Merkur XR4Ti

Not really all that long. The painting was pretty easy. It took some tricky work to make sure I got the white front decals on, but they were great and stood up to handling well.

I finally have built a Dale Jr car. Only took me 20 years to get around to it. Here’s his Looney Tunes/Gossamer ride from Richmond in 2002. These are JWTBM decals. The paint is Testors Huggar Orange lacquer topped with Tamiya Pearl clear; this isn’t entirely accurate for this car but I’m fine with using it. I used a Revell Pro Finish Monte Carlo for this (in the blue box); I think the body looks better than the one in the full glue kit. I ground the mounting posts down a little to lower it.

I used both Molotow and BMF for the chrome. Molotow on the fender and glass trim, BMF for the rocker panels and that long trim along the fender tops.

Beautiful! I have the ML body and Torino kit for this very project. Any tips? Looks like you used the Torino engine bay for this project too?

Built pretty much box stock. Kit decals were useless so I didn't use the redlines for the tires. Paint is from MCW.

This is Ricky Rudd’s Quaker State Buick Regal. I’ve been meaning to build this one for years and finally got it done tonight. Paint is a mix of Tamiya Park Green and British Racing Green. Decals are a combo of kit and Fred Cady, which look alright but make me badly want a modern Powerslide-style set of decals for this car. This, to me, is one of the iconic cars of the 80s.

This is Tony Stewart’s rookie year car, 1999. This is built as the car he got his first career win in, at Richmond. I built this many years ago but recently refreshed it with Slixx decals to repair deteriorated ones and some paint touch up. Paint is Tamiya TS-12, and the decals are a combo of Slixx and kit. I used the kit decals for the large white portions of the body, and to be honest they worked pretty well.

Just off the workbench: this is Michael Waltrip’s Star Trek First Contact T-bird driven in 1996 for the Wood Brothers. The car ran in practice like this: for the race NASCAR made them run white numbers for better visibility. I prefer this look. The decals were by an unknown maker, I got them from Mike’s Decals and they worked great. I also used a set of Slixx decals for Mike’s regular Citgo scheme for many of the secondary and contingency decals. Paint is MCW silver. I sanded off the side grilles from the kit piece for the long track look.

Here’s Kyle Petty’s Hot Wheels Grand Prix. I had built one of these many years ago but gave it away to a friend, so I wanted to build another one. This is with Slixx decals and Tamiya paints.

This pic sure makes the side windows on the NASCAR seem very small, and thus to me the CAD drawings are accurate.

"junk" is a ridiculously strong term and IMO it's completely unfair. To me the kit will be junk only if it doesn't look like a Nascar Olds once it's on my shelf. I don't get worked up about torsion bars or any of that stuff, but that's just me. Mine is on the way, and it it looks like an Olds I'll be happy. From what I've seen it will. it sure beats trying to hammer a resin body into submission. To each their own, but there's an awful lot of self-righteous chest-thumping here that doesn't seem warranted. Don't like the kit? Don't buy it. It's a hobby, not open-heart surgery.

I think that's true for Sonoma but not for Watkins Glen given the layout of that track's pit area.

I didn't decant the white because 1) it was going to be my overall basecoat, so I didn't worry as much about coverage, and 2) for the white I used Tamiya spray paint, which is much easier to use and get a good smooth coat than the Testor's sprays. I use a Paasche Millennium double-action airbrush.

I decanted the paint for the blue and the yellow. White is Tamiya Pure White out of the spray can.

Here’s my latest and it’s another rare one: this is Rob Fellows' Bully Hill Vineyards car he ran for Nemecheck at Watkins Glen in ‘99. Ron finished 2nd in that race, which is the highest finish a road warrior has gotten at the top level. I tried to do a fade on this one and it came out OK. Slixx decals and Testors and Tamiya paint. Technically the fuel filler should be on the passenger side but life’s too short for me to put in that much work, ?. Watkins Glen is my favorite race to watch.

I ordered one of these kits because on my shelf it's going to look just like an Olds Nascar with the cool paint scheme and that's good enough for me, although obviously other people may feel differently. This is a previously unobtainable body style for Nascar and I'm excited to have the opp to build it.

I used the regular Revell kit, and a combination of Wetworks and JWTBM decals. You need both sheets to match the markings on the Daytona winner. Most of the decals on this car came from the WW set, but I needed to add the "We Care" and the Martin Senour Paints decals on the rear fenders from the JWTBM sheet. And I used the little Kentucky flags from the JWTBM sheet as well, next to Waltrip's name.

Mixed up my own blend using Testor's. I don't often use enamels, but it's what I had on hand.

For the top, I first glued strips of .010 plastic onto the roof to simulate the seams. I then carefully masked off the roof after painting the body with Tamiya tape and sprayed Testor's flat black from a distance to get a texture to it. After the roof was dry, I then rubbed my finger along the side of my nose and then rubbed my finger on the roof. The oils from my skin imparted a slight semi-gloss sheen onto the roof and made it look like vinyl.