Ace-Garageguy

PPG and other real-car refinish-material manufacturers have several lines of water-borne products for VOC-strict markets like Cali and others. I have NOT tried any yet. http://master.ppgrefinish.com/en/about-us/news/2012/06/new-improved-d8186-waterborne-clearcoat/

Hey Dan...now THAT'S a camper. Man, that looks like fun.

Yes, you have. These irregularities are the result of uneven or jerky mold filling when the parts are being made. Trust me on this. It's true. When the solvents in the paint or primer hit these irregularities in plastic density, they amplify their appearance because they don't attack the entire surface exactly the same way. Really.

That's helpful. I've been meaning to do some back-to-back tests with PlastiKote and Duplicolor primers. Define "well-cured" please. A couple days? A week? more?

If you shoot your buffing metalizer slick, and polish it so it actually looks like polished metal instead of grainy silverish stuff, I guarantee 100% that the Testors "sealer" will RUIN the effect. After the "sealer" it simply looks like silver paint. I'm a real picky SOB when it comes to faux finishes. It's possible that a water-based clear could work over polished metalizer without destroying the effect, but I've tried just about every solvent-based clear I could think of, including hair spray and fixative for charcoal drawings. They all muddy it, so far.

I really like that. Looks like you did a superb job of laying out the gray primer without even a hint of orange peel. Very nice.

I'm not a Chevelle expert by any stretch of the imagination, but if you do a google image search for "'67 Chevelle", the majority of the cars have a ribbed bright-aluminum rocker panel molding.

In the real-car world, it would, of course, be entirely at the discretion of the individual builder. Some guys like to have stock-appearing trim intact, to give the car a more period, maybe "sleeper" look, while some guys prefer a more monochrome or no-chrome look. There's no right or wrong for the genre. Just a matter of personal taste and style. I personally kinda like to see a somewhat stock-appearing car that IS seriously bad without trying so hard to LOOK bad.

Agreed. Back in the dim days of my somewhat misspent youth, when I still consumed prodigious quantities of adult beverages, many of the older guys who frequented the establishments I imbibed in were WW II vets. Fascinating people to talk to...rather, to listen to... for hours on end. They spoke of a time, a spirit of national unity, and awful fighting conditions in a war that very few people alive today could even imagine. The sacrifices they made to keep, not just the USA, but the entire Western world relatively free from tyranny are so far beyond the ability of anyone without some military background to grasp...so sad to see all of the freedoms and rights Americans take so much for granted being...taken for granted...and so much divisiveness and self-interest in the country now. I guess that without a common evil to fight, it's just too easy for us to focus on trivial things, and to forget the price so many paid for all of us here now.

Gettin' closer...

If Art has had good results using the MCW primer on what I consider to be the overly-sensitive Revell '50 Olds plastic, if I were you, I'd try that. But first, try the Scale Finishes primer you already have coming. It just might solve the entire problem.

That's certainly good to know. I'll have to try it, because I've been holding off on building some models until I had the crazing problem licked. Once again, that's the real value of this forum. One guy's experience may be different from another guy's. but the free sharing of information gathered from actual experience can save many of us a lot of disappointment, and time burned up experimenting instead of building.

Automotive "lacquer primer" is a single-component product, no hardener, and you thin it with straight lacquer thinner from the hardware store. There ARE various additives available for 1:1 use, like agents that slow the flash time to reduce blushing, etc....but these generally make the material "hotter" and more likely to damage model car styrene. You can also get excellent results using more complex two-part catalyzed primers. They are available as urethanes, epoxies and polyesters. Once cured, any of them are pretty much impervious to anything you might use as a model car topcoat. BUT...they tend to be fairly high-build products, and will quickly obscure fine detail if hammered on. On the other hand, they can save a TON of time (is "ton" a valid unit of time-measuring?) if you do heavy bodywork and modifications. In the scales we work in, they are essentially self-leveling, sprayable bondo, which is a pretty cool option. Just FYI, this is a 2-component catalyzed urethane primer, shot with a full-scale gun, on a body I'd done VERY heavy mods to. You see how thick the stuff looks, but it certainly has its uses.

NOTE: I'm not arguing with Art here. He has years of valuable first-hand experience with this stuff he's willing to freely share. But... In my own experience, which is what I based my statement on, many of the older models are very solvent resistant. I shot SEM self-etching primer (really hot, for real cars) wet, on a Johan '61 Dodge, and it laid out slick and as pretty as you please, zero crazing. Excellent adhesion too, as I determined from subsequent light filling and feather-edging. Same thing on a first-issue Revell Challenger One, about '62/3 vintage. The other older kits I recall using it on, like early-issue white AMT '29 Fords, behave the same way. No crazing, excellent adhesion. But the softer more recent gray ones though...forget about it. Both a 10-year old Monogram '70 Chevelle and a recent Revell '50 Olds both crazed so badly, I was forced to dechrome them and build "shaved" customs, as there was no saving the delicate raised detail. Though I agree with Art for the most part about using automotive lacquer primers as a barrier coat (I use Duplicolor's rattle-can line for the most part), even these are plenty hot enough to craze Revell's '50 Olds if shot wet, which I like to do to get a nice non-orange-peeled surface that requires very little sanding.

Yes grasshopper, one must learn to let go of harmful attachments...

Pilot Ray...exactly what I used to install on the big expensive "real" classics when I was in the resto end of the biz. Far as the sealed beam thing goes, because the Fed regs specified "sealed beam" headlamps once they were finally adopted, the vastly superior separate-bulb halogen lamps the Europeans were using were illegal here for many years. I have been ticketed eons ago for running Lucas, Cibie and Marchal halogens on my own cars when they were still verboten.

I have installed what I was told (by supposed vintage car experts) were accurate reproductions of 1930s aftermarket steering-driving-lights, connected via linkage to the vehicle's tie rod, on 1930s Duesenbergs. Apparently these systems were available to retrofit way back then, if not available from the manufacturer.

While these are all neato keen feats of technology, their having a "huge impact" is debatable, from my own perspective anyway. I've been driving over 50 years, much of the time in very high performance and/or evil handling vehicles...none of which were equipped with any of these bells and whistles...and so far, I haven't hit anything. Knock on wood. Vastly improved crash/crush performance (absorbing energy with the vehicle structure's progressive collapse) and airbags (protecting the occupants from impact with objects and surfaces inside the vehicle, and managing the decelerative forces on heads to reduce secondary brain injuries) have indeed had a "huge" impact. Far as some of the other "safety" systems go, I will always feel they are compensating for inattentive, unskilled drivers who shouldn't really be operating vehicles anyway. If you slow down in the rain, allow plenty of space between you and the next vehicle, actually have some clue as to how control a vehicle (beyond standing on the brakes and blowing the horn in an emergency situation), match your speed to the weather, traffic and road conditions in general, and above all...PAY ATTENTION...then radar/computer controlled brakes and complex "accident avoidance systems" are entirely unnecessary. All the "safety" stuff sends a message that taking personal responsibility for intelligently driving your vehicle is not required, and that the technology will save you when you do something really really stupid. The old phrase I've heard over and over and over..."the car wrecked"...says it all.

I'd sure as h buy that.

It sure as jell does on real cars. I shot an acrylic urethane over a fully-cured acrylic urethane that had been shot over some cheapo (also fully-cured) mystery primer on a Pantera. When my fresh paint hit the properly-prepared recoat areas, the old topcoat wrinkled as if I'd hosed it down with hot paint stripper. It took just about every trick I knew to get the new paint to lay down over the old stuff, and that included stripping all the wrinkled areas to bare metal and starting fresh, plus GENTLY blending all over the rest of the car. No profit on that job.

zero...

Nice looking deviled eggs. Makin' me hungry. I bet they're really really good, too. Did the Easter Bunny lay them?

Improved crush performance in severe crashes and airbags have made the most significant statistical reductions in the highway death toll per million driver miles. Air bags became necessary primarily because drivers refused to use seatbelts responsibly. The 5mph bumper standard was reduced to 2.5 mph in 1982, and is now 2 mph, as the 5 mph version turned out to be much more costly to repair in higher-speed impacts, and the insurance companies didn't like that. Vehicles now handle and stop better than ever before, but drivers are still mostly incompetent because the requirements for getting a license in this country are a joke. Right now, an onboard cell-phone / text message disabler would have the greatest impact on saving lives and preventing accidents, particularly among younger drivers. Of course, superior crash / crush performance and better all-around handling and braking are very good things, but our great leaders, in a misguided attempt to protect us from ourselves and eliminate ANY need for driving-proficiency or personal-responsibility behind the wheel, come up with idiot things like rear-view cameras and displays, which will be required on ALL cars as of 2018, will add more cost and complexity to EVERY car purchased new, and still will only save a tiny number of lives...assuming drivers actually LOOK at the damm display before backing over the grandchildren.

Nice surgery.

Lotsa Beetlebugs run similar carbs. If the model is scaled close to correctly, getting them shoehorned in there shouldn't bee too hard.