. One of the caps is missing from the kit parts, but I have an extra from the TR250 I just finished that will fit perfectly. The B pillar was so thin on the left side that the louvers became open when I cleaned them up. I put a piece of thin Tamiya tape on the inside to close them.

At least with stainless and aluminum tight tolerances can be held. The mirrors hold all these parts together by friction. I added the pebble texture. And a decal I made too…

Originally I made the mirror faces for the fender units out of chrome Mylar, but being as large as they are, I later thought they needed more depth... So I made new ones from stainless steel while I was making the Wink panels. (Mylar is literally 1000 times easier to work with.) But the results are an improvement. Sometimes the reflection is hard for the camera to capture too. The mirror housings are painted the same color as the body will be.

This is a Vroom brand 1/43rd resin kit. The body is pretty thin and feels a bit delicate and somewhat brittle. Overall it's a good casting with moderate to mild surface texture and has that aromatic smell that some people hate. (It sparks fond memories for me.) The flash in the windows is not even paper thin on the left, but heavier on the right side so that will have to be addressed when fitting the glass. There is also a fissure along the right front fender by the louvers, (most likely from a worn or cracked mold). It may sand out, but it could need filler to retain the shape of the nicely rendered body. There were several skinned over holes on the bottom of the body. Rather than risk them being an issue later I "popped" them, shaved out the edges and filled the holes with CA. A coat of primer just on the bottom shows those issues are close to fully fixed and I will move onto cleaning up the top sides of the body. It also shows another one of those fissures in the right side rocker…

I made the mounting brackets from aluminum. I've found in real life these things work best when they are firmly mounted to a rigid part of the car. They should be mounted as high and forward as possible, but not too close to the (semi-flexible Lexan in this case) windshield. As great as these are for rear and side views they do clip a bit of the top off what can be seen out the front. (You get used to it… Like having sun visors permanently down.) I cut deep grooves into the roll bar for strength, and a welded-in look.

This inset sets the angles for the mirror panels. It's made up of six pieces.

I left PM before the GT350 was to the point of production casting. I cast a lot of the Mustang convertibles though... I think Paul Fisher (of Fisher Model & Pattern) had a hand in fine tuning some of the Shelby parts. And since Lloyd had the real car in his driveway one would expect it to look good.

First part of a new subassembly… A few hours of machine work; slow going using 1/32 inch end mill. Now for some hand finish work.

Thanks Rusty. This is certainly one for Memory Road...

Thanks Guys! I appreciate the compliments! The tail lights got the same treatment as the headlights except I made the bulbs from thin clear tubing that was sealed on the ends with clear gloss. Since the lenses are molded in clear I used Tamiya lacquers to tint them. I added details to the housings as well to accept the wiring/plugs.