Vintage Toyota 2000GT--Fast and Clean?

Continuing from last post--still too busy at work, always, having completed a labor intensive project on the East Coast and now, finally, I am back at home for awhile (I hope). Glad it's done, now it's time to get back to things that don't make any money....like the pursuit of silly but fun hobbies.....

Still working on the vintage MPC 1:25 scale Toyota 2000GT. As far as I can tell, this kit is old, was never reissued, and is thus quite rare, which of course means if I lose a part or screw up I can't go buy another kit (easily, anyway).

I have decided on a box-stock build and for this project, I am trying to focus on the ever-elusive "clean build" without spending the next three years pondering and fussing endlessly over every part.





So in that spirit am I building carefully? As always: no!!! Not careful enough anyway....I noticed after painting the chassis that the engine didn't fit as well as it did during test fit, and then realized I put the oil pan on backwards! I had to carefully cut the multi-piece block apart, flip it, and re-glue the pan. Now it's ready to be cleaned before repaint. Good news is, the engine is going to make it....




After cleaning, priming, and clipping all parts that needed to be painted (except the body) I airbrush all parts that needed the same "finish". This seems an obvious way to save time, but until recently I often wasn't doing this. For this run, I am using Alclad2 on suspension parts.....



To get some variety I am painting other "metalized" parts with acrylic crafts paint through a single action Iwata SAR airbrush--crafts paints cost a fraction of Alclad's prices and in my limited experience, give a nice contrast to the Alclad look.



To make sure I don't spill, scrape, or otherwise destroy painted parts I store like parts in small plastic bags.....it takes time to bag everything up, but it takes more time to repaint something that gets dropped, soiled, or crushed!



To wrap it up for this post--how did the embossing powder fake-carpet look after paint? Great! Next up--body paint. White finish--can't wait....

Toyota 2000GT: Paint and Carpets....

I have been out of town but now I'm back....it's July already....still working on a vintage build--MPC Toyota 2000GT....



Since I have so little time to build I need to make the process as efficient as possible. Building has become routine: clean up parts after fully or partially removing them from the sprues, then use alligator clips poked into foam rubber to prime and paint.



When I am done I have a bunch of parts, some painted enamel black, ready for Alclad metalizer. I will spray everything at once. It's much faster than painting part by part as I go.



Getting the interior to look good is always important, but since this is a convertible, doubly so! Good looking carpets make good looking interiors, and scale carpeting remains a challenge for me. A hobby mag recently mentioned using embossing powders to simulate carpeting, so I thought I'd give it a try--I bought some ZING powder online, along with 2 embossing pens.



Initial results were promising. The embossing pen lays down a thin layer of glue, so I could make "fingers" that run besides the seats (which would have difficult with white glue and "fuzzy fur"). For thicker "carpet touches" I found that adding Testors liquid cement and more powder did the trick. After the glue dried I used a heat gun to melt the powder in place. I discovered it was easy to over-do the heat gun action and melt the powder too much; it took a bit of practice to get things to look realistic.



Here's a "before" pix of the rear deck. This surface will form the floor of the trunk. Without texture it looks pretty crappy.



A thick shot of Zing powder really helped. This was a triple dose followed by pouring (!) some Future acrylic sealer on top. Being that this was a rare and hard to replace kit, I should have practiced more on spares before trying out something new, but what the hell.

Toyota 2000GT--Return of Son of Vintage Kit

Having rushed through a '63 Corvette build, and with the feeling I have built too many GM cars lately, it was time to do something different....



I have always thought the Toyota 2000GT, along with early Jag XKE's, are some the coolest sports cars of all time. Jag kits are everywhere, but what about the 2000GT? There have been various 2000 GT kits over the years, but the MPC's 1:25 kit--the only 1:25 scale 2000 GT I know of--intrigued me--so I purchased one on Ebay for $65.

 Good news and bad news--yes, it's a cool kit--the convertible from "You Only Live Twice" (there was no "real" 2000GT convertible--this was a custom for the movie, I have read). The bad news: it needs a ton of cleanup.



See those big ugly plugs on the wheel well? These "ejector pin marks" are left over the mold process. Did the 1:1 cars have these? No, I don't think they did! So I have to sand and file and fill all of these--and they are everywhere!


OK I figure ejector pins have to show up here and there, but did MPC have to put one right in the middle of the floor mat? On a convertible? I am going to have to sand the entire thing away, put in some sort of scale carpeting, the use a foil copy process (using a mat from another kit as the master) to recreate the floor mats.


The body has sink marks--where the plastic sagged after it was cast. Most older kits have these, and I have come to expect them. Here's a large one on the rear deck. Superglue and careful sanding takes care of these.



And mold lines--another artifact from the casting process--yep, see those on every kit I've touched. More careful sanding to clean this up. And: the top and bottom molds for this kit must have been slightly offset--lots to do here to fix that!



MPC mastered the kit so you'd mount the chassis under the partially completed body, then glue the front and rear lower body panels into place. Problem: that leaves a huge seam that doesn't exist on the 1:1 car. The resulting rear seam is butt-ugly. The lower body panel has to be glued into place first, and sanded smooth, but then the chassis won't fit...



My solution is to cut up the chassis! After paint, I will pop the rear section into the finished body then glue in the rest of the chassis. Will it work? Maybe!

66 Corvette--Finished!

After the disaster that was the 75 Vintage Vette I figured it was time to finish something, this time a 63 Corvette split window--from the AMT "Street Rods", I figure the kit is from something like the early 70's based on how yellow the instruction sheet was...I bought the kit at a swap meet for $5.

Some details came from Revell's Corvette Snap Kit #1968....the rear tail lights for instance.
Paint is House of Kolor Kandy Tangerine over a gold basecoat, purchased from Black Gold Web finished off with 2 part automotive clear, with the usual Bare Metal Foil trim and Model Car Garage Photoetch.

Besides that, nothing unusual here, this is an almost box stock build of a kit that has been reissued many times so it's not a rare kit.

It was a fun build....good to get something done. AMT for the most part did a good job on the kit--the engine compartment is nothing like the 1:1 but I didn't feel like taking the time to "fix" that. Maybe some other time?

Up next? Not sure. I scored a very good price on an extremely rare MPC 2000GT Toyota but am a bit chicken to start it.

I am still working improving my technique before going back to big-time customizing. It's not been steady progress, but I feel I am improving.....

75 Vintage Vette--End of The Line

It's a beautiful day out today, I was in my relatively dark basement working on this model car when I realized all of a sudden the model sucked and I was wasting my time. I pulled off the wheels and tires--those looked good to me, and put the model down on the floor. Then I went upstairs, put some shoes on, came back downstairs and smashed it under my foot--3 good stomps and it was in pieces. What you see is most of what is left.

I have mixed feelings about doing this. On the one hand, the 2 part clear and reacted poorly with the decals as it gassed out, and the surface of the decals had become rough and pitted. This meant the finished build would never be up to what I have now come to expect of myself. I could see myself spending a lot more time and effort trying to "fix" this and never being happy with the results, so it was time to stop and move on to something else.

In addition to the decals, which once looked so good, now looking crappy; the general fit of the hood was off; the stance wasn't what I wanted; the engine compartment seemed too far off the 1:1 car; I could go on and on. I am not up for taking "favorable pictures" of my work or retouching photos. For better or worse, as I have gotten better at this stupid hobby, my own standards have gone up, and I won't waste time continuing to work on something I know I won't like when it's done.

The only thing left to do is move on. So this kit won't see the light of day. So what--there are lots of other kits to build. But along with the happy memories of building when I was very young, there were painful ones too, and maybe I did this so I could experience the latter. I have to think about that.

75 Vintage Vette--Kristal Klear and More....

I'm almost ready to finish up assembly of the MPC Vintage 75 Vette.....it's time to get this one done!

I was gearing up for (and dreading, really) the usual struggle with the scale windshield; from other posts you have heard me complain that glass often doesn't fit right on these old, warped, dusty kits, and this one was no exception; this Vette had the most warped, bent up piece of convertible crap I've seen so far. But! When I grabbed up the Microscale chemicals for last post's decal restoration I also bought another Microscale product called "Micro Kristal Klear" which I will call MKK from here--more because I liked the "multiple misspelled K's" in the name than anything else....

Turns out MKK really works! I taped and clamped the ill-fitting windshield and layed some thick glue around it. Then over the course of a couple of days I removed a single piece of tape or a single clamp and applied a bit more glue. This was repeated several times. In the photo I have applied the final coat of MKK around the bottom of the windshield--that's the broad white band.

But as you see from this "after" pix, MKK dries almost completely clear, as advertised, and it really bonds! Yes there is a thick bead of glue on there, and the windshield is there for good; you just can't see the glue! This windshield would have been a nightmare using my normal tools (watch crystal glue, styrene glue, or epoxy--all of which i figure would have smeared, run, and generally made a huge mess.) MKK bonded tough enough that I could apply the Bare Metal Foil right over the glued glass and it didn't pop out....

While I was waiting for all sorts of things to dry, I messed around with an Old Buick Wildcat Kit I got on sale at the local hobby shop. This is almost a snap kit, having like 20 parts--no engine, no nothing, so I thought I might fool around by laying on a way too heavy flake yellow followed by some acrylic flames with india ink pinstriping.

It's all fun--the main takeaway here is that non-scale metalflakes can look OK (?) at scale...I figure if this were a 1:1 car each flake would be as big as a dime, but so what!

And also I put the Kandy Tangerine House of Kolor paint down on another oldee moldee I had sitting around--a 63 vette. Turns out the 2 vettes might get done at the same time....stay tuned!

75 Vette--Decal Restoration!

I finished up a nice House of Kolor Snowhite Pearl paint job on the 1:25 '75 vintage Vette. Then I got a comment from a reader that it needs the red decals. And it does!

The problem is the decals, like the kit, are about 37 years old, and have seen better days! How in the world do you get old/faded/busted up waterslide decals, that came out when Gerald Ford was president, to look good now? The main issue of course is that any attempt to slide the decal off its backing will cause it to shatter--from the photo you can see the things are already cracked, split, cut up, and otherwise in bad shape!

Modern chemistry to the rescue....Microscale Industries makes chemicals perfect for restoring old decals. This was all new to me--the first time I tried to resurrect old decals. But there was a lot of guidance online. I started with the "Liquid Decal Film" on the left. I coated the old decals with "Film" and let them dry. This liquid bound the old cracked decal so it could be removed from its backing without shattering into a thousand pieces.

Next, I coated the body with some of the "Set" solution. This worked a bit like glue, so the decal softened and laid down correctly on the model. As per the instructions on the bottle, I then (carefully) brushed more on top of the decal and let it dry.

The decal was still hard to work with and broke in a few places. Fortunately I had 2 identical kits and 2 sets of decals to cobble together to make 1 good model. Also the "sol" solution saved me!

Microscale's Microsol was where the real magic occurred. I read that the crappiest, most ornery decals can be brought back to life with Microsol and for me, that was about right. "Sol" seemed to melt the dickens out of the decal, let it stretch and even out then dry to the body. When I initially applied Microsol, the decal looked terrible; Microsol seemed to create more air bubbles and distortions than it corrected--but once the decal dried it looked really good! The directions said to poke air bubbles with a needle and apply more "sol", which I did--over and over and over. With a lot of patience I managed to get pretty much all the air bubbles, cracks, and imperfections to go away....

The other thing I learned was: never, ever, EVER touch the decal once I laid down the "Sol"; when wet with any of these chemicals, the decal is extremely fragile, so handling the decal while it's wet will ruin it.

I also read online to use a hair drier to get the decals to hug corners and lay down flat. That helped a lot. In the end the solvent/hairdryer/drying process was repeated several times for each area that needed a decal. It all worked!

Overall, with a lot of patience this came out looking really good! It's hard to believe that decals this old can be used at all, but they can. Now it's time for 2 part clear--I will apply this right over the decals, I hope the clearcoat will not mess them up....fingers crossed.