Scale-Master

The dashboards for the Rain-X and Hot Wheels versions came with decals. I decided it wasn't worth my time to make decals for the gauges so I just hand painted the instrument panels as they came from the kits.

There's a M379 version too, it looks a bit more conventional. As weird as the M482s look, I kind of like them; but then I had a pet sturgeon too...

Before the first sealer coat of primer I added steel pins to the rear wing too.

The mirrors come with rather larger square blocks at the base of the pylons, but they don't really match the shape of the rectangular holes in the fenders. I filled the holes and replaced the blocks with steel pins.

McCormack & Dodge 1984 Le Mans. Finished 13th place. This is a 1/43rd scale resin Starter kit from 1984. I have two of these kits and figured I'd build the one with the cleaner casting, if there was a difference. Turns out they are about the same quality, but they aren't exactly the same castings. I found photos that show the single scoop/vent is correct for this version so I'll use it, but I wonder why the difference…

After I cleared the hood of the Sunoco car and it had dried for several days, some of the decals that cracked and I had thought looked OK after butting them back together had developed fissures at the same cracks where the dark blue now showed through. I blended in the same yellow mix I used earlier and a new mix for the red to hide them knowing it's a patch job, not a true repair.

The Sunoco kit came with decals for the ignition boxes. I used the same artwork to print copies for the other two versions. At this point, (due to inaccuracies of the kits), true accuracy is not as much of a concern as what looks good as long as it's believable regarding color choices. That's the Rain-X chassis with the part installed. The blue boxes will go in the Sunoco car.

The exhaust pipes are molded poorly and fit together the same way. A lot of clean-up is required on each half of each pair. Then even more filling and sanded is needed after they are cemented together. The ends were different diameters on the left than on the right so I added the same size brass tubing to make them equal at the tips at least... When I installed the exhausts , the ends in no way would align with the holes in the body so I cut the tail pipe sections off and drilled pilot holes to pin them back together at a more appropriate relation to the body exits.

The rear bulkheads also benefited from some tedious hand painting. Definitely worth the time if you're going to have the bodies removable. The bulkheads fit pretty uniformly, but I was surprised at how differently each of the three engines fit into and lined up with the chassis since they all share the exact same parts. In the end I suspect it won't be noticeable.

Thanks Rich! Matching the spot printed colors on the Sunoco wasn't a big problem; I've had a lot of practice, it's the dot pattern of the litho printed decals (like the Hot Wheels car) that's frustrating. Sometimes I clear the decals before use. I prefer not to, but in some cases it is the better option over creating new ones when replacements aren't available. I have a 1/43rd project that will require that technique to salvage most of the decals, I usually just use Future or Tamiya X-22 and hand paint them trying to stay inside the existing spot printed clear. If it's not a complicated sheet I'll spray the whole thing.

Turns out I missed a few small decals that are applied on top of other decals. I'm going to blame it on trying to do too many projects at the same time. (In addition to these three I have nine other models in progress on my bench at the moment.)

I also had to touch up the side decals on the hood section. Orange was not printed in one part of the Hot Wheels graphic and it left a white area. Since the decals didn't line up with the body panels those areas needed to be hand painted in too. Unfortunately the decals are printed in a four color offset process, meaning all the colors are made up of dots, so there is no paint (or spot color) that can match any of the shades. And the wheel wells needed to have the graphics painted into them as well because the decals did not wrap into them as they should. I used Tamiya LP paint for the red and white and some old Testors enamel for the orange. Close enough is as good as one can hope for with these dot pattern decal colors.

With the Hot Wheels decals being printed earlier than the Rain-X according to the date coding, I expected them to be more manageable due to more ink/less clear (equals more integrity) for many of the body wrapping graphics. Unfortunately they were more fragile and prone to cracking on the sheet even while still in the water and tearing during application. These CMYK U.V. ink printed (as opposed to screen-printed spot color) decals are usually somewhat resilient but apparently age may have taken a toll. They also, in this case, do not fit very well. I can already see there will be a lot of touch up painting done on this one. After getting the main decals on and letting them dry I started touching up the cracks and areas that didn't fit/cover the body color. It's a challenge to make an equivalent to the translucent white decal with paint. (Even the black is not opaque.) I used Tamiya Pure White mixed with a tiny bit of the TS-44 to treat the cracks and mis-fitted areas to start. There is still more touching up to be done before I apply the other decals, which will probably need to be touched up too… I blended white paint over the decals to soften the contrast between the painted rear end and translucent white side panels.

Thanks Rich! Having drawn the artwork for the Sunoco decals, I had an upper hand on them.

All of the decals have been applied to the Sunoco car. It took about a week to decal. I had to do some touch up on the yellow decals that cracked and I added the SCCA decals that were not included in the kit due to licensing issues.

All of the decals are on the Rain-X body. I'll let them dry for a while before clear coating.

I had to raid another kit for the decals as the ones in this kit had apparently been subjected to some very humid conditions and disintegrated before releasing from the sheet. The roof decals went on fairly well. Fluorescent inks can be more brittle than regular colors and I had a couple cracks from age to contend with even before they came off the paper, but surprisingly butting the pieces together yielded decent and acceptable results.

Before applying the main graphics to the Sunoco version I painted the roof white.

I added the black decals for the lights that didn't come on the decal sheet, now I can put the 33 decal on the left headlight.

The Hot Wheels was the next up for decals. While I wanted to use all the decals for posterity, I had to paint the blue on the rear bumper because the decal just didn't conform at all. Any overlap of the decal creates a darker color and being a dot pattern makes it impossible to match the cracks with paint. It's just as well; the blue decal was not even a near match for the color of the painted body.

Turns out there are some decals that don't fit at all and are better done with paint (like the Camaro lettering on the rear end) and many of them, and the placement instructions, don't match the real car on the box art. I split the difference on that as some are configured to fit where the instructions indicate and won't fit properly where the photo of the real car shows. I know it could be that the box art photos are as the car was at a different race from the one it was photographed for the reference used to draw the decals. This is almost all of the kit provided decals applied. I still need to make a few (for the lights) before adding the last ones.

I decided to decal the Rain-X car first. The decals are thin and quite stretchy and while that is normally a good thing since they do not work with solvents; it's like dealing with Saran Wrap during a windstorm. That makes it a challenge to get them off the sheet and onto the car without folding under and rolling over on themselves or sticking to a finger. Lots of water to float them while uncurling the edges with a brush is best way to deal with it. They fit OK, but the main graphics don't cover all the way down on the front, rear and sides. I already touched up the front and rear.

The bodies have color on them; all decanted Tamiya sprays. From left to right, TS-47 Chrome Yellow, TS-44 Brilliant Blue and AS-8 Navy Blue. The Sunoco body will get a different shade of blue for the final coat; the Navy Blue is just to cover the white plastic. I swapped the rear bumpers between the Hot Wheels car and the Sunoco since the latter is molded in white and it needs to be painted white for the former. This is the Sunoco body now… TS-72 Clear Blue.

The roll cage sides took a lot of time to clean up. They are not overly fragile, but there are plenty of mold lines and heavy draft in some areas with bold ejection pin marks. These all are reminders of the era these were produced. (The blue plastic of the Hot Wheels version is proving to be much more brittle than the yellow and white plastic.) And the tires in the Sunoco and Rain X cars took their toll on these parts too; more annoying clean-up… A lot of hand painting is needed too, but it's worth the time to bring out the molded in detail.

The center nuts are not uniform or cleanly molded and half of them aren't even centered well. I decided to machine new ones out of aluminum. I should have drilled them out of the rims before painting, but I was in an out-of-the-box mindset when I started.