NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR
Over the course of the '99 season. the GOODWRENCH CAR has been gettin' add-ons to the graphics. The new hood logo, as seen on this model, first appeared at The Brickyard 400. I wasn't impressed at first, thinkin' it made the car look like the hood was on crooked, but you get used to change... (Actually, I liked the "PLUS" hood logo of 1998, but DE refused to keep it, as he considered it unlucky... or so I heard or read somewheres...)
The build of the model was pretty straightforward, using techniques I've oulined in other model descriptions. Two items stand out - the first you see if you lift the hood. In place of the kit-supplied filter, I used a resin piece, a cold air box from Blue Ribbon models. Pretty convincing, and it fits well. I had a problem due to my lack of understanding of how it fit into the cowl, a learning I got cleared up upon observing one of Dale's speedway cars at The Hobby Show in Toronto... but more on that later....
As you've likely figgered out, the "raison d'etre" for this model was the chance to build it with the new late-season hood logo - plus a chance to model Dale's "Bristol Stomper"... The hood logo arrived unannounced as a JPEG file from my Mexican friend, Sam Lopez. Was I excited?? Yup...
Sam was the genius who developed the Three Stooges Beer graphics I have already featured on this site. I printed the hood logo off on the old CANON, did some cutting and resizing on the Monte Kit I'd immediately grabbed off the shelf, and fired the graphic file off to Alex Kung.
While he was printin' them, I worked on the model.
The usual stuff... Wired and plumbed the engine, added the "E-bar", built new exhaust dumps... and applied a killer coat of CTC's finest black spot repair aerosol lacquer. I was able to get the rest of the decals I needed from the new 1999 SLIXX Earnhardt sheet, plus the standard Monogram (sorry, Revell...) sheet.
Once I got the decals from Alex I began the application process. I used shots from WINSTON CUP SCENE, to figure out how the logo was angled on the hood. This does seem to vary somewhat from race to race, by the way...
The single layer logo was too translucent, and had significant black showthrough. Luckily, Alex had put two images on the sheet, and by overlaying the second one, I got good coverage of the black. (It would be fairly easy to avoid this requirement for two decals, by making a photocopy of the logo, and using it as a template to mask and paint a white square on the hood the right size for the decal....)
When I asked Alex about the feasibility of laying down a thicker, or second, coat of white, to prevent the bleedthrough, I learned something about ALPS printers I did not know: they use coloured RIBBONS, not liquid ink, in the printing process!! When you try to lay a second coat there is often a problem of lifting of the first coat, that ruins the whole decal. Learn a new fact every day, you'll never grow old, they say....
Alex had used FUTURE brand floorwax, applied through an airbrush, as a clearcoat, to protect the decal. I planned to use my usual Tamiya TS13 aerosol clear to coat the entire model. To check it's behaviour over Future, I took an area of the decal that was coated with wax, but had no image, and applied the Tamiya clear, expecting all kinds of craters and fish-eyes. But it looked pretty good, a bit of peel, as the FUTURE tried to do what wax is supposed to do - make liquids bead up, but it dried smooth, and i was able to put two or three coats on, with sanding in between, then polish it, and the whole model up to a nice sheen.
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| The model, and the REAL THING! |
The only discrepancy is the c-pillar decal, where I used the SLIXX Childress decal. Sam has since developed the correct "RealTree" version, so, it'll be right once Alex works his magic...
By a happy coincidence, a Hamilton hobby shop, Modellers Choice, had brought in a REAL GOODWRENCH car to display, that had the same hood graphic. Cool! got a couple neat shots of the real thing and the model together! (and this WAS the real thing, the car had an impressive racing pedigree at Daytona and Talledega, and had been the test car for the Daytona lighting system.)
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| "Mr NASCAR" poses with his model and the REAL THING!! |
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