Quick tip for detailing the taillight panel on Revell's 2005 Impala Police Car

[Chuck Most]

The kit piece is clear red (actually molded clear and painted clear red at the factory), but the 1:1 looks like this...

I've built a few of these, but never got a good result masking off the taillights. I was cleaning off a spot on the workbench, and I swept up a few discs I had left over from using a standard-size hole punch. I grabbed one and held it up to the Impala's lens piece, and noticed the disc was just about the right size.

I placed a piece of masking tape on a piece of scrap .020" plastic stock, and then punched out four discs. I then peeled the masking tape off of the discs, and applied them to the taillight panel, over the spots where the actual lenses show through.

I also applied foil to the Impala emblem in the middle- after the whole piece is sprayed black, I scrape the paint off the emblem with a toothpick. The Revell of German version of this kit actually includes a decal for this, but the exposed foil technique looks better. Note that I don't have the rear marker lights masked in the pic- I used small rectangular strips of BMF for that.

It is important to apply the tape to the plastic first- if you try to just punch out the tape, it will tear. By putting it on the thin plastic, you get a nice, round piece with clean edges. The masking tape lifts easily from the unpainted plastic.

I didn't think of it this time, but since the part is clear with red paint, I could have scraped the clear red paint away from the centers of the inboard lights to represent the backup lamps. Maybe next time.

I know this is a very kit-specific tip, but maybe this technique can be applied to other kits as well. Tomorrow I'll see if I can post pics of the finished result.

[GMCMAN52]

Good Tips are always welcome cause your never to old to learn something new...Thanks

[Danno]

Nice.

[karbuildr]

Very good tip, I'll certainly find this technique useful for the next Impala I build.

[Danno]

[426-Hemi]

Thats AWESOME! When I first seen the disk tape added at a quicl glance, it looked as tho it was real, being "tinted" from a real car! NIIIIICE job!

[Chuck Most]

End result...

I tried out my idea on the backup lights on this one.

The clear red paint is applied to the outside only. I sanded the paint away from over the lenses, instead of stripping it. Not only did this remove the paint, it also removed a few small sink marks over the mounting pins for the taillight panel.

For the back-up lights- I cut the pins off from behind, so they were flush with the inside of the lens. I just applied foil to the area where the pin had been. After that, I used Tamiya clear red on the inside of the lens. The lens unit was then masked and painted as explained in the first post, then clear coated. In hindsight, I think should have applied a few more coats of clear red to the inside, or possibly a couple of coats inside and out- at certain angles (like in the pic) there appears to be a "clear" spot in the center of the outboard lamps where the mounting pins are.

I don't think I got the shape of the side markers quite right- but that's not the point... the point is the technique works, even if your masks don't quite look like the 1:1 lens. All in all, I think it's a pretty big improvement over the all-red lens you get in the kit.