Toyota 2000GT FINISHED!!!

Finally!  Done with the MPC Toyota 2000 GT Vintage build!  It's been a heck of a long haul on this one...

I have been back into this hobby for 3-4 years now, off and on, and I have to say this one took all my skills such as they are, and patience such as it is, to pull off the end of this build.  What an ornery kit!  The trim (pretty much off of it!) didn't fit, and I mean, anywhere, not even close, and that's after a lot of careful prep and test fitting; the instructions stunk, the single-atom layer of chrome fell off in the my fingers while handling the parts....

Much cursing and fear and loathing ensued, but, it's done at last.  I have mixed feelings about the result, from some perspectives it looks pretty good, from others, not so good, I especially struggled with the front grille, which absolutely would not sit correctly no matter what I did. I took the back end with its giant ugly body seam seriously, and it came out OK, but not the front--it needed as much or more TLC to pull this off. The front grill had 2 big pins in the back that mounted to nothing--to me this kit must be a re-do of a promo or diecast or something, because some of the parts didn't seem to belong.

What I am coming around to: for box-stock builds like this, you have to have 2 kits, the first of which is "practice" where you check your parts fit and whatnot--probably build up without any paint; the second  is the "real" kit for paint and display.  Now, this 2000 GT kit goes for maybe $100-150 USD if you can find it at all, but if I look at all the time I spent trying to muscle some of the trim into place, a second kit would have been a bargain--is my time worth $1 an hour?  Something like that?

So what did I have to do to get this sucker off the ground?  The knock offs had to be shaved down like 6 scale inches (!!!)  Out of the box, they stuck so far off the sides of the car that it looked like something "Speed Racer" deployed after hitting "B" on his steering wheel.

The wipers basically didn't exist (at all) and had to be scratch built--MPC did include some useless protrusions on the oversized windshield that in some universe might be wiper blades, but not here on planet earth!  There were no front headlights included, unless you wanted to use "lights up" which I didn't; there's another trip to the parts box.

Overall I'm really glad it's done, and now it's on the something that hopefully is a bit more fun--because this one was a giant pain!

Toyota 2000GT--Staying in the Lines.....

Nearing completion of the rare, vintage, and way frustrating MPC Toyota 2000GT....going back to the body work, this is going to be my first white paint job on a model car--ever--since I was like 6 years old. It turns out white color coats are trickier to apply then I thought.

I sprayed the 2000GT body, hood etc. with some Duplicolor white primer in anticipation of applying a decanted Duplicolor white lacquer.  Good news is I never got to the lacquer!  The primer looks good as-is. The off-white tone--a sort of calming eggshell--looks about right. What the heck, just clear coat the primer and I'm done.  Right? (Right??) But not so fast...colored all white the dinky Toyota looks pale and the door lines, headlight covers and so on need to stand out....

The hobby mag forums say: take some wash and flow it all the gaps and you're done, but I figured it wouldn't be that easy, and I was right.  I got a white GTO body from my junk box, sprayed some white primer, dug into the lines you see here with the back of a #11 X-acto blade, and tried to run some India ink wash in there and it looked, well, really, really crappy.  The lines came out uneven, it was hard to keep the wash "in the gap", and so on.  The magazines made this look easy!

After some trial and error--again, I am glad I am using the same GTO body from the junk box and not the rare 2000GT to figure this out--acrylic semigloss black, with a lot of expensive Tamiya thinner, seemed to work best. Here, I didn't deepen the lines enough before applying the acrylic wash and thus it looks uneven.  But the combination of acrylic paint and high end acrylic thinner, applied as a wash, seems to do the trick.

India ink was a bust (just looked awful!), as was Testors black enamel (couldn't get the wash to flow evenly). Acrylic with Windex (ran everywhere, bubbled up!) was a big miss. Making the door lines even in depth, cutting them really deep, and cleaning them out thoroughly seems to be key to success here. And obviously I have to use enamel or lacquer as base coat, or the acrylic thinner used in the wash will destroy the color coat.

So here's what I have so far.  It's still not perfect--but what is. You can see some sanding issues at the rear that still need to be cleaned up, and a bit of door wasn't cleared out properly, but that can be fixed...maybe....depending on how much more time I can spend on this. Even with these flaws, the body looks 1000% better than before any wash was applied.

I think with some more #2000 sandpaper work and then some automotive clear this is going to look pretty good. The wash adds a subtle but critical depth to the white color coat. Then the question becomes, how to I paint the molded-in top and dash semi-flat black, while the rest is gloss white. I have done a few two-tones but never part gloss and part flat. I have to think about this!!!

MPC Toyota 2000GT--Vintage 1:25 kit--Chassis and Suspension

Still working away on an MPC Toyota 2000 GT kit.  This kit has never been reissued and is rare and hard to find.....

Last time the body prep work was driving me crazy so I turned my attention to the chassis/suspension assemblies.  It turns out that's not been much easier....

Here's a copy of the chassis section of the instruction sheet...I haven't been back into this hobby that long, but nevertheless, I see something like this and I know it's going to be a very long evening trying to build this up......a combination of the amount of delicate parts and the fragility of the suspension is going to make this part of the build tricky!!!

To make things worse--the instructions SUCK!  There are mistakes all over, and/or instances of things being extremely vague.  For instance--take a look at part  #18 above. I ask: where does the L brace facing us attach?  I had to guess that it attaches to part 22, the driveshaft cover--not sure but that's where I glued the damn thing--and it didn't line up quite right so that might not be it....and did I mention that driveshaft was like 2 scale feet too short?  Or did I not mount the motor correctly?  Hard to say from these instructions.  It's baffling that a kit that seems to have been so carefully mastered could have such poor instructions....I had to ask myself: what was MPC thinking?  And of course I can't go out and buy 3 of these kits (I could but it'd cost several hundred dollars) to "try things out". 

So here's what I came up with....




As you can see the rear lower A-frame looks out of whack....as I said, I never could figure out how the rear end went together, but at least the wheels are reasonably straight, the model is going to sit flat, and everything seems sturdy.  I ended up needing some 5 minute epoxy to get some of it to stay glued down but at the end of the day things weren't too terrible. I still have to glue in the exhaust pipes (parts 23 and 25) and note that they go at the very end of part #24, not in the middle, the way the instructions show things.

The engine is a pretty simple affair but doesn't look all that bad once dropped into the chassis.  Again, the un-retouched macro photos tell no lies!

Much fear and loathing--but this could have been a lot worse. And now it's on the interior....more fun!  And the body!  It's not going away!

Toyota Vintage 2000 GT--My Summer of Discontent!

Still building a rare 1:25 scale Toyota 2000GT roadster.  News from the bench is not good.

Another month gone--and this time I have an excuse for not spending more time at the bench--namely this build was driving me crazy and I had to take about 3 weeks off!

As I said a few posts ago, I didn't want a seam running down the rear of the body, so I glued the bottom pan to the body before paint.  The 1:1 car doesn't have a seam here, and my build won't either!  Right??  Now, I have to seal the gap!  And it's proving tricky!  To the point where it's driving me crazy!

A year or two ago I might have left the seam looking like this--in other words, like the surface of the moon, but not any longer.  The macro photo reveals all evils! Now every build has to be better right? What you see here is after a fair amount of work puttying, CA gluing and sanding, and it still has a long long way to go. And sadly I don't have a picture of it but, I feel the body work used to look better than this--that the more sanding and scrubbing I do the worse it gets!

Now is that any way to do professional gap sealing work?  I don't think so!  The macro shot reveals all!!!

As they say about Ron Jeremy--The butt end is even worse!  And that's a macro shot you really DON'T want to see! Seriously--well somewhat--the snail trails you see are CA glue, Plastic weld, and Tamiya putty, which I guess I didn't get off there fast enough, now it seems the glues and putties and plastic are sanding off at different rates, and it's looking worse and worse instead of better and better.

The only cure I see here is very careful sanding with a 800ish grit wet and dry sandpaper, being careful not to remove details if possible, followed by primer, followed by more sanding, finer and finer grits--dr gradus ad parnassum.  So the body is going to look like it got sandblasted with extreme prejudice--not much I can do about that at this point.  No one ever said this was easy, and it isn't.

The question is, will it drive me crazy?

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!