NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR
Said graphics would allow me to build the car Jeremy Mayfield drove in the 1999 California 500, honouring the 125th running of the Kentucky Derby. Unfortunately, in that race, Jeremy didn't quite "Run for the Roses", starting in 14th place, but he stayed up among the leaders, and finished 7th.
Finding pix of this car was not easy! The primary body colour is Silver, but based on shots from ciastock.com, the rear quarter panels appear to be white, behind the horse and rider decal.
The roof is very dark blue, with fogged breaklines about 1/3rd of the way down the A, B, and C-pillars.
Body was first primed (I used PlastiKote grey primer, with 600-grit wetsanding.) Next, rear spoiler was painted gloss black, then masked off before applying subsequent body colours. The parcel shelf in the rear window had to be painted red to match the chassis colour, as on the actual vehicle, it is part of the chassis. Once it was painted and cured (I used VW MARS red for this and chassis) I masked it off before applying exterior body colours.
Entire body was painted silver...then the white needed to be applied on the rear quarterpanels. I masked off the trunklid and the roof, then from a line from the trunk hinge to follow the roof/fender line to a point about one half way along the bottom of the rear sidewindows. The rear panels and spoiler had to be masked as well. I then painted the rear quarters white, using an airbrush, with a fogged white/silver vertical breakline from the top of the rear fender opening to the midpoint of the bottom of the rear side window. This fogged break would be covered by the head of the jockey once side decals were applied. (I had made a photocopy of the decal and cut out the horse/jockey image to determine precise positioning of the fogged break over the rear fender opening to apply the white).
Next step was the roof, which was very dark blue.(Unfortunately, I used black, based on what I could discern from CIAstock.com...) The roof and 1/3rd of the way down the A,B,and C pillars were airbrushed black, after hood, trunk/spoiler and sides had been masked to protect the silver and white body from black overspray.
The front spoiler was dark charcoal or black for the race, but some shots at CIAstock.com show an orange stripe on the front airdam. None of the race shots had this, so it may have been just for publicity, practice, etc... I chose to model as it raced, but one could add the orange for a more colourful model, I suppose.
Now, I was ready to apply the decals, starting with the horsey decals on the rear quarters. I had to make certain when locating these decals that they was not too far forward, or there would not be room for the side numbers. The wheel openings were trimmed so that only a small portion of the horse's chest was visible, based on CIASTOCK photos. About 1/3- 1/2 inch had to be trimmed from the front of the wheel opening on the decal.
The rest of the decal application was straightforward.
There is a good shot in NASCAR Illustrated (Aug '99) that shows the rear of the car, for location of decals on decklid and TV panel. (In this shot the white rear quarters are not obvious... was that a publicity thing too? What DID I build??) Although contingency decals are on the sheet, I used a set from SLIXX 1999 grouped contingency sheet, as definition is clearer. (ALPS process does have its limitations!) All other decals come from the 3 Amigos sheet!
Once decals had 24 hours to dry, they were clearcoated with several LIGHT coats of TAMIYA TS13 Acrylic clear from a heated (hot tapwater) rattlecan. This was followed by polishing with good ol' green Turtle Wax. Once I'd completed this, I had a model of a very clean, but deceptively complex to apply, paint scheme used only once by Jeremy Mayfield, my new favourite driver since the Pocono thing in June...
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