Electric Sand Rover

Hi fellas,

finally finished my latest project.
I've been looking for an original Sand Rover with a reasonable price for ages.
Then this one came up on eBay cheap, looked complete and in good nick, apart from a giant hole next to the driver. The whole passenger seat and floorpan had been cut out.
This car is a really simple design, but it took me quite some time to finish.
First came a complete strip down, the chassis and gearbox were nice despite some extra holes I had to fill. I don't like the toyish look of the stock chassis, but wanted to keep it. So next was an attempt to dye the plain grey plastc parts black, but it failed. So I gave them a satin black paint finish.
I restored the stock wheels, but the rear tyres were bald and new ones nowhere to be found. So I went for some Rough Rider wheels with alloy covers I had lying around and black hex screws. On went my last set of Dunlop rear tyres, which I love! I think they look great on the Rover. J-man made me some great bumpers and a roll bar, huge thanks John!!!
The body was more of a challenge. I bought a re-re shell as a donor and cut out the whole floorpans on both bodies. Nights of filing and sanding, glueing and filling were spent to fix the body. Next up was paint. As much as I like to keep my cars close to box art colours and decals, I love to give them my own twist. I wanted to paint it in a metallic orange, but found nothing within the Tamiya range. So I remembered seeing a Ford Focus ST in a sweet pearl colour called 'Electric Orange' and went for it. The Ford spray paint comes as a 3step paint system. It took a layer of Tamiya white fine primer, wetsanding, then Ford Diamond White, wetsand. Then the Electric Orange base coat and finally clear cote. Then again wetsand and polish. I have to say I was really afraid of the Ford paints reacting with the Tamiya primer, but it worked out perfect! Each layer went on like a dream and it turned out as one of my best paint jobs. The colour really pops in the sun with a nice pearl effect.
The interiour was finished with new re-re parts like steering wheel and shifter. They were detailed with bare metal foil, as was the Stinger exhaust in the back and the FRP leaf spring.
The rear lights were detailed with aluminum bodytape and clear red paint. Finally a few decals went on, as It looked a bit plain without them.
Hope you like it! :-)