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NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR Brendon Gaughan's 2004 "PUNISHER" KODAK Dodge Intrepid

NOTE: The decal has been re-engineered vs the original description below. A new description is included below.

Brendan is in his rookie year in the WINSTON... er... NEXTEL CUP Series. He started into the bigtime in 2002, winning the Raybestos RotY award in the Craftsman Truck Series, following that up in 2003 with a strong sophomore season, with six wins and 14 top tens in 25 races. He narrowly missed out on the Championship, after crashing in Homestead in the final race. This performance was good enough to earn him a rookie ride in a third Penske car, formerly Dave Blaney's ride, with Kodak backing. All in all he has put in a pretty good performance, 29th overall after Indy, although he has been eclipsed in a strong 2004 RotY field, by Kahne, Vickers and Wimmer.

The paint scheme seen here was run at the March Bristol race, to highlight the opening of "THE PUNISHER" in April. Now I had no idea who or what "THE PUNISHER" might be, but both Sam and I knew cool graphics when we saw 'em... and in few weeks Sam had sent me a great set of graphics, including the "Bloodwork" for the sides... and Very Spiff new headlights!!

(Sidebar: I Googled "The Punisher", and got this: "After his wife and family are killed, G-Man Frank Castle takes it upon himself to rid America of crime by acting as judge, jury and executioner."
Hmmm... and NASCAR won't allow distilled spirits on their cars... but vigilanteism is ok....strange.... but I digress...)

It took a long time to get this one ready. In the division of labour in 3 Amigos, Sam mostly creates the graphics, and I fine-tune them and fit them to an actual body. Normally, this is a fairly trivial exercise of adjusting sizes a bit, often they are good to go as recieved. The issue with this set of graphics was adjusting the "Blood" graphics into a printable file to conform to the body, and this took some doing, but I finally managed it.

Following in red is the new process. Ignore the few paragraphs in italics after this that describes the old process. Based on a suggestion by 1/43rd modeller Brian Ebbinghaus, I reversed the process. I developed, using Sam's "blood" graphics as a starting point, black graphics for the roof, hood, sides and c-pillars. This greatly simplifies the process. Now the body is painted "blood-red" - I leave it to you to determine that colour- then mask the body so the cowl, decklid, tailpanel, A,and B pillars, and roof from the roof rails to the top of the rear window, can be painted black. Once that is complete, add the black "splash" decals for the roof, hood, sides, and C-pillars. Pictures below show masking and the newly-decalled body.

Once these "splash" graphics were dry, I dusted on a LIGHT coat of TAMIYA TS-13, then applied the rest of the graphics. From this point the buildup proceeded the same as my original build. The narrative picks up below where the italics end.

I then began the buildup. Starting point was the 2003-2004 Coors kit, that finally found its way into Canada in about late July. The whole body was primed and painted black, and I started by applying the "blood" graphics. All in all, the fit was pretty good, and I soon had them in place. One of my concerns was that the ALPS printer might not provide a sufficiently rich red over the black body, due to showthru. Sure enough, my initial build was a bit disappointing, the red having a rather blue, milky look. But I had a brainwave. What if I airbrushed the decal with a transparent red, to richen it up?? Maybe it would be so transparent, it wouldn't show on the black.

Sooo.... I nipped the top off a red Sharpie, and removed and added the little tube of colourant to a bottle containing a 50/50 blend of TAMIYA TS13 and lacquer thinner. After a bit, the red had leached out into the blend, and I had a concoction that looked like a fine Burgundy wine. Sure enough, when I sprayed this over the red, it immediately brightened up, and it was not noticeable on the black! Elated, I coated the whole body, then let it dry a couple days. Being worried that the red might bleed thru the next level of decals needed (numbers, Punisher logo, etc...) I dusted on some superdry coats of TS13 from the heated rattlecan. So far, so good! I then applied the rest of the graphics. Everything is on the sheet, except a few contingencies and the grillework. They came from the kit sheet and the 2003 SLIXX contingencies sheet.

Then disaster struck! I went back to clearcoat the entire model as is my normal practice. After the third medium coat had dried, there was a very noticeable yellow tint to all the black areas that had been coated with my concoction! "Drat!..." I said...

Going back to the drawing board, I made a couple changes in the printing, by adding a third white coat under the blood graphics, and adjusting the colout to be more yellow and saturated. I considered adding a white "blank" to go on first, but the liklihood of applying them, then getting the coloured set to align on all that curved surface seemed pretty low!

Figure 1 shows the second body with just the graphics applied. It was an improvement over the first set, but not quite where I wanted to be. I took another shot at the red dye trick, this time using very low pressure and flow and spraying only the red, with minimal overspray on the black. (I "softmasked" the black with my hand/fingers where I could as well. Removing the overspray from my hands is another story... latex gloves woulda been smart...) See figure 2 to see the enhanced colour. I then repeated the clearcoating and remaining decal application. This time I used a very dry technique for applying the final TS13 coats, and after it had dried, polished it out. Other than a bit of yellowing, hardly noticeable right around the decals, this one worked!

Fig 1 - no dye	Fig 2 - with dye applied

Brendan had a fairly eventful Bristol race (but then again, who doesn't?). He started well, qualifying seventh, but finished 20th, still on the lead lap, in spite of being spun late in the race. As he put it in NASCAR ILLUSTRATED, there wasn't a lot of respect for rookies out there, and he felt more like "The PUNISHEE" than "THE PUNISHER"!

Final note - the first body, with the objectionable yellow tint all over the black, is sitting in a south facing window. Maybe the yellow will prove to break down in sunlight, like many of these dye-type markers do... After a couple weeks, I think it is indeed fading...

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