NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR

KENNY IRWIN JR's 1998 "JOKER"
TAURUS

Sam fired this file up to me a few month back, and Alex and I have set it up once again for printing on our ALPS printers.

Kenny Irwin made a bit of a splash back in '97, coming in and running well in a couple WC races, in preparation for his Rookie year in 1998. He impressed Robert Yates well enough that he bumped veteran Ernie Irvan out of the coveted 28 HAVOLINE ride, and became Dale Jarrett's new team mate in Yates' racing enterprise in '98..

But all did not go swimmingly for Kenny in his rookie season. He struggled to get into the field, then had a tendancy to wad up Robert's expensive machines, thru a combination of bad luck, and sometimes stickin' the 28's nose in bad places. On top of this, there were media reports that Yates did not see him as sufficiently committed, leading an offtrack lifestyle that Robert felt did not leave him in top condition for those gruelling Sundays. By the end of the '98 season there had been a couple sessions reported of Yates having to sit Kenny down and "refocus" him...

Kenny did win the Rookie title, but in reality, there was precious little competition, and he had the best ride of the bunch. Kenny stayed with Yates through 1999, but for 2000, he was released, in favour of veteran Ricky Rudd. Kenny resurfaced on the SABCO team in 2000, in Joe Nemecheck's BELLSOUTH car, as Joe had moved on. All in all, Irwin is developing into a good competitor.. he, like many of us, just took a bit longer to figger out "how things work"...

The car shown here was part of one of those bizarre promotions that Humpy Wheeler often gets into at Charlotte, this one being at the 1998 UAW-GM Quality 500 in early October. Kenny had the Joker livery on the 28, and poor DJ had the BATMAN livery on his 88 machine (decals, model pending...) in celebration of the latest BATMAN movie at the time ("Batman Forever"?). The cars were involved in some kind of prerace hoohaw, where Batman was supposedly trying to prevent The Joker from disrupting the start of the race. Not sure of the details, and the announcers were disinclined to add much enlightenment during the race. All in all, not a high spot in NASCAR's resume, but the paint jobs were sure neat!!

While I was fine-tuning the graphics for printing (once more lots of emails and attachments flyin' between Canada and Mexico..) I worked on the paint job. As near as I can figger, this is a five-colour job, with fogged in breaks between colours. I sensed another opportunity to get up close and personal with the old airbrush.. but it came out pretty good! I started with a full coat of white, as a base for the yellow. The whole body was then painted yellow, using Tamiya's TS16 Yellow, straight from the rattle-can. This would lead to a problem later one, which has been subsequently corrected on the decal sheet.

For the second colour, I chose Tamiya's TS22 Light Green, which is a close match to the fogged-in green around the windshield and front fenders. This is also a close match to the green stripes on the decal sheet. Prior to fogging in the green, and other colours, I had masked off a strip about 1/2" wide around the bottom, planning to apply the green decal stripes. Since I needed a fine fog-line on the green-yellow break, I emptied some of the TAMIYA green from the rattle-can into an airbrush bottle, and carefully, using low flow and air, fogged in the green area. So far, so good..

Next colour was a light, bright blue, which I made by adding some Chromabase@ blue basecoat to some Grabber Blue that I had emptied from an automotive touch-up can into an airbrush bottle. This was then fogged onto the roof and sides. Still, so far, so good... A darker blue was made from the remains of the light blue, by adding more blue base, and some TAMIYA clear (TS13) to the light blue. This was then fogged in on the rear of the roof, and the rear quarterpanels. No problems... Final colour was to fog in the back end with basic black. All went well, and I was pleased with the result.

By this time, on about the third try, I got a good set of decals printed, and began by applying the green stripe - supposed to match the green fogged in colour, remember?

Uh-oh... I was applying over the Tamiya Yellow, and since the stripe had no underlaying white, the yellow showed thru, and the green colour was too dark and yellow. I should have masked before I applied the yellow, I now realized... Since then, the graphics have been reworked to have a white base underneath, to avoid this problem. You can see the off-colur stripe on my model... ah, well...

I finished the decal application with no problems, other than the red MAC logos in front of the rear wheelwells were also too transparent. This has also been corrected...

After printing the decals, I had applied a couple LIGHT coats of Microscale Superfilm, cut 50% with lacquer thinner, thru my airbrush, to protect the delicate printing, and to provide sufficient thickness to allow the decals to be manhandled into place. These decals tend to be very thin, and the adhesive strong, and it would be easy to fold or tear them if you are not careful. They are NOT for the faint of heart - especially that big hood logo...

All the decals except the front-fender contingency decals came from the sheet I printed. Those fender decals came from SLIXX. Once all the decals had been placed, I let it dry a couple days, then SLOWLY built up a layer of TAMIYA TS13 clear, in several THIN coats from a heated rattle-can, then polished it out with Turtle Wax.

The chassis was built following my usual formula - valve stems, radio cord, exhaust dumps, etc were added.

I also built a grille insert from sheet plastic with a small opening backed with photoetched screen, painted it yellow and installed it to match pictures of the car as it raced. Masking tape, painted yellow, was also used to block off part of the bottom grille, as in photos.

And how did The Joker do in the race, you ask?? Well, Kenny qualified 10th... He got caught up in a lap-204 accident that was not of his making, and finished 20th, a typical result for the year...

Overall, other than the stripe thing, I was very pleased with the model and the graphics application. And my printing prowess is slowly developing... I now have another striking and unique model for my collection, one I've wanted ever since I posted shots by Perry Yeager of his Joker and Batman cars. He got the stripes right, by the way...

Well done Sam... the adventure continues!