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bRIBEGuy

The Tale of Two Pumpkins...

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Best way to make a newly painted body look terrible?  Cover it in liquid mask!

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4 brushed on coats was my final solution to trying to get this masked.  I spent (wasted?) almost 90 minutes trying to figure out how to do it with adhesive vinyl masking and Tamiya masking tape before throwing my hands up and going this route.  Probably doesn't make sense right now, but at some point it might... :lol:

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Electronics are mounted now.  Slightly unorthodox ESC location, but sometimes ya gotta go where the wires force you to go.

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The idea for the body on my daughters truck was the first "optional" box-art setup as shown on the original kit box.

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I have NEVER seen anyone actually do the white and pink version, so it seemed like a fun look to try.  Now, when you start this off, you quickly find out WHY no one is doing this paint job... it's virtually impossible.  Sure, it's super easy for Tamiya to take a 2D drawing of the Ford body and draw parallel stripes across it, but in reality it's pretty much impossible to keep these visually straight for any length of time.  As soon as they wrap around a curve (of which there are many), the trajectory changes, and things get....er......funky real fast.

We used electrical and masking tape to "mock up" the look, and the horrific natural path of the curves makes the second side look like this:

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Less than ideal in my eyes, but thru the eye's of a 7 year old?  Dad, that's awesome!  One side is all nice, and the other side is CRAZY!  I love it!!!

Okay then... not my truck, not my rules.....

Time to get out the Xacto and start trimming the masking...

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The trimming took a L-O-N-G time. 

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The pink did not.

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The result is far from perfect, but for a runner it should be fine.

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With the focus being on the much cooler Pumpkin for my daughter, the box-art work on my Pumpkin somehow alluded the camera for a while.  Regardless of the lack of photographic evidence, my shell was finally acceptably smooth, and was rocking a nice gloss black (TS-14) finish.  The body had sat for over a week to cure, while the body on my daughters truck had cured even longer.  At this point she decided that she wanted some black oh her truck too, and we made the decision that both trucks would get matching TS-29 Semi-Gloss Black window trim (as per the manual), as well as running boards, and beds.  Since the rest of the paint work was complete, I figured the easiest way to do this was with liquid mask again.

So, out came the Bob Dively and brush.  3 coats later, and we're looking good... 

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Each coat dried for an hour or so before the next coat went on, and then the whole thing sat for 12 hrs to fully setup.  The next day we trimmed the mask, sprayed 3 coats of TS-29, and let it sit for a couple hours before pulling off the rest of masking.

Well, imagine my HORROR when this is what I saw...

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Yup, the gloss finish is gone, and the black is all mottled and gross.  It's not something on the paint (I did dry to wash it off with dish soap and a soft cloth to no avail), it seems to be etched into the paint.

Yup, I've pretty much wrecked a month of painting with an accidental discovery of doom... Bob Dively Liquid Mask and Tamiya paints are not good bedfellows.

At this point I'm pretty much beside myself, furious, confused, and not sure what to do now (aside from starting over).  

The pink and white don't show the effect to the same extent, but it is certainly there.  To make matters worse, while peeling the mask off of the pink/white one, small flecks of the black paint landed on the colors, and seemed to instantly adhere/etch them selves to the surface.  :angry:

Not a good time.... not a good time...........

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Aaaargh. I feel your pain. 

 

But to be constructive: Willy iine's idea about weathering in the other thread was brillant. Allthough for now it's OK to be sad for a while. 

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9 hours ago, Andreas W said:

Aaaargh. I feel your pain. 

But to be constructive: Willy iine's idea about weathering in the other thread was brillant. Allthough for now it's OK to be sad for a while. 

It is... except I nixed that idea early on in order to do box art.  Plus, I don't think I could ever weather it too look cooler than it did part way thru the stripping process when the paint under the old flame stickers wouldn't come off...

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A week after my paint fiasco, and I think time has allowed me enough space to cool off enough that I could be in the same room with my Pumpkins again... :lol:  

A bit of time with some 4000/6000/8000/12000 grit micromesh pads and I'm starting to be reasonably happy with how at least one of the bodies is turning out.  Perfect?  Heck no... but it's a runner, so it's not the end of the world.

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The tailgate font color has been a hotly debated topic around the house, as I wanted to do something a little more "matching" to the theme of the truck, and my little one wanted to do "something sort of teal".  My tactic of showing her that Tamiya didn't have a suitable teal color at the LHS backfired, when my 7 year old reminded me that she could just custom mix a color.  Okay fine..... have at 'er.

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Tamiya X14 (Sky Blue) and X15 (Light Green) found their way home with us, and a disgusting blend was created using THE WHOLE BOTTLE of blue, and maybe 2-3ml of the green.  It looks gross.  My wife thinks it looks fine.  My daughter loves it.  I realize I've lost this fight and just go ahead and paint it on...

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Since we're now just going into insanity land, I opted to paint the door handles the same color at my wife's (later admitted to being a joke) suggestion.  :blink:

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I think the colour itself turned out really nice. I love teal,  cyan and turquise colours. Espesially with metallic. 

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On 8/16/2022 at 10:04 PM, Andreas W said:

I think the colour itself turned out really nice. I love teal,  cyan and turquise colours. Espesially with metallic. 

Thanks!  Hopefully it will go well with metallic stuff, since we're almost at "chrome time" :lol:

 

On 8/16/2022 at 10:26 PM, Grumpy pants said:

Looks great, one happy daughter as well - priceless. 

Yup, happy child is always a good thing.

I felt the teal door handles didn't do enough for balancing out the tailgate, so I decided to add a bit more and paint the recessed details in the grill too.

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The reflections in the paint make it look MUCH worse than it does in reality (where it actually looks half way decent).  

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Enough time has passed since the liquid mask debacle, that I figured it was time to just man up and fix my mess on my own Pumpkin.  It's a toy... the world has not ended... :lol:

I masked off the semi-gloss black areas I am hoping to keep and hit 'er with some sandpaper prior to heading out to the "painting booth".

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A few quick coats later, and we might be back in the game...

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The black is not 100% perfect... bit since that seems to be the theme of the build, I'm just going to leave it.  This was supposed to be a quick and fun daddy/daughter project and has already grown into way too much of a beast.  Good thing we've had a ton of fun along the way... ;)

Over some morning coffee, it was time to start banging off a few details back on my daughters truck.  The tailgate needed some semi-gloss black details to meld with the rest of the bed...

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The front (V8) grill originally had red light painted.  I stripped off as much as I could, and then opted for orange instead of the box art white.  This truck has enough white paint on it already...

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Rear tail lights got some red as well...

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Chrome won't get you home... but it will get you closer to finishing your build!

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Front bumper doesn't sit 100% even... but I'm not sure why as the holes/mounts are all as-is from the factory.  Huh.

Daughter opted to go with the re-re chrome roll bar to match the re-re chrome wheels she chose to match the other chrome bits.  I feel like her sense of style and completeness is much more logical than that of Tamiya spec-ing yellow wheels on the Black Edition MP....LOL!

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Can't have an RC without a driver, right?  As mentioned before, my daughter chose a vintage She-Ra toy (that was originally my wife's) to take this pumpkin to the ball.  I'm (hopefully) not gonna go to crazy here, but I think I've figured out a good starting point for a mock-up.

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She_Ra is currently taped to a thicker piece of styrene sheet that originally served as template for a carbon fiber ESC mount I built for my MCD XR5-Max...

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This will get some rough shaping/painting, but doesn't really need to do much aside from make the driver visible.  The plate is mounted to the chassis with a couple 25mm (30mm?) Tamiya screws running thru a couple aluminum tube spacers, and into the original MSC mount.

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What was supposed to be a simple box under She-Ra's butt to bring her up to the right position has morphed into a terrible sorta-seat-shaped object thanks to free time and a lack of skill.  :lol:

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I sanded it down a bit, then added some filler to smooth it out.  I was curious iif more filler could ad some texture to make the styrene look a bit more like fabric. 

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The answer is very clearly NO.  It does however help make it look like you're a skill-less hack.  :lol:

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Seat got mounted.  Had to add a "speed hole" to it for access to the mounting screw.  Built a mount for the steering wheel.  Hit it with some truck-matching pink and semi-gloss black paint.

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Steering wheel is from an Axial scale parts tree.  Added some silver and pink to keep with the theme...

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Got She-Ra mounted with a few zip ties, and a purple paracord seatbelt.

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Shifter from an Axial scale parts tree was a last minute addition, as was an extra set of mounting holes to shift the whole thing back a bit after realising the steering column hit the body.

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Haven't forgotten about the uncreative box art one... slowly making some progress here too...

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Got some more of the detail painting done too... terrible white on the front marker lights, and straight up red & gold for the tailgate.  Boring stuff here folks... :lol:

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Body is assembled.  Time for those NIB original stickers...

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I had the foresight to take a 600dpi scan of these first.  Not that I have the ability to do anything with that... but it seemed like a smart "just in case" before letting them go under the knife.

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The "lets not pre-cut our decals" guy at Tamiya is a sadist... :lol:

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On 8/26/2022 at 10:11 AM, bRIBEGuy said:

Got She-Ra mounted with a few zip ties, and a purple paracord seatbelt.

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Shifter from an Axial scale parts tree was a last minute addition, as was an extra set of mounting holes to shift the whole thing back a bit after realising the steering column hit the body.

Barbie approves of this…

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1 minute ago, Frog Jumper said:

Barbie approves of this…

Oh man, that used-to-be-a-Frog is awesome!

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KC Daylight stickers got trimmed down to a smaller 17mm diameter for the pink Pumpkin's lightbar...

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