Painting interior tin(in a drag car)?

[crowe-t]

What paint do you guys use to paint interior tin in drag cars?

I have Alclad Aluminum, White Aluminum and Polished Aluminum.  I'm thinking one of these.  I just don't want it to turn out looking like silver paint.

Edited February 11, 2022 by crowe-t

[R. Thorne]

I like the Modelmaster ( if available) buffing metalizer sheet aluminum.

[Claude Thibodeau]

Hi Michael!

I've experimented a lot with Alclad Chrome. If you apply it over a glossy BLACK surface (i.e. Testor's black enamel spray cam), il will likely look chrome. My experiences over WHITE glossy enamel gave a hue much like polished aluminium (might be your objective?). Over a baby blue glossy enamel, il looked more like polished stainless. In the three options, the key is to airbrush VERY LIGHT COATS of Alclad chrome, to prevent a heavy coat that will look like silver paint, that you want to avoid. 

The pic below is Alclad Chrome over WHITE enamel on the scratchbuilt air intake. 

Good luck!

CT 

[Ace-Garageguy]

My go-to for bare aluminum panels used to be Testors ModelMaster "aluminum plate" buffing metalizer...which is why I bought all I could get my hands on when they discontinued it. To me, the end of the buffing metalizers was a tremendous loss to the modeling community...particularly guys who build warbirds and jets.

The engine cowling below is Testors, as above (forward of the canopy is too, but hasn't been buffed; some difference, eh?)

I've also had promising results using Rub 'n Buff silver leaf.

I got this effect on the Challenger using a combination of the two.

[R. Thorne]

Ace:  curious that your pics don’t show on my screen.

[TransAmMike]

Don't know if any of you guys' have tried the Krylon "Foil" rattle can stuff. I get it at HL. To me, it has a polished aluminum look. 

Edited February 11, 2022 by TransAmMike

[Ace-Garageguy]

23 minutes ago, R. Thorne said:

Ace:  curious that your pics don’t show on my screen.

Well that bites. They show on mine.

I'd suggest reporting the issue to the mods, as they're all copied from this very site.

[crowe-t]

Thanks guys for all the advice!

[crowe-t]

6 hours ago, Claude Thibodeau said:

Hi Michael!

I've experimented a lot with Alclad Chrome. If you apply it over a glossy BLACK surface (i.e. Testor's black enamel spray cam), il will likely look chrome. My experiences over WHITE glossy enamel gave a hue much like polished aluminium (might be your objective?). Over a baby blue glossy enamel, il looked more like polished stainless. In the three options, the key is to airbrush VERY LIGHT COATS of Alclad chrome, to prevent a heavy coat that will look like silver paint, that you want to avoid. 

The pic below is Alclad Chrome over WHITE enamel on the scratchbuilt air intake. 

Good luck!

CT 

I never thought to spray Alclad Chrome over gloss white.  I'll test it and also test Alclad Polished Aluminum over gloss white.

[peteski]

On 2/11/2022 at 6:27 PM, Ace-Garageguy said:

Well that bites. They show on mine.

I'd suggest reporting the issue to the mods, as they're all copied from this very site.

I see something unusual about your photos Bill.  Other photos in this website usually have .JPG extension.  Yours have .WEBP extension.  Like this:

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/monthly_2022_02/DSCN0456_zpsmk5kpuwb.webp.ff22ca6d67d6b41fae711a8c311ab925.webp

I looked it up and:

What is a WEBP file?

A WEBP file is an image saved in the WebP (pronounced "Weppy") raster image format developed by Google for web graphics. The WebP format reduces file size more than standard JPEG compression while maintaining similar or better image quality. It supports both lossy and lossless compression and includes an alpha channel for transparency, similar to the PNG format.

 

So, Google is doing "its thing" again.  I suspect that not all browsers are able to render WEBP formated photos, and that is likely why Ron can't see them.  The "problem"is on your end.  Seems that this site does accept WEBP formatted photos, but not everybody can see them. Maybe you can configure your Google account to use the more widely used JPG standard for photos.

[R. Thorne]

Thank you for taking the time to investigate and share that information.

[Bugatti Fan]

The under coat colour will always make a difference to what the top coat will look like when using Metallics like Alclad for example. Some experimentation can yield some surprising effects, so worth trying.

There was mention of a Testors paint now discontinued that could be buffed. I think Humbrol made something similar but not sure if it is still a current product or not.

There are so many metallic finish products now available that it is finding the right one for you.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Bugatti Fan

[bisc63]

4 hours ago, peteski said:

What is a WEBP file?

Just a bit of additional info should anyone encounter a webp image they might want to save for reference, but in a more cross-platform friendly form, there is s nice free image converter call XnConverter that will let you convert webp images to any kind of image file you can think of. I use it on Windows, and it's from a reputable company, and there's no strings attached to the free version.

[Ace-Garageguy]

8 hours ago, peteski said:

...So, Google is doing "its thing" again.  I suspect that not all browsers are able to render WEBP formated photos, and that is likely why Ron can't see them.  The "problem" is on your end.  

I appreciate the information, Pete, but I fail to see how the problem is my responsibility.

I uploaded the photos to the web in JPEG format, some considerable time ago.

Far as I'm concerned, if the incessant meddling of a bunch of techie dwerbs makes my photos invisible now to some users, it's not my dog...no more than if I give somebody a car with a properly tuned carburetor setup, later they put EFI on it, then it won't run, and they think it's my place to fix their mess.

Nope, not my dog.  

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[peteski]

4 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

I appreciate the information, Pete, but I fail to see how the problem is my responsibility.

I uploaded the photos to the web in JPEG format, some considerable time ago.

Far as I'm concerned, if the incessant meddling of a bunch of techie dwerbs makes my photos invisible now to some users, it's not my dog...no more than if I give somebody a car with a properly tuned carburetor setup, later they put EFI on it, then it won't run, and they think it's my place to fix their mess.

Nope, not my dog.  

 

I doubt that this forum changes the photo you upload from JPG to WEBP format.  I have not seen this forum automatically modify the file format of any files I upload. I suspect that this this is (or was) done on your end Bill.  But hopefully you will will get an answer from the admins.  @Dave Ambrose can you comment on this?  Does the forum change the file format from JPG to WEBP when the JPGs are uploaded?  I have not encountered that so far.  All my photos which were uploaded as JPG are still JPG.  I just checked and my oldest and newest (just couple of days ago) uploaded files are still saved as JPG on this forum.

[Ace-Garageguy]

4 hours ago, peteski said:

... I just checked and my oldest and newest (just couple of days ago) uploaded files are still saved as JPG on this forum.

That's nice.

Look at the photos I posted on this thread:

They're saved on Photobucket as JPEGs just like I uploaded 'em in 2016.

Last time I looked, it wasn't part of my job description to make sure the interdwerbs handle all my photo uploads in perpetuity so everybody and his little dog can see them.

EDIT: I've reported occasional problems with photos copied from this site to this site either not displaying or kicking up an odd 502 with some gibberish about "the server can't be reached" bla bla bla.

So far I've heard only crickets.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[peteski]

11 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

That's nice.

Look at the photos I posted on this thread:

They're saved on Photobucket as JPEGs just like I uploaded 'em in 2016.

Last time I looked, it wasn't part of my job description to make sure the interdwerbs handle all my photo uploads in perpetuity so everybody and his little dog can see them.

 

The photo from that thread you just linked to is also WEBP, not JPG. 

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/monthly_2022_02/DSCN0456_zpsmk5kpuwb.webp.ff22ca6d67d6b41fae711a8c311ab925.webp

I thought about this some more and I see a proof that you uploaded the WEBP formatted images.  The link to your photo contains its original name.  In the example in my previous post shows the name DSCN0456_zpsmk5kpuwb.webp.  It is WEBP, not JPG.  Playing a detective, I can further expand on this.  The DSCN part of the name tells me that the photo was taken by a Nikon digital camera.  Normally the file camera creates  would be DSCN####.JPG.  But the file name of the file you uploaded has _zpsmk5kpuwb added to it, and the extension is WEBP. That tells me that Google, or some other photo host was involved at some point and it converted the JPG to WEBP format. UNless your camera saves the photos as DSCN####.WEBP? You then uploaded that WEBP photo to the forum.  I'm not going to argue this - the explanation I provided above is clear enough.

Edited February 13, 2022 by peteski

[Ace-Garageguy]

1 hour ago, peteski said:

The photo from that thread you just linked to is also WEBP, not JPG. 

I thought about this some more and I see a proof that you uploaded the WEBP formatted images.

That's real interesting, as those photos display the image link file names as jpg on the Firefox browser.

http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af320/fastoldcarz/Jag XK 120 for Bonneville/DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.jpg

Edited February 13, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[peteski]

8 minutes ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

That's real interesting, as those photos display the file names as jpg on the Firefox browser.

http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af320/fastoldcarz/Jag XK 120 for Bonneville/DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.jpg

I believe that you use copy/paste to upload photos here.  Maybe they get changed (on your end) by that method?  As I shown to you, the ones we have been discussing are WEBP.  How exactly do you get them from photobucket to this forum?  I can tell with certainty that the  DSCN0193.JPG was uploaded to the forum as

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/monthly_2022_02/DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.webp.0f5a855188b3a8fedb77a8f009e97889.webp

The proof is the name as it came from your computer: DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.webp

The Operating Systems seem to get more and more intrusive in automatically choosing what they "think" is "the best" for the user. Apple is especially invasive, but MS Windows is getting that way too.  It might think it is "helpful" to automatically change the file format to reduce the image size by changing JPG to WEBP.

Edited February 13, 2022 by peteski

[Ace-Garageguy]

36 minutes ago, peteski said:

I believe that you use copy/paste to upload photos here. 

Nope. Photos I upload to this site NOW are uploaded in the same format I've always uploaded photos to P-bucket...as jpgs, straight from the drive on an old Win7 machine that stores them as jpgs.

BEFORE this site offered photo hosting, everything I had here, and that still displays fine on my older threads was hosted on P-bucket, uploaded as jpegs.

For proof, LOOK at the image link file name I copied directly from the photo displayed on MCM on the Firefox browser and pasted here. It's jpg, as uploaded by me.

Any configuration change has zip to do with me.

The problem arises only when COPYING FROM THIS SITE TO THIS SITE...and sometimes copying other photos on the web to illustrate a particular point.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

[Ace-Garageguy]

58 minutes ago, peteski said:

  I can tell with certainty that the  DSCN0193.JPG was uploaded to the forum as

http://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/uploads/monthly_2022_02/DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.webp.0f5a855188b3a8fedb77a8f009e97889.webp 384.65 kB · 0 downloads

The proof is the name as it came from your computer: DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.webp

 

Nope. That photo came from MY computer as a jpg, to P-bucket back in 2016.

This is the image link: http://i1019.photobucket.com/albums/af320/fastoldcarz/Jag XK 120 for Bonneville/DSCN0193_zps9xvzkq5t.jpg

How it ended up here as a WEBP, again, just isn't my dog.

When somebody needs an example of something, I find my old thread by name on this site and copy/paste photos already posted on this site into the "question" thread.

And that USED to work fine.

I'm NOT going to sift through thousands of photos on a hard drive to make fresh uploads here just so everybody can see them. Sorry.

Giving somebody the RIGHT answer with well lighted, in focus, and highly relevant photos really ought to be enough without jumping through hoops to make sure that photos already visible on this site elsewhere will be visible to every user if copy-pasted into a new thread.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy

[peteski]

Well Bill, I asked the admins to split off these several technical posts we have here to the "How to use this forum" section, as the discussion is off-topic here. Hopefully they will do that and maybe chime in with their view on this situation.

 

I also asked you for a detailed description of how you take those JPGs from Photobucket and upload them here. I think that's where the problem occurs.  Also what type of computer and what Operatign System are you using? You did mention Firefox is your browser. Just trying to help out and understand what is going on.

Edited February 14, 2022 by peteski

[crowe-t]

Is there any way you can take this discussion on photos to another thread?  While it might prove helpful it's way off topic.  Thanks.

[peteski]

Um, did you happen to see the post above yours?

[crowe-t]

1 minute ago, peteski said:

Um, did you happen to see the post above yours?

Sorry I missed that.  With all these posts it got confusing.  Thanks for contacting the admins.