Opening holes
As first business, I worked on adding the holes for the lights.
I want to have the two side fog lights and the central fog light at the centre of the front grill.
A close up from the sister car:

And today I also got my new Proxxon drill that I won from the WWSCC ;-)
So what better excuse to start using it and open up some holes in the car.

First I marked with a piece of tape where the openings will be and traced the edges with a pencil.

Then I drilled the holes using bits of different size and square them up using a sharp blade.

My idea is to press through the hole these LEDs (ignores the one bleeding...)

And in these pics you can see how the look like:

 

More holes
Hey I love my Proxxon, so let's make more hole ;-)
As I mentioned I want to have the central fog light in the middle of the grill.
So, first I remove some plastic that is in the front the of the car behind where the grill piece will go.

Next, I drilled a row of holes through the grill, connected the holes with a blade and then squared it off.

Test fit the LEDs I will use:

As a bonus I also put in the front anchor point for pulling the car:

That's it for now.

 

Off to a good start Gio. What wire do you use for your lighting? I have a hard time routing the wires after I get the lights in place. I've done silicone wiring, but it looks like you are using something else.

Heath

 

hi Heath
The wires you see here are pre-soldered on the LEDs.
So I am not sure what they are.
If I have LEDs that are not pre-wired then I use a good multi core 36 AWG silicon wire.

 

If this project is half as good as the one on the Bentley... I have no choice but to follow it.

 

Nice project Gio 👍🏼

Getting the chrome color will be a good challenge, looking forward for more advances.😀

 

WOW, this has been on hold for some time now. Poor @MALAFAMA has been eating popcorns for 9 months...

A little diet
I have been procrastinating on this build mainly because I know what I want to achieve but it is not what I am going to get.
Another thing that I have been debating is whether I want to reduce its weight given that it is a large car.
So this weekend I hit the bulled and went for it.
I started with the dremel and a medium round burr.

The starting point of the body alone was 10.84 g.

After 30 min, the overall weight dropped to a whooping 9.89 g.

Then using a scalpel, I tided it up and lost another 0.1 g

Next I worked on the wing just with the scalpel.

Before:

After:

With all the details in: I tared for the two plastic bags....With the lightweight interior it should be around 17 g.

I gave it the first layer of black coat...hope the weekend weather will be good enough to make some progress.

 

I have gained 5 kg....
I see that your car is quite the opposite hehehe

Those front LEDs look very good, I can't wait to see the final result

 

I´ve come across this thread on multiple occations, only to be dissapointed that it was discontinued. It´s great to see this project come to life again.

 

It has never been discontinued...only life sometimes gets in the way. But you are too young to understand that ;-)

 

Well...he's at least 6 months older by know
But its well worth the wait👍

 

He is getting there ahahahah ;-)

 

Always educational to follow your builds. Looking forward seeing how it progresses! 😀

 

thanks Michael. I am not sure that this is going to be so educational...I think it is going to be full of compromises.

 

The chrome finish being one? 🤔

 

Exactly.

 

I wish I had known about this paint from US company Krylon when I did my Lexus. https://www.krylon.com/en/products/craft/premium-foil-metallic#accordion-67f8c94406-item-98de48af1f

I used multiple layers Tamiya blues and Pearl clear to come close, but I want to pick up some of this and give it a try.

 

Masking and more masking
The weather was not too bad this morning for painting.
Before starting the masking process, I watched a couple of videos. I think the best one was on how to mask canopies for airplane models.
In particular on how to cut very thin strips of tape and use a tooth stick to move it around.
Other tips included keeping your tape dust free and a nice sharp blade for the cutting.

With this in mind I started the process of first masking the perimeter of the area that I wanted to protect and then fill it with thicker strips of masking tapes.

Not perfect but close enough.

 

Looking at the details
I must admit that I took the calipers out a couple of times to check the symmetry in a couple of spots.
But most of the masking was done by looking at the pics I had in my documentation and make some rough estimate.
Also, most of the lines are along the panel lines of the body.

 

Painting
The approach I am taking is to spray a silver base and then spray a clear blue on top of it.
For the silver base, I found in my stash of paints, a Tamiya LP pot named Sparkling Silver (I believe the LP code is 48).
I went for my basic approach being:
step 1 Spray Tamiya gloss clearcote from the can to the airbrush and then use the airbrush to spray the clearcote over the masking tape edges to seal them
step 2 Give a couple of minute to dry, spray the two way thinner through the airbrush to clear it and leave some for diluting the next paint
step 3 Put the silver from the pot in to airbrush and spray it over the model at a low PSI setting
step 4 Once happy with the paint coverage spray the model with tamiya TS13 clear
step 5 Put the model back into a covered container and start cleaning the airbrush of any paint. This gives me something to do to let the paint settle on the model.
step 6 after 5 minutes, remove the masking tape from the model to avoid that the edges between the masked and unmasked parts of the model are not too thick

The results

Not too bad....I have to say that the edges are all good. I did not have any overspray.
Next step: I have to do all the masking again for spraying the clear blue!

 

Not too bad....I have to say that the edges are all good. I did not have any overspray.

Well done Gio, what must people don't realize is that for a good multi color livery paint job....masking is 90% of the work.

Next step: I have to do all the masking again for spraying the clear blue!

As I've got several projects on my "to do" list that will require "replication" of these metallic "Mirror type" foil liveries, I've been doing some research and tests shots.
Your choice to do a silver base coat and cover it with clear blue will give you the metallic look, but it won't produce the "mirror" effect. For that the surface of the silver just isn't reflective enough. Buffing/polishing the silver might enhance the result a bit. In fact a careful polishing of the whole car (Black & Silver) before spring the clear blue will improve the end result.

And as a trade off...the extra time you spend on polishing can be gained back by not having to mask the silver.
Just spray the whole car with clear blue. Over the silver it will create the metallic blue you're aiming for and over the black it will just add a nice deep (blueish) shine.

And when you spray the clear blue, build up the layers, keep the top facing surfaces lighter than the sides.
You could even divide the sides in lighter and dark shade with a split more or less where the reflection of the horizon would be.
Most of this can be done free hand, but if you want to create a sharper "split" covering the upper parts with a piece of cardboard while you spray will give you a nice soft mask.

with kind regards
Tamar

 

I think I now understand why you waited with this one for so long

 

Mate I’m impressed. ’Not too bad’ is clearly under selling what you’ve achieved here. Excellent masking result!

No pressure to nail the blue

 

Don't you hate when you do things that you do not know nothing about suggested by other people that end in big screws up? ;-)

I wanted to buff the silver as suggested by Tamar.
I started using a 3000 grit tamiya sand sponge which removed some of the silver....I had to redo most of the masking and re-spray.
All good now.

 

Don't you hate when you do things that you do not know nothing about suggested by other people that end in big screws up? ;-)
View attachment 363215

I wanted to buff the silver as suggested by Tamar.
I started using a 3000 grit tamiya sand sponge which removed some of the silver....I had to redo most of the masking and re-spray.
All good now.

Metallic paints and chrome, silver paint never react good to ANY kind of sanding, usually means you have to repaint again the color that was sanded. Also, some chrome paint (like Molotov), don’t like clear over, so better to left it at the end .😉

 

Well I did say "buff and polish" which in my book doesn't include anything else than taking a piece of cloth and buffing the paint surface.
"Polishing" could also include adding a few dabs of Tamiya "Fine" polishing compound onto the cloth.

I never mentioned any "sanding" which, even with 3000 grit, would obviously include the risk of cutting through the silver...did I now? 😇

 

... Also, some chrome paint (like Molotov), don’t like clear over, so better to left it at the end .😉

Absolutely true, which means always do a test shot on a piece of plastic to see which "effect" the combined metallic/chrome and clear coating have on each other.
And agreed, if you just want to do a pure "chrome" effect, any clear coating will dull the reflectiveness to some extend.

As for the Molotov chrome, as it's water based it specifically doesn't like clear that's solvent based.
But a Tamiya or Alclad acrylic clear can be used with good results.

But Gio isn't looking for pure "chrome", he's chosen Tamiya TS Silver (which is solvent based) as a base coat to replicate the Metallic Blue foil effect . So for the blue he can use either the TS Clear (blue) or any Acrylic water based clear.

With kind regards.
Tamar

 

So basically it’s Gios fault 🤔🤷🏻

 

In this case..yes. And..when you start doing stuff that "you know nothing about".
Always do a test on a small not critical part of the car. 😇

 

Yep, all my fault.
Anyway, after all that masking, I did spray the silver again without issues.
Then after letting it drying in the attic for a couple of hours at 35 degree, I took it down again, did some buffing (no 3000 grit this time) again.
I have to say that I put less energy on the cloth but still some of the silver paint started to come off but this time I stopped in time.
Then I proceed to mask the parts that have to remain in silver.

and then...