Ace-Garageguy

Prep and primer as you would for any decent paint job.

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You beat me to it.

Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your post somewhat. I'm getting tired, slow comprehension. Are you sure it's crazing? Under magnification, crazing looks like alligator skin. "Pebble Beach" implies (to me, anyway) dry-spray (material too thick, or sprayed from too far away). What did you thin the Alclad primer with? People working in every modeling genre are using Alclad black gloss base on styrene and like it (there was an issue some time back about slow drying, but it's been fixed). I know some modelers use gloss black Krylon, decanted and airbrushed, and some use black lacquer primer, sanded and polished under chrome Alclad. Sorry I can't be more help, but that's all I know at the moment. EDIT: Here's a discussion about Alclad primers... favorite primer under alclad http://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=36336

I'll use a variety of primers, depending on what I'm trying to achieve. This is SEM self-etching black, shot over a lot of kinda rough bodywork to give a well-stuck base to the subsequent operations. The next coats were SEM high-build buff, shot to get good filling quickly. Sanded to get most of the bodywork smoothed out. Nice thing about using two colors is that you can easily see exactly where your problems are. Then shot with Duplicolor high-build gray. Getting close to the final for-paint surface. After working that down, I shot it with Duplicolor "sandable" white. Getting very close now. This model has little surface detail to worry about filling up, and it will be used as a plug for a set of molds to duplicate it. It was necessary to re-scribe all the panel lines after every couple of coats of primers, and it was also necessary to rework the beltline / quarter panel character lines, because they DID get filled up and softened too much. I'm using Duplicolor white "sandable" here at the almost-end because it doesn't fill much, covers well, and won't require much work to get it right for paint. Build thread here...

"Pebble Beach" is from shooting under-reduced product, or too dry from too far away. Thinning it fixed the problem, right? "Too hot" means the solvents attack the plastic and craze it. Different problem entirely.

CarQuest was bought out by Advance, no longer carries PlastiKote, only Duplicolor. PlastiKote IS AVAILABLE AT AMAZON.com.

Good tips. I started using and recommending Comet somewhere around 2012, and it works great. Like Jimmy says, you can be aggressive with the stuff without worrying about fubarring details. Sandpaper, on the other hand, will tend to soften and dull details, and it just can NOT get in all the little nooks and crannies next to chrome trim, door-handles, etc. I've found a hot-water rinse is all that's needed to get all the Comet and residue off the model. I personally prefer to use el-cheapo recycled white paper towels, the grocery store generic brand, to mop up whatever water remains on the model. Then, I've come to rely on a thorough wipe-down with clean paper towels and 70% isopropyl alcohol. It's the best wax-and-grease (and silicone too!!) remover I've ever found, and I use it on full-size custom and aircraft paint jobs where I simply can't afford a redo because of fisheyes. The stuff works.

You can find just about every version of this kit ever released on Ebay.

Depending on what scale you're working in, sprue may be WAY too fat for a chassis tube. In 1/24-1/25 scale, for instance, most sprue is only appropriate for the main frame rails of something like a Cobra or a Jensen Interceptor. Determine what the diameter of the REAL tube you're modeling is, and divide that by the scale you're working in to see if sprue is right for the job. To do nice tube-frame work, I also suggest Evergreen or Plastruct material, but I prefer to use rod. It can be easily bent with your fingers, and the heat of not-quite-boiling water is enough to set it long enough to glue it where you need it. I scratch-built the upper parts of this chassis / roll cage from styrene rod... This roll-bar assembly is also made from rod...

Speaking of wimps, the "epic" Atlanta SnowJam of '82 also brought the city to a halt. We only got about 6", but it started shortly before evening rush hour (with virtually no warning) and by the time the traffic peaked, it was too slick for most non chain-or-stud-equipped vehicles. I had a sports-car shop downtown, close to Ga. Tech, and a main 4-lane road out of downtown was out back. By dark, it was a parking lot. We made coffee, filled a thermos, and started walking down and giving it out in styro cups to stranded drivers, then stayed open all that night with the pot still on, giving it to police and the occasional straggler who walked by. Hot sake, too. By dawn, most everyone had gone...but the cars were all where they'd been left. Most drivers had actually managed to get their cars far enough to the side to leave one lane open. I had studded tires in stock, and put a pair on the back of my Triumph GT-6, then went out driving for a couple of hours. Ghost town. Lotsa fun to be one of the very VERY few mobile people in a situation like that. The storm of 2014 started shortly after morning rush-hour, and by 10:00 AM it was starting to get really slick. The problem was different this time. The roads were already so cold that cars passing would melt the snow, but it would almost immediately re-freeze into a sheet of ice. Again, no chains or studded tires, even though the weather forecasters had warned of the coming storm. Nobody took it seriously, they all went to work, and around noonish they ALL tried to get home at once. With the roads frozen with a 1/4" thick cap of solid ice, without chains or studs, you simply couldn't move...not even 4-WD vehicles. I realized that day that Atlanta had a lot more hills than I'd ever been aware of, as thousands of vehicles came to a spinning-sliding halt while trying to make it to the tops of even the shallowest of them. I got stuck behind a line of cars in front of the Big Chicken, all trying to make it up the hill on Hwy. 41. I didn't have studs or chains...just M&S tires on the back of my truck, but I was able to get it off the main drag, off-roading over the median, and get to back-streets that were still mostly snow, then finally a car-lot where I parked it out of the way....and walked home.

Beautiful work, as always.

Oh yes... Nice proportions on the chop. The fender extensions for the headlight surrounds are perfect too. Tasty.

Fine looking model. Great paint, superb carbon-fiber work too.

Didn't know it existed. Will givt it a try, for sure. thanks. I agree about PlastiKote being great stuff. I used to get it at CarQuest, but it was replaced by Duplicolor when Advance Auto Parts bought out CarQuest. PlastiKote primers are still available at Amazon, $8.58 for a big 12oz can, in several colors, and Amazon does free shipping on orders over $35. http://www.amazon.com/PlastiKote-T-235-Sandable-Primer-Enamel/dp/B000CPAA3A

Nice work on the engine. And yes, it's definitely 100% a first-generation Oldsmobile OHV V8. It's appropriate for anything in the 303-324-370- (and 371 GMC)-394 engine range, built between 1949 and 1964. Looks like you have it about beat. This Revell Olds engine, and all of their other kit and parts-pack engines from this period CAN be built into great-looking models...as you're proving here. The dimensions are very close to right for all of them, and they're loaded with detail. What I discovered over the years with these engines (this basic Olds engine appears in the first Revell Stone-Woods-Cook Willys, the Anglia and Thames gasser kits, and at least one Ed Roth custom too...and this parts and assembly design is shared with the Chrysler Hemi, the old nailhead Buick, several versions of smallblock Chevy, Ford FE engines in parts-pack and Mysterion versions, the parts-pack and Challenger One Pontiac engines and several others), what works best for me anyway, is to start by removing all of the locating pins and tabs, and then "machining" all of the joining surfaces dead-flat on a piece of 180-grit stuck to a flat piece of glass. It's a little tricky to get the upper-block halves just right on the lower surfaces, but once they're flat, the pieces all fit together remarkably well. Removing the molded-on crankshaft detail from the bottom of the block and machining the oil-pan rail flat is also a good idea. You can do the same thing to the top of the pan itself, and thin the pan flange to a more scale-correct appearance at the same time.

Yessir...the original issue had a styrene hood. Somewhere along the line, i assume the tool was damaged or modified (for another slightly different version of this kit), and the re-issue you have has a resin hood. Odd indeed. It takes a fair amount of effort to remove all the parting lines and flash from this thing, but it WILL build up into a beautiful model if you take your time and work carefully.

Bay, I wish we'd get that here. The city wouldn't move until May.

The product posted above is a high-build primer, and will obliterate surface details if you're not careful. It says "scratch filler primer" right on the label. The "sandable" primers that don't say "scratch filler" are better suited to general model car priming. The "scratch filler" product is excellent over bodywork when you WANT high-build and filling characteristics. I use all of these products and many others, for various applications on models.

Don't ask me. I'm a transplanted Yankee, and 2" of snow to me is nothing. Part of the problem is the hysterical way the media was whipping up even the possibility of snow for several years, and a lot of folks simply became numb to the whole thing. Then when a little bit of nasty stuff hit, no one was prepared. There probably weren't 50 pairs of snow-chains in a 25-mile radius. And I saw quite a few high-end 4X4s on their roofs. I guess if you can afford an expensive rig like that, the laws of physics just don't apply to you.

I was driving home from work, 6 miles away, and ended up having to leave my truck in a car-lot and walk because everyone literally abandoned their cars in the middle of ALL the roads and streets....on the sides, on the medians, in the middle of intersections. The entire city was a vast parking lot...even the interstates. There was simply nowhere to go, no way to get anywhere because of the abandoned cars in the way, until the sun came out and melted it all.

Geez. If it got that cold in Atlanta, the city would just shatter.

Most of the rattlecan primers are lacquer-based, and will usually provide a decent barrier under real-car polyurethane base-clear systems. You can also use automotive 2-component primers (be SURE to add the catalyst BEFORE you add the reducer) reduced (thinned) to spraying consistency for model work with an airbrush. Real-car primer builds rapidly, and will obliterate details if you're not careful. ALSO, I'd recommend doing your testing on sprue or the undersides (that won't show)of the SPECIFIC KIT you're working on . Plastic-kit styrene formulations vary widely, and some are much less tolerant of hot solvents than the plastic spoons are. Some recent Revell kits, for example, will craze quite badly under hot primers....primers that work fine on spoons. AND...depending on what you're doing, the high-build two-component primers can work really really well. I shot this model with a gray urethane 2K product, using a regular automotive gun. I did extensive heavy bodywork on this one and I needed a high-build and tough primer that would fill the sanding scratches and also sand easily.

The OP said he "will be using automotive paint cause I can get it for really cheep". The term "automotive paint" can be ambiguous. It includes lacquer, both nitro-cellulose and acrylic, enamel, again both synthetic and acrylic, and more recently the range of products from the urethane, polyurethane and acrylic urethane families. There are also epoxies used for race-car finishing. Without knowing EXACTLY what you're using, there's no way to answer your question accurately. In general, many automotive-paints will work well over rattlecan primers made for real cars, like Duplicolor. Note that if you sand through your primer, the solvents in "real" car paints are generally significantly hotter than the solvents in paints made specifically for plastic models, and you may experience mild to severe crazing of the plastic. Also, in general, you'll need a first coat of primer that will provide a barrier and "hold out" the hotter solvents in big-car paint products. TEST before you commit to painting any model you care about. There's NO SIMPLE RULE that works every time.

If you're trying to glue parts like exterior mirrors or handles to painted surfaces, you may want to consider pinning them before you paint your model. Pinning allows precise location of the part during final assembly, and allows a water-soluble glue (PVA) to do the job...easily cleaned off the area with no damage.