Clear coating race car models. Should they be that shiny?!

[Dragline]

It's getting heavy....................

Bob

[Dragline]

What makes a muscle car?

For me it's Power/Weight ratio.

Be it a Ferrari or a VW Jetta. It comes down to P/W ratio.

All other factors are just that.

Bob

[IMSANUT]

Perhaps I should never, ever have used the word "clear" in the post heading......

Some understood the meaning of the post's questions, others were offended as if they were being personally attacked.....

Well, there was no malice intended towards anyone nor to anyone's preferences. Sorry if I was misunderstood.

Anyway, enjoy.

[zenrat]

Jim, you chose to ask a question that can raise hackles.

Not your fault.

Personally If I ever build a NASCAR or NASTruck (instead of just raiding one for parts) then I will not clear over the decals.

This is because I am lazy and can use the "they should not be shiny" argument to justify my idleness.

But really I don't give a fig if they are shiny or not on other peoples builds.

What does get on my tits is otherwise immaculate builds by supposedly top notch builders without the decals slit where they cross panel gaps. This could recently be seen on the centrespread build in a model car magazine that rhymes with Ale Sorto.

[ScrappyJ]

Wow!

[Steven Zimmerman]

If you actually think about it, a model is reduced to (for sake of comparisom) 1 /25 the size of a real car.Now think about paint. When you use clearcoat, and / or polishing compound or pads, you are reducing the size of the orange peel. I'm not saying you should / should NOT clearcoat or polish, but a finish reduced in scale, will shine more than the 1/1 paint it's supposed to represent, am I correct ?

[Steven Zimmerman]

COMPARISON, not / never mind.....

[wgflatliner]

IMO, paint it for you. if you want to paint for accuracy, pull up pictures of the real car for reference and include it in your "under glass" post to justify your level of clear. The pictures of the real thing vs your interpretation should be enough "proof" that you did it "right" - whether or not other people agree with it. There is no argument to conclusive evidence of the end result looking like the real thing.

[Art Anderson]

Doesn't it all depend on the type/era/venue of the race car in question? Let's take a look:

In the early days of motorsport, cars were painted by brushing, not spray-painting (spray-painting didn't really begin until the advent of sprayable lacquers in the early 1920's (thanks DuPont!) and the development of spray guns. The same with plated parts on race cars (Nickel plating was around before 1900, but chromium plating didn't come into being until the late 1920's (Oldsmobile was the first production car to feature chrome plated bumpers and trim, in 1929).

Of course, the major league of American racing, AAA's Contest Board-sanctioned "Championship Racing" reached a zenith of sorts in the 1920's, with highly tuned, and highly finished Miller race cars (Harry Miller's 122 and 91 cubic inch straight 8 DOHC powered race cars were built and finished like fine jewelry), with their Duesenberg competitors less highly finished. This all came to very much a screeching halt in 1930, due as much to the onset of the Great Depression as anything else.

However, by the late 1930's, AAA Championship cars, especially as they appeared at Indianapolis each May, tended to be very highly finished, at least those campaigned by major race teams. Of course, many lesser cars weren't all that well presented, due to the limitations of available money, but they tried for sure.

Grand Prix cars of the 20's and 30's also tended to not be as highly finished, with of course, a few exceptions, as most were privateer entries as opposed to factory teams; but even factory team cars weren't often showpieces (the early Auto Union rear engine cars were covered largely in aircraft linen, doped in the same manner as fabric covered aircraft, which resulted in rather dull silver finishes. Some Mercedes cars showed up in unpainted aluminum a few times as well.

Fast-forward to the postwar racing scene, which brought some real showmanship to racing in the US: Midgets were often very highly finished, at least at the start of the season, with the chips, dents and dings of dirt track racing taking their toll over months of racing 3-4 times a week. Indianapolis cars (Championship Division of AAA and later USAC) generally were very highly finished, with incredibly shiny and showy paintwork at least at the start of the Month of May at Indianapolis, and often those cars that qualified for the 500 got repainted and re-trimmed (sponsor graphics) during the week between the last day of Qualifications and the start of the 500 on Memorial Day--after all, Indianapolis was (and still is) perhaps the biggest media event in motorsports, and car owners and sponsors wanted (and still want) their cars to stand out, appearance-wise. Of course, most of those paint jobs tended to wear badly during the 500, and more often than not a Champ car would run the entire season without repainting unless damaged in a crash.

A very good example of what a USAC Championship car in the Offy roadster era looked like by the Bobby Ball Memorial 150 at Phoenix AZ (for a long time the last race of the USAC Championship Season in October) is the 1964 Sheraton-Thompson Watson-copy Offenhauser roadster driven by AJ Foyt to Victory Lane at Indy, and the USAC National Championship that year--it started out in May with an absolutely gorgeous Dean Jeffries pearlescent white paintjob, that rivaled any show car that Jeffries painted for the custom and rod show circuit that year--and it had candy red and candy blue accents, the blue scallops even faded by Jeffries light-to-dark for accent. All the sponsor graphics were hand-painted by a professional sign-painter, the Sheraton-Thompson (co-sponsors were the presidents of Sheraton Hotels and Thompson Industries (forerunner of Thompson-Ramo-Wooldrige, now TRW) logo's were in gold leaf, edged with shiny sign-writers' paint. Only the accessory, or "secondary sponsor) logo's were decals, even a couple were glossy paper stickers. That car, as it has stood in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum since 1965, is as it finished the 1964 season though, worn, the candy red nose somewhat faded, with all manner of chips and dings on the forward portion of the nose and the external oil tank on the left side, (added for the 200 mile race at Milwaukee the Sunday after the 500 that year. The forward portion of the chrome-plated exhaust header has numerous small dings in it from track debris kicked up by the left front tire, as well as from cars Foyt came up on and passed on his run for the season championship. But, I saw that car on race day morning--it was a brilliantly finished show car that ran fast. The same was true with other race teams as well: There were cars in the starting field at Indy in those last years of roadster dominance with metalflake and candy paint jobs, done by some of the biggest names in custom car painting (consider that many of them were owned and maintained by California-based racing teams back then).

Wasn't it very much the same with the top level of drag racing also? I tend to think so. When Can-Am rose up to prominence, with major sponsor and car owner money flowing into the top race teams, Can Am cars tended to be very well finished. Now, SCCA cars in general, and even Formula 1 cars before sponsorship graphics graced their bodywork, often tended to be somewhat drab, not necessarily highly finished (I've seen more than a few rather crudely finished Team Lotus cars back in the day).

With graphics, be they decorative or sponsor-oriented, bear in mind that very few sponsor logo's were decals, and of course, computer designed, laser cut graphics didn't come along until what, the early 1980's or so? So the era of car should be considered as well--there's a great deal of difference between laser-cut mylar and vinyl and masked/sprayed graphics, even hand-painted logo's done by professional sign painters. Likewise, no matter the type of racing or the venues involved, there will be a great difference generally, between what a car looked like at the start of the season, or even a major racing event, than at the end of such a major race, certainly at the end of a long season--particularly true with short-track racing (certainly on dirt!) and also depending on the bank account of the car owner.

However, clear-coating a model race car for that "show-car" look almost always makes it look less realistic--clear coats greatly thicken the paint finish, and while shiny, clearing the model does tend to give a car a one-piece shine all over, where there would have been differences in sheen on the actual car, going from rubbed and polished lacquer to hand-lettered team and sponsor names done with the likes of One Shot signwriter enamels. Certainly accessory decals or stickers stand out on the surface, not buried under clear coats.

Art

[Brett Barrow]

I have to admit to being drafted as a young teen or pre-teen to be given the task of helping to wipe down Kyle Petty's Felix Sabates-owned #42 Mello Yello Pontiac at Martinsville (my hometown - whoo hooo!!!) with some strange industrial strength spray-foam cleaner/protectant the Sunday morning before the race. I can't recall what it was exactly, I was just a kid with a camera and a pit pass (if you even needed a pit pass back then) and they just grabbed me and asked if I'd like to help out. The car was pretty rough and stone chipped and orange peeley and had visible runs, and the decals were cut vinyl, but this cleaner/protectant stuff left it looking nice and slick and shiny as snail snot - and this was Martinsville, a short track - the shortest track to be correct. From a distance, like how we would typically view a scale model, it definitely looked smooth and shiny. All the teams were out there that morning cleaning up the cars before the race.

Now I know in this day and age with regulations, liablility, the big bucks, and all that there's no way a kid plucked from the crowd at a Nascar race would ever be allowed to touch an actual race car...

When I built Nascar models back then I always thought putting Pledge over raw decals gave pretty much the exact look of how that car looked after we'd wiped that cleaner on it.

[Daddyfink]

All I know is that it is ok to do shiny paint jobs on Dragsters! That's right, roundy round cars are not the only race cars in the world!

It cracks me up that it always boils down to NASCRAP builds!

In the end it is the folks looking at the models on the contest tables that end up admiring "the shiny toy cars"!

Just go build something!

[Mooneyzs]

Not everything like you think you do!

I built Mr Hendrick his son's winning supertruck and presented it to him in Oct of 2011. I snapped this picture. All those guys are fixed operations directors at his dealerships across the country.... It was a most memorable day for me...........

Think Rick Hendrick is thinking "too much clear" ??????

And yes.... I cleared OVER the decals on the build because they were alps decals and I did not want the ink rubbing off over time......

David.... that is one beautiful model. And I bet it was an honor to meet him. I am a big Jeff Gordon fan. Anyway love your builds

[Brett Barrow]

On a related note - are today's race cars done with vinyl wraps or heat-set Mylar wraps? - 'cause Mylar is much shinier than vinyl. I've seen some time-lapse video of race cars being wrapped and they're not even fully painted underneath, the urethane front and rear clips are still raw black and the body was the same grey they do the roll cage in, every bit of "color" on the car was printed in the wrap, pretty much everything except the contingency stickers on the front fenders.

[kalbert]

This is still going on? Seems like we all have a lot of facts and opinions about how we think race cars should look. Anyone actually built anything lately???

[martinfan5]

. Anyone actually built anything lately???

Thats funny, you know most people on here dont build models right?, they just talk about it

[Pete J.]

Thats funny, you know most people on here dont build models right?, they just talk about it

It is technically a syndrome referred to as "analysis paralysis". I think this thread shows that this is one subject that everyone has an opinion about. I think I can break it down into six categories. 1- That ain't how they do it on the real cars. 2- I need to protect my decals, because they will fall off. 3- I am accounting for the scale effect. 4- I like my models super shiny. 5- I am getting rid of unevenness. 6- I built for myself and will do what I darned well please.

So did I leave anyone out? I doubt we will ever arrive at a consensus but it is always good to hear other opinions.

[martinfan5]

It is technically a syndrome referred to as "analysis paralysis". I think this thread shows that this is one subject that everyone has an opinion about. I think I can break it down into six categories. 1- That ain't how they do it on the real cars. 2- I need to protect my decals, because they will fall off. 3- I am accounting for the scale effect. 4- I like my models super shiny. 5- I am getting rid of unevenness. 6- I built for myself and will do what I darned well please.

So did I leave anyone out? I doubt we will ever arrive at a consensus but it is always good to hear other opinions.

I know, I was just being a smart arse, I really have not wanted to get involved in this one, like you said, there are 6 different categories and there really is no simple answer .

[Mooneyzs]

This is still going on? Seems like we all have a lot of facts and opinions about how we think race cars should look. Anyone actually built anything lately???

I have been building one... this project has taken me way longer than I wanted but its ok because its turning out better than I have expected so far. Plus I don't want to rush and screw something up.

[MAGNUM4342]

All I know is that it is ok to do shiny paint jobs on Dragsters! That's right, roundy round cars are not the only race cars in the world!

It cracks me up that it always boils down to NASCRAP builds!

In the end it is the folks looking at the models on the contest tables that end up admiring "the shiny toy cars"!

Just go build something!

What cracks me up is that NOONE is downgrading drag racing but you gotta say "NASCRAP"? Nice!

[Pete J.]

The illusion of central position. It bites us all at one time or another!

[wgflatliner]

How about building one that has all six aspects? Guaranteed winner at that point.

[Daddyfink]

What cracks me up is that NOONE is downgrading drag racing but you gotta say "NASCRAP"? Nice!

Who is Noone?

Just yanking on Drew's chain!

Edited April 26, 2013 by Daddyfink

[IMSANUT]

Doesn't it all depend on the type/era/venue of the race car in question? Let's take a look:

In the early days of motorsport, cars were painted by brushing, not spray-painting (spray-painting didn't really begin until the advent of sprayable lacquers in the early 1920's (thanks DuPont!) and the development of spray guns. The same with plated parts on race cars (Nickel plating was around before 1900, but chromium plating didn't come into being until the late 1920's (Oldsmobile was the first production car to feature chrome plated bumpers and trim, in 1929).

Of course, the major league of American racing, AAA's Contest Board-sanctioned "Championship Racing" reached a zenith of sorts in the 1920's, with highly tuned, and highly finished Miller race cars (Harry Miller's 122 and 91 cubic inch straight 8 DOHC powered race cars were built and finished like fine jewelry), with their Duesenberg competitors less highly finished. This all came to very much a screeching halt in 1930, due as much to the onset of the Great Depression as anything else.

However, by the late 1930's, AAA Championship cars, especially as they appeared at Indianapolis each May, tended to be very highly finished, at least those campaigned by major race teams. Of course, many lesser cars weren't all that well presented, due to the limitations of available money, but they tried for sure.

Grand Prix cars of the 20's and 30's also tended to not be as highly finished, with of course, a few exceptions, as most were privateer entries as opposed to factory teams; but even factory team cars weren't often showpieces (the early Auto Union rear engine cars were covered largely in aircraft linen, doped in the same manner as fabric covered aircraft, which resulted in rather dull silver finishes. Some Mercedes cars showed up in unpainted aluminum a few times as well.

Fast-forward to the postwar racing scene, which brought some real showmanship to racing in the US: Midgets were often very highly finished, at least at the start of the season, with the chips, dents and dings of dirt track racing taking their toll over months of racing 3-4 times a week. Indianapolis cars (Championship Division of AAA and later USAC) generally were very highly finished, with incredibly shiny and showy paintwork at least at the start of the Month of May at Indianapolis, and often those cars that qualified for the 500 got repainted and re-trimmed (sponsor graphics) during the week between the last day of Qualifications and the start of the 500 on Memorial Day--after all, Indianapolis was (and still is) perhaps the biggest media event in motorsports, and car owners and sponsors wanted (and still want) their cars to stand out, appearance-wise. Of course, most of those paint jobs tended to wear badly during the 500, and more often than not a Champ car would run the entire season without repainting unless damaged in a crash.

A very good example of what a USAC Championship car in the Offy roadster era looked like by the Bobby Ball Memorial 150 at Phoenix AZ (for a long time the last race of the USAC Championship Season in October) is the 1964 Sheraton-Thompson Watson-copy Offenhauser roadster driven by AJ Foyt to Victory Lane at Indy, and the USAC National Championship that year--it started out in May with an absolutely gorgeous Dean Jeffries pearlescent white paintjob, that rivaled any show car that Jeffries painted for the custom and rod show circuit that year--and it had candy red and candy blue accents, the blue scallops even faded by Jeffries light-to-dark for accent. All the sponsor graphics were hand-painted by a professional sign-painter, the Sheraton-Thompson (co-sponsors were the presidents of Sheraton Hotels and Thompson Industries (forerunner of Thompson-Ramo-Wooldrige, now TRW) logo's were in gold leaf, edged with shiny sign-writers' paint. Only the accessory, or "secondary sponsor) logo's were decals, even a couple were glossy paper stickers. That car, as it has stood in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum since 1965, is as it finished the 1964 season though, worn, the candy red nose somewhat faded, with all manner of chips and dings on the forward portion of the nose and the external oil tank on the left side, (added for the 200 mile race at Milwaukee the Sunday after the 500 that year. The forward portion of the chrome-plated exhaust header has numerous small dings in it from track debris kicked up by the left front tire, as well as from cars Foyt came up on and passed on his run for the season championship. But, I saw that car on race day morning--it was a brilliantly finished show car that ran fast. The same was true with other race teams as well: There were cars in the starting field at Indy in those last years of roadster dominance with metalflake and candy paint jobs, done by some of the biggest names in custom car painting (consider that many of them were owned and maintained by California-based racing teams back then).

Wasn't it very much the same with the top level of drag racing also? I tend to think so. When Can-Am rose up to prominence, with major sponsor and car owner money flowing into the top race teams, Can Am cars tended to be very well finished. Now, SCCA cars in general, and even Formula 1 cars before sponsorship graphics graced their bodywork, often tended to be somewhat drab, not necessarily highly finished (I've seen more than a few rather crudely finished Team Lotus cars back in the day).

With graphics, be they decorative or sponsor-oriented, bear in mind that very few sponsor logo's were decals, and of course, computer designed, laser cut graphics didn't come along until what, the early 1980's or so? So the era of car should be considered as well--there's a great deal of difference between laser-cut mylar and vinyl and masked/sprayed graphics, even hand-painted logo's done by professional sign painters. Likewise, no matter the type of racing or the venues involved, there will be a great difference generally, between what a car looked like at the start of the season, or even a major racing event, than at the end of such a major race, certainly at the end of a long season--particularly true with short-track racing (certainly on dirt!) and also depending on the bank account of the car owner.

However, clear-coating a model race car for that "show-car" look almost always makes it look less realistic--clear coats greatly thicken the paint finish, and while shiny, clearing the model does tend to give a car a one-piece shine all over, where there would have been differences in sheen on the actual car, going from rubbed and polished lacquer to hand-lettered team and sponsor names done with the likes of One Shot signwriter enamels. Certainly accessory decals or stickers stand out on the surface, not buried under clear coats.

Art

Art's last paragraph nails exactly what my original thought was, though much better explained.

[Danno]

Art's last paragraph nails exactly what my original thought was, though much better explained.

Dittos!

[Scale-Master]

Oh my Gosh.. talk about beating a dead horse till it jumps back up and beats you.

Repeatedly...