Zoom Zoom

1- Are they compatible? To a degree. I've heard that people have used DC clear over Tamiya w/o problem. The primer is a bit "hot", so be careful not to drench the model with it. You will want to wetsand the primer before color. Tamiya primer is much smoother, but more $$. Tamiya clear is excellent. 2- If so, how many coats of primer and "wet sand" between coats? If so, what grit? Enough to cover, start light and work into heavier coats. Wetsand the primer before covering it w/color, and also wet sand between coats (not every pass, but every painting session if you have to go back and reshoot primer a second/third/fourth time). Micromesh 2400-3600 grit is my preference, but you can use 600-1000 grit wet or dry sandpaper as well. 3- How many coats of color? Again wetsanding between coats? Enough to cover, it varies depending on color-Tamiya pigments aren't very dense, you must paint lighter colors over white primer if you don't want to waste paint. Wetsand between painting sessions; as in get the color on, if it's smooth and covered well leave it alone. If it needs more paint or you need to sand out imperfections, then recoat. 4- Clear coat finish. I have heard about applying clear coat right after last color coat to even the surface. Also heard about waiting until last color coat is dry before clear coating. Your thoughts? If using Tamiya products alone you must clear w/in one hour of the last color coat, or wait upwards of a month due to paint incompatibility that can cause cracking of the clearcoat. When in doubt, mist on a bit of clear over the color, let it dry, then wetsand and add more clear. I'm not sure about the timeframe using another brand of clear. I use Tamiya clear w/Tamiya sprays to avoid compatibility problems. I usually airbrush the first color and clearcoats, and lay the last clearcoat on straight from the can for maximum gloss. 5- Using Tamiya #TS-54 as color on one model. It is a light blue metalic. I would like a bit more depth. Would a coat of flat black over the primer do it? I would recommend gloss black, or a gloss non-metallic blue that's darker than the metallic. Tamiya paint is best applied over the smoothest surface possible, it goes on glossy but shrinks a lot as it dries and you'll see the pattern of whatever paint is underneath it, and Tamiya is glossiest over bare plastic so if your undercoat/primer isn't as smooth as bare plastic, your paint won't be as glossy. You'll spend less time polishing later. 6- Have some Testors spray enamel. Is this compatible with the Dupli-color? It will be fine over the primer, but I would recommend against using DC paint over the enamel. It will likely be destroyed. Get a box of white plastic spoons at the grocery store. Test all the potential variables to see how everything works. It's a good way to learn what your paint will do before potentially harming a real model. Good luck!

I agree, neat conversion. Works amazingly well w/the Focus body. How's the new Civic? Sad to see what Ford did to the '08 Focus. It's so out-of-focus it might as well be called the Escort.

From the discussions about the '32 Tudor sedan w/Kelsey Hayes wheels, I saw this gem this past weekend at a local cruise night. If the model is anything like this car, I'm happy. I'd be inclined to do a close replica of it, the period warm gray paint w/the yellow wheels really fit this car perfectly, it was a knockout. Very subtle, full of attitude and class.

This one is held every 3rd Saturday from April through October, and has over 500 cars. This time was so full they were turning away cars by 5:30 pm. Revell's doing a '32 Ford Tudor sedan w/optional Halibrands. I believe this gem has to be very close to what we're getting from Revell: This T-Bird gasser was perfect. I don't know the history, I believe it resides in a museum. It wasn't nearly as raucous sounding as one would expect. Lots more: Canton Cruise Night Album

That is certainly not a Ferrari. Probably just some low-production kit car. Has a lot of GT40 MkI styling cues, especially in profile.

As Homer Simpson would say..."DOH!". Bet Ismael would love to have known that before buying it! It's a bit harder in PR to find paint products than it is on the mainland. Nice to see you pop in occasionally Leon!

You did a very nice job on that. Black Chevies are always cool. I hear you about vac-formed glass, most often it never fits as well as it should, unless it's a really high $$ resin kit from one of the better mfgs., which definitely excludes R&R. I have a '61 wagon that I've played w/a few times, it's a handful But as you've proven a bit of perseverance pays off.

The leftover carcasses. Magnum front clip and 300 body. A diagonal cut from the A pillars keeps the cowl w/the clip, while allowing the body to be spread to match the donor clip. I won't combine these two parts, I'm a much bigger fan of the 300 front clip vs. the Magnum, even though the Magnum SRT-8 front clip is much cooler than more pedestrian Magnums. If anything, I may do an '08 Magnum SRT-8 w/the new front clip which I happen to prefer over the current variation.

Most of the time I do use primer for Tamiya paints, because of the aforementioned properties. It's a bit thin, it doesn't cover anything (Testors lacquers are another story, not as smooth but much more opaque). But on the odd occasion it can be sprayed over unprimed plasic, it comes out amazingly smooth. Tamiya primer is amazingly smooth, but if you want your top coats to be really glossy, either your plastic or primer has to be glossy. Even wetsanding Tamiya primer doesn't leave the base surface smooth enough for the topcoat to come out as perfect as it would be over bare plastic. I'll shoot white over white plastic, or black over any color. But it's rare that I can do that. Tamiya paints don't dry as hard as auto paints, but they do dry harder than Testors enamels, and do dry rapidly. If you decant them to an airbrush they go a lot further. I love shooting auto lacquers, but for base colors that Tamiya does in a spray can, you can't get a better/easier kind of finish w/a minimum of hassle.

Gregg did one with the diagonal cut using the AMT 300 which is just as wide as the Revell version. I had wracked my brain trying to figure how to do the conversion because of the width disparity, then he came along and made it look easy If you remember the Skyline wagon I started, that was because of my frustration w/the dissimilar parts between the AMT kit and the Magnum, and the fact the SRT-8 kit wasn't going to be available for a long time. I'll still finish it, after a few other projects ahead of it. Did you notice on the Overhaulin' conversion that they used a 6 cylinder 300 front end? Headlights differ noticeably between V6 and Hemi 300's.

I also had to cut down the height/width of the 300 windshield to fit; the Magnum one is too narrow once the conversion is done. Then I had to add some styrene strip to the inner A pillars to fill some of the gap. Nothing terrible, just a bit tricky. The rear bumper will need some work, it needs to be based on the 300 instead of Magnum. Not sure if I'll add the Euro fog lamps or not. I'm just going to cut out a big section of the 300 rear bumper face and splice it into the Magnum part. Dash fitment may also be challenging, I'm also using the inner fenders from the 300 instead of Magnum because they fit better and have decent engraving close to the same level of detail as the Magnum. I'll splice in part of the Magnum firewall, and cut out the "engine" engraving from the 300 piece. Boggles my mind that we don't get this car in the US. Honestly, do Americans really prefer overweight/topheavy Grand Cherokee SRT-8's over one of these? Sheesh...

Nice work I've built a lot of these EM 911's. They're not the easiest, but once you've built one the others are a lot easier knowing all the weird areas (I quit building them w/the opening trunk, it causes many fit problems). They're simpler than a lot of the later EM kits. I have just scored another one of these Carrera RS kits, and am building another '74 RSR IROC racer (the orange #1 Donohue car from Daytona in March of '74).

That's sharp

Contrary to early rumors, the new Revell Uptown 300C SRT-8 is basically no different than the previous Uptown Charger or STS-V; it's a stock-proportioned car without door handles, a full set of stock decal markings, and can be built relatively stock w/some ingenuity. Here's the basic model w/some wheels from a diecast: Here is the 300C SRT-8 Touring Wagon conversion: It's a fairly simple conversion, angle cut the front clip from 300 (including cowl), remove same from Magnum, spread the Magnum body out a bit to match, and voila. The 300 is 1/24 and wider than Magnum. However it's no wider than the AMT 300, which is just as wide as 1/24 but shorter. A plastruct tube is welded in place behind firewall area to provide support/strength, and to keep the body from flexing at the point it's been glued together. It required very little filler so far. Wheel donors. Maisto Chrysler ME Four Twelve diecast concept. Fronts are the same scale 20" size as Magnum SRT-8 wheels/tires. Rears are wider and taller. The wagon gets all four fronts, the larger sedan will get all four rears. Design is nearly identical to the 300C SRT-8 stock wheels I have no idea when these will be built; I have other more pressing projects. But at least I got this out of my system, I've been dying to get the plastic SRT-8 kit since it was announced. It's a better parts donor than the AMT kit which isn't an SRT-8 and has inferior headlight details.

This one sure got my attention! Cool reissue. Thanks for sharing

Sure, you can use the pics. I took them in anticipation of perhaps one day doing a model of it. It's nice not to have to scratchbuild it I've applied Alclad II chrome under glass before and backed it up w/some clear/smoke paint and it made for very realistic reflective glass on the model I used it on. The Firebird III definitely doesn't have the reflective canopy any longer. I recently started my AMT Astro I show car, will be a good companion to the Firebird III Another car that I got a lot of reference pics at Amelia.

For anyone who has the Firebird III or is getting one (I'll be getting one soon), I took a few detail shots of the car at Amelia Island in '04. Can't believe there's a model of it now!!!

That came out fantastic! There's nothing better than a white Ferrari, unless perhaps a white Porsche GT2 or GT3 Gives me a great idea how mine will look; I saw a white unmarked 360 Challenge when they were new, really wanted to build a model of it, and had started my F430 Challenge car early last summer when the kit came out to look basically just like the 1:1 car you showed a photo of on A/F. I got sidetracked w/other projects and my car is still in a box in white primer . I also want to make the air jacks so I can show the car up on air jacks, but I also want the jacks to store in the down position as well.

Very nice A+ on the subtle weathering and extra details

It looks like it's right out of MPC Motorsports I would imagine we'll be seeing it in plastic or resin before too long Dunno 'bout anyone else, but I'd take a 2nd gen Camaro (especially '70-72) over any '69 any day of the week. The first gen car was a Mustang pony car ripoff, the 2nd gen looks like an exotic. I'm tempted on that RR '73 Super Duty resin Formula...

I had no idea what you were talking about, I had to find the pinned posts. When log on the main forum I hit "view new posts" and that's the page I see, and all I see are new posts. I never see the pinned posts unless I open a particular sub-forum to start a new thread. I tried saving the "view new posts" as a bookmark, but it only works for X amount of time

Nice features. I've even fired up the "ignore user" feature for one lucky individual

It's widely known that AMT was stopping retail kit production, and not taking any new orders. So exactly how would HL be able to continue stocking them? Seriously, the product line is being dropped, it's not news, and HL is clearing the decks. If the AMT lineup gets purchased, perhaps HL will carry their products again. But at this time I'd have to say if there's anything from AMT you want that's not being funded by a private group like Model King, you'd better get it now, before the distributors run out of stock. There's a whole lot of Lindberg products being reissued that could fill at least part of those aisles.

They're all at the top on my end. Do you view from the main forum, or do you view using "View New Posts" link? Replies within a thread are in the same order as before, with newest replies added after the previous ones.

It may not be as fast as some pages, but it's a huge increase in speed on my old computer and IE. Pages are loading about 10X faster now. My IE was getting particularly cranky, many forums were slowing down. Some pages were still fast, but any with heavy graphics or embedded ads were getting terribly slow. I'm still not getting any email announcements from this forum.