55 Corvette

Another batch of chassis stuff painted.








My reference photos showed that the underside of the Corvettes were a tan-ish, yellow-ish fiberglass.



Here I used Testors Tan acrylic over white styrene for the 53 kit and over grey styrene for the 55 kit.



The tan over white looks closer to the reference photos.









I stripped the kit chrome from the engine goodies and used Alclad II gloss black base in prep for the ALC-107 chrome.  It goes on nice and thin and details remain crisp.

Here is the underside of the hood with the requisite challenges.  







The Foredom flexshaft machine will hopefully come to the rescue.  Just pick your poison and go to work.











Made quick work of that.  Just be careful and make sure to keep moving, or else you will end up with a big hole.







I'm using Perfect Plastic putty for this.  I like it because it is water based, doesn't shrink, doesn't stink (by comparison), and it is easy to work with.  I'm still a noob, so my technique will get better.

Now it's time to deal with the tail lights.  I glued them on the body and put some putty around the joins to try and mold them in.











I then glued the lower valence to the body.  It is wider than the body and sticks out proud.  Ugh.  Oh well.  

Now on to the shifter.  This is the hideous, out of scale part that comes in the kit.  Nope.  Don't like it.






In this reference photo we can see the shift knob and the turn signal stalk.  I wanted to replicate both.  I started with a pin, put it in the collet of the flex shaft and with a file, reshaped it till it looked right to me.










Here are the results in situ.  Very lame attempt at a carpet heel pad.  Ignore that.  I'll do better next time.  

Now for this model, as opposed to the 53 Corvette I have in process,


I wanted to try and do whitewalls.  I started by painting on Humbrol Maskol, a paintable latex.  I like this product.

Shot the tires with Tamiya X2 white, then peeled off the mask.  Clean up any ragged edges with a #11 blade.  I think they turned out pretty good.







If you look closely at the tire on the far right you can see that is the weak link.  I tried to brush paint on the whitewall.  Too blobby and inconsistent.

"If you want good results, you have to put in the work." I said to myself.  The airbrush did a much more even job of the paint application.  







In this case the steel wheels are painted body color.  Harvest Gold.  I got the Harvest gold, Woodland Green lacquer, and grey primer from MCW- Model Car World.  Mike is a nice guy and I really like the product.








Here are the painted wheels/wheelcovers, followed by the assembled wheels.  I am very pleased with the results.

This is the reference photo for the chassis.  The tires sit nicely in the arches.






This is a pic of the 53, but the 55 looks exactly the same.  Looks like a dune buggy.  This won't do.  I will have to deal with this.





That's all for now.  Thanks for looking.

Thanks Bruce.

I actually have some of that. I will have to see what I can do with it.

Thanks for the tip.

Thank you Dennis.

Appreciate the comments.

Thanks Deano.

Appreciate the comments.

Some progress:


It's really weird working on two cars that are so similar.  I am getting deja vu.

Anyway, on to the exhaust.  Here is the reference photo.







Here are the exhaust tips in the kit.  No thank you.








Drill through the valence.








Some tubing and some miter box action.







I am pleased with this result.

WOW...That looks great Mark!