Scale-Master

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.

I planned to build them straight out of the box to see how they build up, but I decided to add simple ignition wires for fun. The engines were built the same except for the different frame color of the Sunoco car on the motor plate and the added ignition wire colors. I know the wires are not routed correctly for these cars, but then with the other inaccuracies of these kits it seemed like a little artistic license was warranted. After all they are reconfigured Fords with a few new parts.

The rear window could fit better than it does on my earlier built up. I shaved a good bit off the front and rear edges of the three rear windows. The windshield fits pretty well but they were also shaved around the edges to compensate for the paint. The first round of painting is done on the insides of the windows. The lines are not molded crisply and they are not symmetrical so I drew up masks and cut them on my plotter so they would all look the same. The vertical straps on the windshields are on the insides and they are on the outsides of the rear windows. I just used masking tape for the second round; more time consuming than I expected…

I thought I'd get the wheels painted early on so they could be totally dry when I got around to installing them. The wheel details are molded on the soft side where the centers meet the rim making masking tough. The chrome is very weak too, not only poor coverage but it wipes right off even with the most careful handling. So I brush painted them. It took four kits and all sixteen wheels to get twelve acceptable rims due to the bubbles in and poor coverage of the chrome.

After reviewing the previous built up I recalled the hood/fenders and front fascia didn't have a positive fit to each other. And the fascia is supposed to be cemented to the chassis with the hood & fenders setting on top and removable. To remedy this I installed magnets and made steel brackets to force the fascia and hood seam into alignment without any cement. I also added mounting bosses to the rear of the fender section and bored corresponding holes to the body.

Hot Wheels, Rain-X and Sunoco Liveries. I meant to build each of these Revell kits as they came out, but never got around to it except for the one I made as a what-if street machine painted like our real '94 Camaro back in '98. I built that from an extra Sunoco kit I pulled the decal sheet from to archive and was curious how these kits went together. That one had a warped chassis and a very poorly fitting rear window along with other fit issues I'm guessing I'll need to contend with on these. (The license plate is off the Galaxie '48 Aerosedan sheet and is the actual plate from our real Camaro. Gary Schmidt let me include that when I designed the decal art.) The gummy residue on the yellow Rain-X body will have to be cleaned up. It is from the test fitting of artwork I designed for the Sunoco kit. The blue one is the Hot Wheels car and the white one is the Sunoco. I started these back in February of this year (four months ago) and have been documenting my progress, but am just getting around to posting; so they are "mostly done" at this point and I'm catching up. The hood of the Hot Wheels car was attacked by the tires in a half dozen spots. Those melted spots needed to be filled and smoothed. The Sunoco car also has an "R" divot from the tires in the nose.

Thank you Monty! It's done now...

Starter 1/43rd scale. I'm calling it done. It was fun. WIP Thread:

Thanks guys. It's getting close to being finished. Too many projects at once (11 on the bench and two in CAD) put this one on the back burner for a couple weeks. The rear wheels stuck out a bit more than I would have liked. (To be fair, in some photos it appears they did stick out somewhat.) But I milled 0.025 inches out of the backsides of the wheels so they tucked in a little. The material the kit provides for the roll bar braces is about twice as thick as it should be. I used aluminum rod to replace them. The engine cover still fits without interfering with them.

All the decals have been applied and I shot the clear coat.

The stripes also went on well which was a little surprising as one of the stripes had a slight fold in it and I fully expected to crack at that point. They also conformed quite well to the contours including the louvers front and rear.

I waited until the decal was mostly dry; about 30-40 minutes, but still a little pliable where it spanned the slight gap. I used a sharp X-Acto knife to slice them and then rolled the four tiny flaps on to their respective edges. I cut wet decals often and it is not too difficult to get good results with a sharp blade. You only have to cut the decal, not what's under it.

I used BMF instead of the kit supplied Mylar for the sides. It didn't feel like it would conform as well as foil. I started with the roundel & number decals. They went on fine.

The engine and rear suspension is pretty much done and much of the cockpit has been detail painted. The wheels are built too. The engine cover still fits so it is time to paint the body.