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Trakz German Staff Car

Another breather, and part 3

I had previously glued the three fender sections together, primed them, and taped them into position when making the supercharger pipes. I now sprayed them with a few coats of Alclad II black primer, and after that dried, tried to fit them. They no longer fitted! I was really losing my patience by this time, and ended up separating the three sections. I glued the front sections to the body sides and they fitted with no problems. I then glued the rear fenders into place, and again they fitted reasonably well. The running board section was a totally different story. Both were too short! One side by one mm; the other by two mm! I added this from plastic strip to each side. I tried to recreate the pattern as molded and then glued then in place, and used filler for any gaps. Of course my nice shiny black finish was a wreck, and now required some fancy masking of the grey body to re-spray (Photos 42-44).

CHROME! Certainly not something the average military vehicle builder does everyday. I’m sure if I was a car builder, or a steady aircraft builder, I would be more adapted at using this Alclad II product, but this was my first venture into using it. I used it for all the smaller parts, the radiator shell, and chrome trim on the side of the hood. After spraying on the gloss black primer, I waited until the next day to spray the chrome. This like the primer is airbrush ready. I sprayed on several light coats, as the instructions said, waiting about 15 minutes between coats. Eventually it built up into a nice shiny chrome finish, that looked as good as chrome plated parts. With practice, I'm sure you could replicate a good chrome finish on just about anything you can mask off. I’m not that experienced with it, and frankly trying to mask off extremely thin trim strips would have surely put me over the edge, so I resorted to good old fashion Bare-Metal-Foil bright chrome for the long and thin trim. This is really a pretty simple process, of cutting it a little over size, applying it, and burnishing it down with a q-tip, and tooth picks, and trimming with a NEW #11 blade. For the supercharger pipes, I flowed on several coats of Polly S Stainless Steel. The running boards were my next headache. No matter how many times I tried, I just couldn’t get the nice thin chrome strips running along between the rubber strips. I eventually said the hell with it, and gave the car plain old solid rubber running boards with a little chrome trim (Photos 45-50).

Moving right along at a snails pace, I started placing the smaller parts. I reamed out the light housings, and installed some MV lenses. I cut the wind shield out from .10 clear plastic, ran a black sharpie along its edges, and white glued the wind shield in place. I flowed in “The Detailer” Black into the panel lines, and radiator and hood side vents (Photos 51-54). Photo 55 shows the car next to another long running project, a PSP Renault AHN truck. Yeah, I’ll finish that some day too!

In went the seats, no problems here and on to the figures and base. Photos 56-59 show fitting the one figure, sitting on a Verlinden resin cobble stone street section cut down to fit the base, and a few of the small parts added. The smaller parts were now getting added in-between sessions of working on the figures. The folded top was primed and brushed painted with craft store acrylics, and then given a coating of raw umber oil paint was worked over the surface, and after it had set up for several hours, the excess wiped off with a paper towel. This left not only a darker color in the recesses, but also darkened the tan nicely and all discovered by mistake! The license plates are from an old SMA photo etched set. Photos 60-67 show the model fast approaching the finish line.