Casting Continued--the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The quest to build more Mopars remains on hold....I'm waiting for our UPS guy to deliver Resin parts for the 71 Roadrunner project and vinyl textured paint for the '69 Superbee.....



As I said last time, I've never tried to recreate a vinyl roof before, and I didn't want to try this out on an expensive resin body, so I got a '69 Revell Superbee that I'm building box-stock to learn more about creating a fake vinyl top. I've painted the body already with Model Car World #6955, "Seafoam Turp. Metallic" purchased for the Charger 500 project but never used until now....

I masked off everything but the roof....the brightwork had to be masked as well, I figure, since Bare Metal Foil reveals every little bump and pit and would look terrible covering scale vinyl. Ironically I used Bare Metal foil as the mask for the eventual application of--Bare Metal Foil! Overall this vinyl top thing is a mystery; I have no idea how this is going to look, but that's what $12 box-stock builds are for, for me anyway: trying out new things.




In the meantime I've been messing with more resin casting. Last week I bought a starter kit from Alumilite and have spent a lot of this weekend playing around with it, casting more Halibrand wheels and a bunch of valve covers.



For the wheels: I found a few deep rear 5 spoke Halibrands in my parts box. I always have loved these wheels, but each was missing its mate, and one of them had a pretty big chip taken out of the rim. I repaired the rim by stripping the chrome with 91% isopropyl alcohol, then using Plastic Weld, tube styrene, and a file to replace the missing chunk. But what about its mate? We need 2 wheels Scotty!!

Casting ahead warp factor nine!!!

What I've found:

First and foremost, mix the resin components really carefully! Or else the resin never quite cures and you end up with wheels that looked chewed by a dog!

Also: make sure to deform the mold right after pouring the resin to allow the resin to flow down into all the creases and crevices.

And let the part cure in the mold a long time--a few hours, at least--it takes the rims of the wheels a lot longer to cure than the rest....I was taking the part out of the mold, but the rim was staying behind, which of course is not good....letting the cast wheel sit in the mold for a few hours seems to fix this.



Another trick: glue the original part down to the bottom of the mold box--if not it will literally float--then the cast part will not be able to be extracted from the mold.

And....small round salsa containers, from the "para llevar" counter at the local Mexican joint, make great mold boxes for small one piece molds.

Putting the mold in the microwave and using baby powder to get rid of air bubbles, before the pour, didn't make a lot of different I could see, at least so far. The Alumilite site says to do this, but I couldn't see any difference, and occasionally the baby powder would deform the piece. As long as I could pop air bubbles with a toothpick before the resin hardened I was OK, for the most part. What air bubbles were left--and there usually weren't a lot--didn't seem that hard to fill with superglue.



As far as the wheels, I had about 50/50 results--meaning I could keep about half of what I cast, which isn't too bad for a newbie at this. The takeaway: I could repair an original wheel and then cast a mate, and then use both on a build! Cool!



For the valve covers I went into my parts box and got every "cool" valve cover I could find--and a cool Thunderbird air cleaner to boot. We're talking the Caddie valve covers that say "Cadillac", Dodge Red Ram, Weiand, Ford Cobra, and so on--the nifty covers the kit manufacturers don't include these days because they don't want to pay GM or whoever an (even huger) licensing fee.

I whipped up a quickie mold box out of .015 plastic sheet, CA glue, and polymer clay.



The results were really good! I had about 90% keepers for the 3 rounds. The parts, other than needing to have flash trimmed off, look every bit as good as the originals. These would go for $3-5 or more per pair (!!!) from one of the aftermarket resin places. For me, it was about 50 cents worth of resin and about 1/2 hour of my time to make a lifetime supply of them!!!!

I did try some 2 part molds this week as well, but it was a complete disaster. More on that next time. Overall, casting is easier than I thought, at least for simple things, and going forward I see it changing the way I approach a lot of the builds I do.

Roadrunner on Hold--so in the Meantime.....

After a lot of sitting around staring at the 1:25 MPC 71 Roadrunner MPC body I have decided that it's going to be too much work to modify the body and front grille/bumper to suit my needs. I love MPC, I really do, but this body just doesn't get it done--it is too far from the spirit of the 1:1 car, so I'm not going to use it for the '71 Roadrunner build.

I'm not giving up; I have ordered some resin parts from Modelhaus and Bandit Resins to get the '71 Roadrunner build done....so now I'm waiting for the parts to show up, then decide what to do next.



In the meantime I have been building a "box stock" '69 Superbee in 1:24 scale...Revell 85-2363....I don't normally work in this scale so it makes it more likely I will stick to a stock build--and I need to build box stock now and then to see if my basic skills are improving. Also I wanted to practice creating a vinyl roof, having never tried that before. This kit serves as a better test bed for this than a $45 resin body.



Things are progressing OK on the Superbee but I remain a bit unchallenged by a stock build and find myself at times a bit bored and impatient. I also see an awful lot of really, really good scale muscle car builds all over the place; the hobby forums are full of them, with one Revell 1:24 69 Superbee build better than the next. It seems some of the very best builders build lots of muscle cars. It's a bit intimidating.

However, I'm doing everything I can to keep boredom and intimidation out of my hobby life, so it's on to other things while I figure out what to do about the MPC Roadrunner situation.

So....I have been reading up on casting resin parts. As with so many other things these days, the Internet makes it all easy. Like the crazy world of polymer clays crafts: there is an entire Internet universe devoted to all aspects of casting--and this casting universe is totally and completely nuts. You can spend your entire life doing nothing but casting or for that matter just reading about casting; and of course being able to cast small and large items has 1001 uses to almost every hobby or craft as well as many professions.

So what am I waiting for? I got a "starter" resin casting kit from Alumilite and plucked some random parts out of the parts box to get some casting practice.



The Alumilite starter kit has everything needed to, well, get started. To do my first single mold casts I followed the how-to directions on the Aluminite site, combined with some reading on various casting forums.



For mold boxes I used some scrap plastic I had lying around; I didn't cover the seams very well on one of the mold boxes but thankfully not too much Silicon spoo bubbled out.




So here are the 2 pieces cast so far. The Halibrand type front wheel came out a lot better than I expected; I lost the master cylinder but the vacuum boost part came out really well. Overall, I did a lot better than I thought I would for a first effort--it was really pretty easy.

Next up: a two part mold--casting a turbocharger from a CART racer, a rare part that would be very useful for custom builds. Step one is to mold the "back" of the part, then flip the mold box, remove the clay, and create the mold for the front. Exactly how I am going to cut holes to get the resin down into this two part mold escapes me now, but maybe I will figure it out. Overall casting with 2 part molds looks to me to be exponentially more difficult, so I'm really not expecting much the first time out.

Aftermarket Vendor List!!!

I am always forgetting where to find what in aftermarket land. Here is a running list of who I've used and what I know about them.

AFTERMARKET LISTINGS:
http://www.modelcarhub.com/bg-accessories.htm
http://www.socalcarculture.com/modelcarlinks.html
http://www.briansmodelcars.com/links


AFTER MARKET VENDORS:

SCALE EQUIPMENT LIMITED:
Neat stuff, Good and helpful service
http://seltd.net/ez-catalog/X344897/21
What they have: Excellent and realistic wheels/tires for musclecars and stocks, dioramma making stuff, "accessories" like scale burgers and doughnuts, hard to find resin goodies. Decals.


SLIXX:
Scale Decals!
http://www.slixx.com
Decals for historic and current drag cars and race cars (Gassers, dragsters, stockcars, etc) Some model kits, Black Gold brand paints, Competition resin Bodies and accessories. tools.

DIECAST AND DECALS:
http://www.diecastanddecals.com/
Custom waterslide decals made to customer's needs

THE PARTS BOX:
http://www.thepartsbox.com/
Australian but I have gotten stuff from them shipped in the US. Hot rod parts, bodies for European cars, stuff you can't find anywhere else.


MODEL CAR GARAGE:
Good source for photoetch. Other places sell MCG too. Discounts available if you're on their mailing list.
http://www.modelcargarage.com/
Photoetch; flocking; wiring; plumbing. Resin parts for things like flatheads and old engines.

LPSTECH:
http://www.lpstech.com/products.htm
Really good prewired distributors, valve covers, wheels/tires.


COMPETITION RESINS:
Great source of motorsports resin bodies and conversions.
http://www.compresins.com/
Resin bodies and parts; Slixx decals


HENDRIX RESIN:
Huge selection of Resin parts and bodies, mostly hot rods and oldies. Good prices.
http://www.resinrealm.net/Star/HendrixGallery/index.html


SCALE REPROS PLUS:
http://shop.scalereprosplus.ieasysite.com/default.aspx?categoryid=0
Engine parts: metal and resin: valve covers, funny car engines, magnetos, distibutors, oil pans. etc.


ALTERTED STATES MODELS:
http://www.alteredstatesmodels.com/
Resin Bodies and parts for old dragsters, gassers, and salt flat racers...interesting stuff.


SCALE DREAMS:
Great one stop shop; fast service
http://stores.scaledreams.com/StoreFront.bok
Most of Model Car Garage (Photo etch, resin parts), Detail Master's stuff (Engine details in resin, wire), Ross Gibson engines, Scale Repros stuff (turned aluminum parts, racing engines, good selection of valve covers; air cleaners, oil pans; distributors, trannies) Detail Master stuff (AN fittings, wiring, turned aluminum)


Strada Sports:
http://www.stradasportsstore.com/Model-Cars.html
Another one stop shop for aftermarket (as well as hard to find kits)
Emphasis on Motor Cycle and F1 type building: Shabo Transfer letting; Evergreen and plastruct plastic; KS metal, Ross Gibson engines, Jimmy Flintstone Resin, some Rep and Minitures of Maryland (F1 type stuff, not hot rod stuff), Model Car Specialities


DETAIL MASTER:
http://www.detailmaster.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=detailmaster
Another One stop shop: They are best known for their own AN fittings and small resin parts, but they also carry: House of Kolor, Slixx, Ross Gibson Engines, Shabo lettering, BareMetal Foil, lots of others. Pricey, and constantly out of stock on some stuff they don't mfgr, it seems to me, but the AN fittings are cool....


JIMMY FLINTSTONE RESIN:
http://www.jimmyflintstonestudios.com/onlinestore/sunshop/index.php?l=product_list&c=3
Great selection of Resin bodies (mostly hot rods, oldies, customs) at very reasonable prices.

RESIN REALM:
http://www.resinrealm.net/-MCM/ResinList.html
50s era resin bodies: Fords, Chevys, Hudson, Desoto, Etc.

PRO TECH:
http://protechmodelparts.com/
Engine detail parts, tubing/wiring, Distributors, Magnetos, braided lines/AN fittings

DRAG CITY CASTING:
http://www.dragcitycasting.com/
Resin hoods, some valve covers, some wheels, some 60's era Gassers.

MORGAN AUTOMOTIVE DETAIL:
http://www.lpstech.com/products.htm
Prewired Distributors, Trannies, Valve covers, wheels, performance parts

RELIABLE RESIN:
http://www.reliableresin.com/products.html
Resin Funny Car Bodies, Gassers, Transkits, rivet decals\

KITCHEN TABLE RESINS:
http://public.fotki.com/KenK/kitchen_table_resin_kits/
Resin: Unusual engines

BANDIT RESINS:
http://www.banditresins.com/
Resin Bodies, parts, conversions.

RESILIENT RESINS
http://www.resilientresins.com/home.cfm
RESIN Bodies (1:24 and 1:32) of old race cars (Lotus,McClaren,Indy Cars, etc). Cool!

MISSING LINK:
http://www.missinglinkrc.com/Index.html
Resin Bodies, parts from the major mfgr's recast.

MODELHAUS:
http://www.modelhaus.com/
http://public.fotki.com/drasticplasticsmcc/1/2/1/after-market-source/modelhaus/
Huge assortment of spare parts cast from promos.

71 Plymouth Roadrunner--Caution--Vintage Build Ahead!!!

Welcome back!! Chargers are done!! On to the next build!



I started this one while waiting for the Charger "Scrap Parts" build to dry....Bought on Ebay for about $45, it's a 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner as you can see. I always liked 71 Roadrunners and as far as I know this tooling hasn't been reissued in a really long time--say in the past 15-20 years? So it's a vintage kit....there's a common Revell 1971 (72?)GTX 1:24 kit around, but I don't build in 1:24 generally so here we are.






A few weeks ago I began working on the engine compartment, but the hood never really fit right, so sadly due to time constraints it's going to have the hood glued shut. But worse: to me the MPC 1:25 the body looks very little like the 1:1 car, as evident from the box art photo of the "actual model" compared to 1:1 pix I see on the web, like this cool 71 owned by the great Richard Carpenter. I mean come on--does the box art photo really look like a 71 Roadrunner? The stance is close but not quite right, and the general squareness of the 1:25 stock build makes it look like, well, I don't know what, but not a 71 Roadrunner.






Another big issue is the chrome grille/bumper that came with the 71 MPC kit. The bumper is the wrong shape and the headlights are too small and incorrectly positioned. So I got a 71 NASCAR Roadrunner resin body from Competition Resins and stole the bumper/grille off that--that's the whiteish thing on the bottom of the photo. To me, the resin bumper looks more like the 1:1 bumper, which is good! I am going to have to do some surgery this still, for sure, but it'll be easier than scratchbuilding the whole thing or trying to hack up the MPC bumper/grille to make it look better. To this end I am going to try to make a resin copy of of the resin copy...I don't want to work on the original if possible--it was expensive....and then see what I can do....this will be my first attempt at casting....we will see how it comes out.






So here's what I have so far. With the resin grille in place it looks decent--doesn't have some of the sexy organic lines of the 1:1 car but it's close. I took a file to the really sharp edges to the fenders....add some cool wheels/tires, a 70's era beam-me-up-Scotty-interior, etc., and we'll have a pretty good looking car...hopefully!

69 Charger Scrapper-FINISHED!

Time to wrap up the 69 Dodge Charger street racer built out of parts leftover from the Vintage Charger 500 build....It was a race to the finish, but I really wanted to get this build done by the end of the month....and I did. The results came out pretty good....my wife said she liked the blue and gold colors and the stance. The paint finish is a bit ratty again--I rushed through the polish stage in an effort to get this done by the end of the month--but I doubt a 1:1 match racer would have a really mirror finish to it. Overall it was a fun build and did bring back the spirit of the good old days, way back when, building models with my brothers.




The only tough part finishing this was dealing with the rear wing. It came off a AMT/Ertl 71 Charger. Getting the wing to sit straight and situated correctly on the trunk lid turned out to be more work than I anticipated. The 71 AMT Charger was purchased as a donor for the next build (a vintage 1:25 71 Roadrunner, which I already started). To make matter much worse, wing-wise, I dropped one of my photography lights on the model right before this photo shoot and the wing broke off! So it had to be reattached!



But that's what glue is for right? Anyway this was very quick build--only a few weeks from start to finish--especially considering that the interior and engine compartment was scratch built. And how busy I am doing other non-model-making things right noiw. The alacrity of this build makes up for 6 months of pain and suffering to build the Vintage Charger 500!!!



The hood doesn't hinge or come off in a clever way--again something I did to speed up the build. I will probably display this "hood off". More finish problems: some of the decals on the hood rippled up after a week or so of gassing out--maybe some sort of interaction with the Future Floor Polish? But it's not that noticeable.




Overall I might not be getting better at custom builds but I am getting faster!



The engine compartment was detailed out with craft wire and very small diameter plastic rod bent into shape. I paid little attention to how realistic things are in terms of 1:1 function. I don't even know what some of the parts I bolted to the firewall are supposed to do, not knowing that much about cars. I just put them on because I thought they'd look good, which is exactly what I did 35 odd years ago. As I see it there's nothing wrong with any of it.




So next is yet another Mopar. A 1:25 Early 70's Roadrunner or GTX seems to be a vintage model kit holy grail of sorts--I see promos going on Ebay for $100!! When is someone going to reissue this bad boy? Anyway I already prepped the body of a 71 Roadrunner (bought on Ebay, yes....) already have some primer on it and have the donor kit open, which I am already pilfering. So I am committed, but am still looking around for other ways to get this next build done.

69 Charger Scrapper--Decals and Clearcoat

I'm almost finished with a 1:25 scale 69 Dodge Charger street racer built out of spare parts....



I realized as I was applying the decals from Slixx that it's been almost 35 years, maybe more, since I've applied a lot of decals to a scale model. Growing up we'd put decals on everything we built, and it seemed easy, but now years later it doesn't seem as easy as it was back then.



I am not sure why--perhaps I am just pickier now about how it comes out, and maybe that's not the best thing.



It was helpful to use Badger "Model Flex" Decal Setting Solution and Decal Softening Solution. I discovered these during the 32 Texas Old School Hot Rod build...the first helps the decal stick and the second helps it conform to the tricky curves and whatnot. I found (once again) that's it's dangerous to overdo the application of solset and solsoft--the decals will crack and split. Also a good tip is to apply solset and solsoft alphabetical order--because it's a very bad idea to start with the softener, doing so will pretty much destroy the decal every time; it did for me anyway.



Afraid of melting the decals with lacquer or enamel clearcoats, I once again chose Future Floor Polish ("Pledge with Future Shine") as the clearcoat for this build, so I brushed on in 2 heavy coats 8 hours apart.




A major breakthrough was the clearcoat/solvent relationship between Future and another household product: Windex glass cleaner. Last build I had issues with Future whitening and pooling up in certain tight spaces on the body. On the 69 Charger 500 build I sanded out the Future goo and tried to live with it. It turns out Windex is the perfect solvent to get rid a build of Future clearcoat problems, and it doesn't wreck the lacquer color coats below. So if the Future acrylic goes wrong (dries cloudy, dries white, won't dry no matter what, pools up and looks ugly, and so on) just spray or brush the affected area with Windex, wipe if off with a lint free cloth, let it dry, reapply the Future polish and keep going. I had to redo the "hood scoops" because Future pooled up in them and dried white, so I removed about small section of clearcoat with Windex and reapplied Future just over the area. You could never tell I touched up the clearcoat. If only everything else was like that!

69 Charger Scrapper--Paint, and the Next Build

The "hot" 69 Charger, built up out of scrap and left over parts continues....



This week I thought a lot about what paint scheme would look good. I wanted something retro looking, but not "stock". I had some Duplicolor royal blue and gold mist lacquers around....




After taping off with Tamiya tape, I came up with a simple two tone scheme. So far, so good. But I am usually impatient when it comes to applying the Bare Metal Foil, decal, polish and what not. This time the lacquer is going to gas out for at least a week before I continue.



In the meantime I am starting the next stock Mopar build. For this I purchased an MPC/Ertl Roadrunner kit on Ebay for about $40. But is it "safe?" The last "vintage" stock build, a 69 Charger 500, took nearly 6 months to complete and was fraught with fear and loathing from warped rooflines, clearcoat eating through the color coat and front grilles that didn't fit; in general, a much harder and more time consuming build than expected. So let's see if this one takes as long--and if I learn from my mistakes.

As far as the kit (MPC/Ertl 6282--there is no reissue I know of that can be purchased new, and Revell's offering is a GTX in 1:24 scale, not a 1:25 Roadrunner): it was in good condition, unbuilt except for the engine which someone had started; the body was in good shape; like the Charger 500 build I'm going to steal the engine and other critical components from more recently tooled, better detailed Mopar kits....



The 71 Dodge Charger (#30053) is such an offering from AMT/Ertl. What a difference in detail between modern tooling of the 71 Charger and the older Plymouth kit! I got this from Ebay as well for about $15; I am pretty sure it's not that hard to find elsewhere if you look around.



Repeating the same process I used to spice up the 69 Charger 500's engine compartment, I hacked the inner fender walls from the '71 Charger and grafted it into the older kit....



It's not that hard a process to do...surprising easily actually.....I finished off the engine compartment "sheetmetal" using sheet styrene shims and thick superglue to fill some of the gaps.



Getting the hood to stay up was tricky. I tried supergluing styrene posts to the hood and then shoving the posts into enlarged holes in the firewall, only to find that there was no friction to hold the hood up--the hood would slide back down and shut every time! I needed to cut ridges into the posts, but at first I couldn't figure out how to do this. After some thought I came up with a solution: I softened up the styrene posts with plastic weld and then with the plastic soft and I pressed a scored piece of metal onto it. This left ridges in the soft plastic, and when the glue dried I had a sort of plastic ratchet. Now the hood stays up due to the ridges on the posts. I am probably going to display this hood up, so having the hood stay up isn't a bad thing!



Paint for this will be from scalefinishes.com. I want to see how their paint compares to MCW's, especially the clearcoat. I will probably have a chance to paint the 71 Roadrunner before turning back to the Charger "scrapper" so stay tuned....