SCCA Camaro Trans Am Set

[Scale-Master]

All of the decals are on the Rain-X body. I'll let them dry for a while before clear coating.

[Scale-Master]

All of the decals have been applied to the Sunoco car. It took about a week to decal. I had to do some touch up on the yellow decals that cracked and I added the SCCA decals that were not included in the kit due to licensing issues.

[Scale-Master]

With the Hot Wheels decals being printed earlier than the Rain-X according to the date coding, I expected them to be more manageable due to more ink/less clear (equals more integrity) for many of the body wrapping graphics. Unfortunately they were more fragile and prone to cracking on the sheet even while still in the water and tearing during application. These CMYK U.V. ink printed (as opposed to screen-printed spot color) decals are usually somewhat resilient but apparently age may have taken a toll. They also, in this case, do not fit very well. I can already see there will be a lot of touch up painting done on this one.
After getting the main decals on and letting them dry I started touching up the cracks and areas that didn't fit/cover the body color. It's a challenge to make an equivalent to the translucent white decal with paint. (Even the black is not opaque.) I used Tamiya Pure White mixed with a tiny bit of the TS-44 to treat the cracks and mis-fitted areas to start.
There is still more touching up to be done before I apply the other decals, which will probably need to be touched up too…

I blended white paint over the decals to soften the contrast between the painted rear end and translucent white side panels.

[Scale-Master]

I also had to touch up the side decals on the hood section. Orange was not printed in one part of the Hot Wheels graphic and it left a white area. Since the decals didn't line up with the body panels those areas needed to be hand painted in too. Unfortunately the decals are printed in a four color offset process, meaning all the colors are made up of dots, so there is no paint (or spot color) that can match any of the shades.

And the wheel wells needed to have the graphics painted into them as well because the decals did not wrap into them as they should. I used Tamiya LP paint for the red and white and some old Testors enamel for the orange. Close enough is as good as one can hope for with these dot pattern decal colors.

[Scale-Master]

Turns out I missed a few small decals that are applied on top of other decals. I'm going to blame it on trying to do too many projects at the same time. (In addition to these three I have nine other models in progress on my bench at the moment.)

[Scale-Master]

The rear bulkheads also benefited from some tedious hand painting. Definitely worth the time if you're going to have the bodies removable.


The bulkheads fit pretty uniformly, but I was surprised at how differently each of the three engines fit into and lined up with the chassis since they all share the exact same parts. In the end I suspect it won't be noticeable.

[Scale-Master]

The exhaust pipes are molded poorly and fit together the same way. A lot of clean-up is required on each half of each pair. Then even more filling and sanded is needed after they are cemented together. The ends were different diameters on the left than on the right so I added the same size brass tubing to make them equal at the tips at least...

When I installed the exhausts , the ends in no way would align with the holes in the body so I cut the tail pipe sections off and drilled pilot holes to pin them back together at a more appropriate relation to the body exits.

[Scale-Master]

The Sunoco kit came with decals for the ignition boxes. I used the same artwork to print copies for the other two versions. At this point, (due to inaccuracies of the kits), true accuracy is not as much of a concern as what looks good as long as it's believable regarding color choices.

That's the Rain-X chassis with the part installed. The blue boxes will go in the Sunoco car.

[Scale-Master]

After I cleared the hood of the Sunoco car and it had dried for several days, some of the decals that cracked and I had thought looked OK after butting them back together had developed fissures at the same cracks where the dark blue now showed through. I blended in the same yellow mix I used earlier and a new mix for the red to hide them knowing it's a patch job, not a true repair.

[Scale-Master]

The dashboards for the Rain-X and Hot Wheels versions came with decals.

I decided it wasn't worth my time to make decals for the gauges so I just hand painted the instrument panels as they came from the kits.

[Scale-Master]

Instead of building all three chassis at this point, I concentrated on the Rain-X chassis since the body was the furthest along. I needed to make the tailpipes fit on one so I'd know how to deal with the other two cars.
I went ahead with painting and decaling the individual parts for the other cars though. I used the extra seat belts from the left over Sunoco sheet (after clear coating them) for the Rain-X car and printed a copy for the Hot Wheels car. The Jack Baldwin lettering for the seat was not backed in white from the kit so I made a replacement decal for that too. I painted the seats dark gray for a little contrast against the black belts.

[Scale-Master]

The windows have been installed in the Rain-X car. They are not the best fitting even after all that sanding and trimming; the rear window is just too wide. And the windshield is a very "soft" fit with a good amount of load on it due to the flex of fitting the body on the chassis. They had to be held in place with CA.

For some tips on using CA to easily cement clear parts in without risk of fogging (or worse) check this out:
https://finescale.com/how-to/2024/07...ithout-fogging

[Scale-Master]

The body doesn't fit too well over the chassis and the sides at the bottom do not want to meet with the chassis at all. I made some steel brackets and utilized more magnets to get the body to fit better and somewhat consistently line up to the chassis.

[malscar]

Whilst I am only able to login to he forum randomly, I always look to see what pearls you are building. Just to appreciate your expertise and garner any hints from what you are doing. I admit I would be very hesitant to use superglue around clear parts.

[Scale-Master]

Thank you for the kind words. I've been using the technique I shared in the link for decades since I came up with it and have never ruined a clear part doing it.