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Champ85

Masking, Painting and Decaling a Turbo Optima Body - A Pictorial

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I have mentioned before that I do not enjoy painting RC car bodies.  I'd much rather tear down, clean and rebuild a chassis instead.  This project was no different.  Mistakes were made, overspray and bleeds happened, and the result is not as nice as I would like.  It never is.  But here is a short pictorial of my masking and painting process of a Turbo Optima done in what I call "Almost Box Art" for your enjoyment.:D

  • Body: Turbo Optima from MarwanRC
  • Decals: Turbo Optima from MarwanRC
  • Trim Tape: black from Testors in various widths
  • Chassis:  vintage Turbo Optima that I bought on eBay approximately 7 years ago and completely rebuilt a few weeks ago.
  • Wheels: Aluminum Turbo Optima from Pargu (pmg28 on eBay)
  • Tires: OT-66 from MarwanRC.
  • Masking tape:  wide, medium and narrow from Tamiya
  • Paints used:  PS-5 Black, PS-15 Metallic Red, PS-41 Bright Silver, PS-1 White from Tamiya

Cutting, trimming and fitting of body on chassis not shown.

Windows and White masked off first.  I want the windows to be clear.:

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Red masked off ready for black to be sprayed:

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Black done:

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Red masking removed. Ready for red to be sprayed:

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Red done:

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Bright Silver painted as undercoat for red:

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White masking removed. Ready for white to be sprayed:

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White done:

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Protective film removed.  Defects revealed!

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I wanted to use metallic red instead of the somewhat orange-red solid color they used on the box-art car.  Not sure if the box cover has color-faded over the years.

The bright silver undercoat gives the metallic red a darker look.  Using a couple pieces of spare polycarbonate, I test-painted metallic red backed by white and bright silver in order to compare.  The white-backed one was a lot brighter/lighter in hue.  It was nice, but not the color I wanted for this car.  The bright silver darkened the red to a very rich dark red that I really liked.  Spraying white on top of the silver did not change the color at all as it was already opaque at that point.

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Thanks for sharing!  Not enough optima porn on this forum. 

1. Looks fantastic- can’t spot any faults.  Love the metallic red and aluminum wheels-my absolute favorite of RC wheels.

2. How about a naked shot...what is it powered by?

3. Plan on running it?

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58 minutes ago, 426Purplefish said:

Thanks for sharing!  Not enough optima porn on this forum. 

1. Looks fantastic- can’t spot any faults.  Love the metallic red and aluminum wheels-my absolute favorite of RC wheels.

2. How about a naked shot...what is it powered by?

3. Plan on running it?

I'm terrible about taking pictures.  Apparently I have not taken ANY pictures of the chassis sans body, so I just took a few tonight.  Apologies for the quality.

  • This is a vintage Optima chassis with all original parts except tires, wheels, body, decals and final pinion, motor pinion and rear motor guard.
  • The motor guard is from Pargu.
  • The receiver is the Futaba R113ip 75MHz PCM 3 channel.
  • The steering servo is the Futaba S148.
  • The ESC is the Tamiya TEU-105BK w/ Deans connector for battery.
  • The motor is the original Kyosho Le Mans 240S.
  • The final pinion is a Thorp Optima Final Pinion Gear #4738.
  • The motor pinion is a Robinson Racing 12T 32P steel pinion #0120.

I do run it, but not very hard.  Mostly run on asphalt with different wheels/tires.  No jumps, no real offroad stuff.  I don't have a good off road track type place to run.  I run for relaxation and stress relieving mostly.

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Nice, thanks.  Cool that you are running some.  I also have no good off-rod tracks near me to run mine.  I took my TO re-re to a construction site recently and spent about 30 min clearing gravel and small rocks from the undercarriage and suspension.  Oh well

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