Ferruz

Around here it feels as if spring just suddenly punched winter right in the face (not to a KO though, I'm sure winter will get up before the referee counts to 10). Snow is just all gone within a few hours, turning every enjoyable area into a slushy, muddy, dirty trap. I only have one car that can tackle such horrible conditions without the drama, and it happens to be my oldest: the ruff and tuff Big Boss 😝🤟. I love how I can run it through anything and then just pack it with bicycle cleaner formula and hose it down clean. I wish I could hose down all the cars with no consequence, but it's certainly not the case.

Had a nice blast with the Manta Ray. This was a good playground! Now back to stickering the C11 ⚫🔴⚪

I rad the van man. Vad the ran bad. Fun the bun clam. Gum the rat flat. 🤯 Ran the mad van! In the evening. 😁

Thank you so much everybody for all the positive feedback 😀 @Kol__ good question! The first couple coats of red went on with no issues, probably because I was very careful in keeping them light. I must have been too heavy handed with the third coat, and the solvent of the extra fresh paint sitting on the dry one was probably enough to melt it again and blur my lines. That's the explanation I came up with, it could be wrong but it makes sense to me. The black had been on for at least 48 hours before I sprayed the red, so I doubt that by then it wasn't fully cured (ps paints tend to dry and cure relatively fast to begin with, more so if sitting in a dry, warm indoor environment like in this case). All the four areas where the blurring happened did show evidence of overspraying, which seems to confirm the theory. Speaking of PS paints, in my experience the are quite different from each other in terms of coverage, drying time, and even smell and feel. They don't all behave the same. I once backed some fluorescent yellow with white barely an hour after it was sprayed, with impeccable results. Days after -on the same shell,lol- I went with metallic blue, which was as beautiful as it was aggressive to the white. It did a lot of damage in some areas, melting the white and the yellow. In that case I sure did the mistake of painting light colors first, but it didn't feel like I oversprayed tge blue so that reaction was still a bit weird. Then again, the light blue of my Terra Scorcher has never reacted with the fluorescent orange or its white backing 🤔 So yep, in my experience PS paints are all different. They are hard to deal with, that is! But treat them right and they'll make you happy 😉

Thanks! It's just that, once I'm ready to paint at a psychological level, there's no way I can wait for further stars to align... fortunately I have a spot in a communal garage where I can do all sort of work including painting! The snow was present for sure, gave me a hard time when trying to bring the prepped body to the booth during a blizzard, but that's all in good fun 😅 Painting is now officially done. It took me a while, as usual, and the result is not perfect, but definitely good enough for me 😊 Black went on first and ok, with not too much bleed through besides the usual couple random areas where the tape slightly detached Nothing that couldn't be easily fixed with some Polycarbonate body cleaner, a truly life saving product (I can't believe I used to paint bodies without it at hand). Red was sprayed next. All good until the third layer, when I oversprayed some areas resulting in the solvent re-melting the black. Live and learn! More swearing, more patience, more poly cleaner, more masking tape, more paint and the mistake was fixed Next was going to be the backing paint. I was unsure about what to go for between white and silver, so I used the wheel arches cut-offs to make some samples. And I'm glad I did! Both turned out not suitable for what I had in mind: the white backing made the red a little too bright, and the silver one made the red look way too dull. After an extra day of pondering, I decided and went for yet one more layer of red, just to get rid of some translucency. While waiting for the paint to cure, I had a glimpse at the inside of the plastic bag I tossed the masking in during the painting process. It looks like the work of a mad man, look at it🤣 The moment when you finally peel off the protective layer and see the result is just so fulfilling, can't put a price on that! Look at that shine... it will never ever be that shiny again! My fingerprints are already everywhere, I'm starting to understand while some people use gloves when handling bodies! Anyway, I 'll just drool over the shine for the rest of the evening and probably jump on the decals tomorrow. Painting was dreaded, but decals should be fun and not too daunting in this case so I'm looking forward to it.

@BuggyDad homebrew buggy looks sharp to say the least. You are doing something truly amazing. And after all that effort, you'll get to name it too! 😉 As for me, I finally resurfaced from the booth after a week or so of painting shenanigans (funniest of which was me trying to transport the masked, prepped, vulnerable body through a blizzard all the way to the garage without getting it wet 🤣). A detailed description and more pictures are available on the build thread. Anyway, now I have a shiny body ready to decal 🤩 That moment when you peel off the film is just priceless.

@GermanTA03Guy thank you for the encouragement, I hope so! In the middle of paint coats at the moment

Thank you. If you go to page number 1821 of the "So, what have you done today" thread in the general section of the forum, you'll find my post about the mud flaps with description and pictures @Andreas W glad you like the report and pictures. Man I wish I could set up a Postal Racing track on that rink, it would be all giggles and fun (but probably not much performance eheh). I get the concern about the risks. Mine was calculated, but still... Hockey wasn't an issue in my case, as a much better rink not far away was where all the action was taking place. Still there were some kids just happily out to get the car: they would have jumped on it had they managed to, fortunately their zero skills on ice were no match for the mini Deltona, so I decided to bank on that and stay 😆 The worst risk, if I think about it, is that I decided to ride my bicycle to that rink, through traffic, black ice and snow, while holding a grocery bag containing the Lancia 😰 no small risk indeed, but it saved me the frustration of driving (or should I rather say, dragging) a car through the city... ...though maybe next time I'll just do that 🙃

No buddy it's not just you same thing happened to me, I slipped in a shim that was indeed just short of one mm!

Time for a little update on the build. It took me ages to mask up the body shell, and now I'm finally done. While at it, I also punched out the holes for the light buckets. Fortunately, no casualties there. Body is ready for paint, once I set up the station and double/triple check all the edges one more time. Feeling a little tense but excited. Hopefully I won't mess this up! It'll be nice to finally get some paint on it.

Finally, I am now done masking the C11 shell. Man, what a drag this has been! I sure wish I had the resilience and determination of @technics and @Yoshimitsu when doing these tasks. Also, I pretty much ran out of Tamiya 6mm masking tape, will have to get some more asap as it's so useful also for shell touch-ups. Now on to the painting part (after I triple-check every dang millimeter of the masked areas, that is 😓). Hopefully I won't ruin it! 😄

Thank you for the kind words @Nicadraus! 🙂

This was last Sunday, almost a week ago, but I needed some time to sort out the footage. I did a bold move, well worth it in the end: I set up the Delta Integrale and brought her to the ice rink, in pursuit of some unspoiled drifting action. I called it bold move just because I usually steer clear from other people when I want to run my cars... but sometimes it's good to make an exeption and get out of our comfort zone. Indeed, other people were at the rink, skating and doing their thing but not too many for me to try. After some contemplation, I just went and took my chances discreetly. Fortunately, nobody seemed to mind, most people were actually interested/pleased by the unusual presence on the ice. I may or may not have gotten some dirty looks from the less experienced skaters, which sure didn't appreciate the extra distraction, but that's a small price to pay for the good times Once I felt comfortable enough in terms of not being an annoyance to others, the fun began. The rink surface was bang on, thin layer of powder over the ice, providing great conditions for running and dramatic enough for the looks. The visuals of the car performing long and swift drifts was pure joy. With some more chassis roll during the action it would have been close to perfect (need softer springs for that), although just seeing the snow splashing off the mud guards like the real thing was in itself very satisfying. This went on for the duration of a battery pack, half an hour of bliss. It's safe to say I had at least 1/10th of the fun I would have experienced driving the real thing Strangers seemingly enjoying what I was doing was also a nice plus. All in all, a grand day out for my Didier and Bernard. Here they are, warm and dry after the post run cleanup

@ChrisRx718 nice models, but that sweat band is the best part of the loot 😁

Popped into the dollar store for a random browse. There was a ton of Hot Wheels on display, some of which were absolutely jaw dropping. I can't believe the leap forward that Hot Wheels took in the past few years, in terms of both quality and model production choice. I mean, given that one is not in survival mode, can you imagine a better way to spend 1.75 $? Look at this gorgeous Alfa GTV I was lucky enough to find this and a few more, and was very happy to drop a few dollars on these. The occasion also prompted me to pull the trigger on something I've been wanting to do for a while: set up a skinny shell for my favourite Hot Wheels models. It was supposed to hold 10 models or so, but for now I ended up over crowding it 🙄 Still pleased with the result 😊 (and thanks Mrs. Ferruz for embracing yet another essential display of cars in a completely unrelated area of the house).

Been away from the forum for a week or so. Spent the first part of the morning catching up with this and other threads. Lots of talent, fun stuff and inspiration as usual from ya fellow TCers I went for a brief outing with the Van the other day, and am planning on going back to the same spot later on today. I still haven't resurfaced from masking the C11 shell. This time around I really don't feel like it, but rather than powering through it to just get the task done, I seem to linger and do a little every day instead. Whatever works, but I can't wait to be done and move on to the decals (love that part). As long as I don't mess it up it's all good

And so the masking begins... with hope