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NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR

Dale Earnhardt Junior's 2004 "Born On" Monte Carlo!!


Well, it just looks like 2004 might be Little E's year, doesn't it?? Got off to a real good start at Daytona - second place in the Shoot-out, winning his TWIN 125 Qualifier, then, the ultimate - winning the Daytona 500. (Footnote - he also won the BGN race - model in progress...).

DEI certainly has this restrictoracin' figured out, and after Mikey's big wreck, Dale showed that the car, and he, could do it alone if needed. So Dale accomplished in 5 years, what took his Dad something like 17 years. But it was Dad's business savvy that gave Junior the equipment he needed... and Dad's DNA, I suppose, didn't hurt...

When preview pics of this car appeared, Sam was all over it, and a week or two before the Shootout, he sent me the graphics for the Shootout car. Now, at the time, I did not realize that that scheme would be used throughout Speedweeks, so I got going on the Shootout "Born On Feb 7, 2004" version. This was my first crack at the new Monte Kit from Revell as well. More on that later...

Sam's graphics were bang on, I did some resizing, then realized there needed to be some gold foil accents and trim, which I pulled together from Sam's files, and printed the decals. Then a couple things happened - TJ pointed out the "perforated" effect of the hood signage for the date, which I changed. Then, as race week wore on, I kept noticing little differences - the NEXTEL "rookie" stripes/signs, the different Bud Pole decal, the Gillette's, Gatorback, Mobil 1, Sunoco logos... and the three different "BORN ON" dates used. As well as the 7th, the 12th and 15th appeared for the Twin 125 and 500 races respectively. So each night I was hunting images; doing a little contingency decal here, some new "Born On" signage there.. finally, by Sunday night, after the race, I had it set up so that with the decal sheet and a few '03 SLIXX contingencies, a really accurate model could be made (I don't wanna talk about the red wheel...)

The body was primed with white PlastiKote primer, then sprayed with CTC white touch-up lacquer. (Didn't look like white pearl to me..??) It was then masked and the red sprayed. Since the decal provides the white areas for the hood and decklid, I just painted them red. I used TAMIYA's #8 Red (seems appropriate...), which was an excellent match to the printed red on the decals and looked like a good match to the actual car. To minimize red bleedthough I printed up extra white underlays for the hood and decklid, which, combined with the actual decal, gave excellent coverage.

Once all the decals were on, and it dried a day or two, I applied several LIGHT coats of TAMIYA TS13 from the heated rattlecan, gave it another nite to dry, then buffed 'er up with Turtle polishing compound.

I am very pleased with the final results, this is an elegent colour scheme - kinda retro to the cars of the early '80's - one of Dale's better-looking rides... I was also quite happy with the '03 Monte kit Revell had put together. The body looks right, has rear decklid pins!... and although the chassis shows it's ProFinish heritage, some of the more distressing aspects have been corrected - it has a real driveshaft, the seat is a significant improvement, I like the new rear springs, and the adjusting bars in the rear window... altho I forgot to install them... The body sits down well on the chassis, and thank goodness the giant screws are gone... All in all, a pretty good effort! Gonna be buildin' a whack of these!

We have put together a decal sheet for those interested. It has all three date sets, so you can build any version, and some updated '04 signage - NEXTEL, Sunoco, Bud Pole, Mobil 1, Gillette, and the NEXTEL "rookie sheets are all there. Extra white underlays for the hood and decklid will also be included.

I am assuming that this weekend at The Rock Dale Jr will be back to the "regular" Bud colour scheme. It's nice too, but I think he needs to run this one more, it sure seems to work for him!!

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