June '21 Model Kit Build-off

In reply to BenB (Forum Supporter) :

I was particularly impressed with how the decals confirmed to the shapes, especially on the roof. That is one piece up the A pillar and over to the trailing edge. Look at the shape of the strakes that direct air into the top inlet. I used lots of setting solution, but still, they worked.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

That looks spectacular.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Whoever does their decals does a great job. Not something you often see with kit decals.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

Wow is all I can say.

Interior complete. All black so it's hard to see the mistakes. Does come with some nice (albeit tedious to apply) dash decals, including woodgrain accents.

In reply to slowbird :

I like it!

I finally finished the Nunu Audi R8 LMS. Pretty painless build; all of the problems I had were self-induced. Sorry for the crappy cell pics.

In reply to BenB (Forum Supporter) :

Are the decals/livery on the Audi from the kit? 

In reply to TurnerX19 :

They're from Indycals. If you've never used them before, they're laser-printed and you have to cut out each individual decal. The printing process isn't quite as sharp as normal silk-screened decals and underlying colors (especially red) can show through the white bits if you don't double up the decals. My only complaint about them is they don't conform to compound curves as easily as silk screened decals. 

In reply to BenB (Forum Supporter) :

I have some Indycals, but have not used them yet. Both very much simpler than your Audi. One is entirely black decals onto a white car, the Eagle F5000 car of Tony Adamowicz. Other is 1928 Indy 500 winner to use with resin kit I started 20 years ago. Both of these need to be built soon.....

I need to paint the driveshaft and rear shocks and then attach them. Then it'll just be painting and assembling the body. This month sure has flown by.

In reply to slowbird :

That looks good. How'd you get the aluminized look on the exhaust?

In reply to vwcorvette (Forum Supporter) :

This is the paint I used. Rustoleum advanced formula metallic satin nickel. It says paint and primer in one but if I was painting white plastic I might put black primer on it first, then you can get away with a lighter coat of this stuff. I also considered flat-coating over it to dull the metallic flakes a bit, but I didn't end up doing that.

So I did another quick build. Once again the only extra detail added was proper seat harness instead of the decals provided, and I installed them in proper endurance racing quick change position, tied up to the roll cage. The Bemax/NuNu BMW M6 GT3 winner from the 2016 Spa 24 hour. I think BenB did this one recently with a different livery. I watched that race live, and jumped on the kit as soon as I saw it. Nice kit, although the panel lines are a little shallow. 

A small rant: I don't know how they design the tooling for these kits, but you can't convince me that they had to attach the wheels to the sprue right up against the front of the rim. This isn't the worst I've ever seen, but it does leave a visible deformation of the lip of the rim even once cut and trimmed. It's not that bad once it's on the shelf, but it bugs me when I'm putting it together. (I went back and put some silver paint on it, but the shape is still the main issue.)

Now, as for build progress, we have a rolling chassis with interior ready for the body to go on. I once again failed to paint the body properly by forgetting to do multiple thin coats of paint. (It looks so good going on that I think I'll just be okay with one coat. Then I look at it the next day and it's all cloudy and I know if I put another coat on it will crackle. It may be the humidity, or not shaking it enough, but it keeps happening when I use rustoleum.) So I buffed it out and buffed through to the primer on the roof. So now I've tried to put a light coat on the roof just to make it red again without crackling hopefully. Then I'll try buffing it again.

In reply to TurnerX19 :

That turned out great! It's a fun kit. They're releasing a version of it with the Playstation livery, so I guess there will be another one in my future.

@slowbird, designers seem to have a knack for putting sprue attachments in inconvenient places. The worst ones are those on a lot of the clear parts.

I started Tamiya's Castrol Supra last week after I finished the Audi. It's going pretty fast, because almost everything is painted white. Shunko's decals for the car are impossible to find, so I had to use the kit decals. They were okay, but I have to touch up some spots where they cracked.

Tamiya makes a product called "panel line accent color". It comes in a glass bottle with a little applicator brush in the lid. It's a very thin black wash. There is a learning curve to applying it but the stuff works great once you learn. Excess can be rubbed off with a cloth and maybe a smidge of polish if needed. I first tried it on the '65 Mustang convertible and it made a huge difference in how the final product looks. I'll probably go back and do it to my older builds.

I just painted the hood and tried to keep in mind the proper recoat times. Other than a spot where I smudged it with my finger trying to remove a speck of dust, it looks a lot better so far. 3 or 4 coats a few minutes apart. Gonna get that tattooed on the inside of my eyelids so I remember.

The paint has turned out crap and I debated starting over, but then I decided I was out of berkeleys to give and the stripe decals will hide some of it. I also procrastinated a lot, so I'm busy rushing through the final assembly now. Windshield and rear and side windows are all molded separately on this car. It's a pretty nice and detailed kit that goes together well except for a few minor things. I trimmed some plastic off the edges of the chassis around the back because it's really hard to cram it into the body otherwise. And the wheel assembly is kind of wobbly around the metal pin that holds it to the axle. Pics to come.

Holy crap it's June 30th?!? The year is half done? Let's see, did I even start a car? Nope, no I did not. Sigh. Sorry.

Really struggling to get these decals to settle down. I should've cut a hole in it where the keyhole bump is. Sigh.

Well, don't feel bad if you didn't finish. I didn't even prime my parts until this week and then got fish eyes despite having washed everything. Pro Tip:  try not to buy kits made in Ukraine (yes, really).

Annoyed, I ordered two Revell/Monogram Mustang kits off Ebay that arrived yesterday. 69 Shelby GT500 and 70 Boss 302. The Shelby kit was opened but the parts are sealed. The only thing missing is a set of stripes from the decal sheet. Naturally, they are the white stripes that go with every color. There are black ones but I can only find black stripes on a yellow car, which I'm not wild about. The other color is a sort of medium brown...that I guess is supposed to be 'gold', but isn't. I'm already flummoxed about what color to work with and may just say "Berkely it" and paint it whatever Tamiya color looks good on the rack.

It's been hovering around 90 degrees here most days with the usual PA humidity so painting in the garage is a no-go.

In reply to ddavidv :

It may not be factory correct but I think the black stripes would look real good over Tamiya TS23 light blue.  Kind of a Grabber Blue/Petty Blue shade, or pretty close.

In reply to ddavidv :

Grabber Green used black stripes.

Kind of disappointed in this one. The paint is rather poor and my decal application skills need work as well. I lack the motivation to properly chrome out the rest of the side trim, and the passenger side mirror already fell off somewhere. Oh well, try to do better on the next one.

Almost finished this one by the 30th! I just noticed I need to go back and paint the hold downs on the boot lid. It's a fairly simple kit and it went together pretty fast because almost everything is painted white.