Revell 71 Boss 351 Mustang-DONE! (5-16-24)

[mrversatile]

Ouch! I hate redoing anything. I know from whence you come, though. Keep plugging

[eaglecash867]

Thanks Gil. Pretty demoralizing at first, but it turned out to be an easy fix without too much brain damage.



Recovered from the brain fart and pressed on with getting the engine back in and getting the undercarriage all squared away. I'm going with the black undercoating with the factory primer and bare metal of the fuel tank peeking through here and there. Goes along with what I remember of my '72.

[handiabled]

For the issues you had it sure didn't effect how great your engine compartment looks. Nice recovery!

[eaglecash867]

Thanks for the compliment, Handiabled!

My compressor crapped out on me about 20 minutes ago, so I'm stalled until Monday or Tuesday. I'm tired of the cheap (yet fairly pricey) compressor I have currently, so I've got a Paasche DC-350R on the way. Hopefully I'll have better luck with that, and I know that Paasche's customer service is top-notch if I have issues.

Got the wheels on and shock towers all painted. Was working on painting all of the little items that go into the engine bay when the compressor crapped out, so those aren't in there yet.



Before I got the exhaust pipes painted and installed, I used my awesome little micro drill set to drill out the tips of the pipes. Love those little drills.

[406 Silverado]

Yikes! I’ve got a spare compressor just in case something like this happens . What you’re doing here does look good so far though. The drilled out exhaust always puts a good touch on any auto build. Excellent progress so far.

[keavdog]

I've always used a CO2 tank but have a cheap compressor (from a cake decorating kit lol) in case I run out.

[406 Silverado]

Nov 4, 2023 14:35:00 GMT -5 keavdog said:

I've always used a CO2 tank but have a cheap compressor (from a cake decorating kit lol) in case I run out.

Now THAT'S a pretty cool idea John.

[keavdog]

It's really convenient with quick disconnects.

[eaglecash867]

I might have to give that a try some day with a Nitrogen tank.  I looked into it this afternoon and I guess its not all that bad, money-wise after you get the initial cylinder and stuff.  It would certainly eliminate any moisture problems.

[handiabled]

Bad news about your compressor. I use a Rolair 2.5 gallon "pancake" compressor. Loud as all get out but it only needs to cycle once most of the time.

[eaglecash867]

Thanks Handiabled.  Heh...I almost went to Lowes yesterday to get a compressor...and then I saw the noise rating on the one I had my eye on.  LOL.  Somewhere around 90-100 dB.  My house is a duplex, so I don't think my neighbors would have liked that one very much.  Hehehe...

[eaglecash867]

The new compressor arrived on Moday last week, but it wasn't ready to go out of the box. I have the parts on order to make it work more readily with my current airbrush/hose setup. In the mean time, I was able to get the old one back on its feet by taking the stuck valve assembly apart and lubing everything lightly with a little vacuum grease and WD40. The valve is still not quite doing what its supposed to, but at least its not rapidly bleeding air anymore. The new DC-850R compressor looks pretty sweet though, and its nice and quiet, so it'll be a great addition once I get the adapters I need for it.

Got almost the whole engine bay done at this point. Tried a layered technique with painting the washer fluid tank. Used MRP Insignia white as a base for the tank bottom, then Tamiya X-23 clear blue, then a slow misting of more of the MRP Insignia White until I got a pretty good visual effect.



Gunship Grey turned out to be a pretty close match to my photo references for the braces between the firewall and shock towers. The grey plates underneath are an MRP color I had bought for doing a Ukrainian grey digital camo scheme on my Su-25 project, but it also was a close match for my references.



Testors square bottle Bright Blue was used on the...voltage regulator (? That's going back a few years...I think it was the voltage regulator that was underneath the starter solenoid). Not real happy with the opacity of the Autolite decal on the battery. It should be a nice bright red, but you can barely see that its there against the black battery. Glad I elected to cut the red cap portion out of the battery decal and paint the caps red instead...at least you can see those.

[kyledehart5]

Beautiful looking engine bay. That's some outstanding work there.

[406 Silverado]

This is looking just great so far eagle. I don't blame you for painting the battery caps instead of using the decals.

One of the things that I like about these newer Revell releases are the attention to detail that's in them. Heck, the interiors and chassis are getting the same attention as of late from them. One of the first kits that I noticed where Revell started to improve was on their Foose FD-100 truck. I built the old school Revell F-100 a few times in my life and those have sucked every time BUT.....then came the Foose truck and WOW!!!! That was a breath of fresh air and a complete BREEZE to build by comparison.

[eaglecash867]

Thanks for the compliments, fellas!



I hear ya on the quality of the Revell releases, Joe. This one was definitely well thought-out. The only problem I have run into so far...that wasn't my own doing...was where the brace mounts on the firewall. The brace is made to go down around a tab in the middle of the firewall. The tab is there, but for some reason, they didn't cut the notches all the way through the firewall to make it so you can actually use the tab. Its not chunks of flash that I forgot to remove either, because the visible side of the firewall has nice contours all along the top, like it was meant to be that way. Not a huge issue since the rough edges of the cut I had to make are covered up by the brace, but it was a little scary having to cut those out around all of the other delicate, painted pieces.



Got the final piece of the engine bay in place...the upper radiator hose, and now I'm working on getting the body colors and striping all planned out. I painted just the top of the hood with Acapulco Blue MCW Enamel because I wanted to make sure I get a close enough match between one of the several different "argent silver" paints I'm trying and the decal stripes before committing to the color scheme. Seeing that Acapulco Blue on the hood though? Just too good to pass up, so if the decals don't match well enough (which they probably won't...metallics are always so hard to match), I'll figure out how to make some paint masks and do it that way.


Here's the hood shortly after the wet coat with the MCW enamel and lots of additional Mr. Leveling Thinner added at the end.  Heh...can't figure out why it looks like there's dust on it in some spots.  Definitely no dust on the actual piece...must be schmutz on the phone camera lens or something.

[406 Silverado]

That's definitely weird about the tabs on the firewall eagle and I guess they can't get everything right. lol. In any case, they have definitely upped their game to bring the standards up to alot of the other model makers out there on the market now. That Acapulco Blue does look good doesn't it? I painted my '67 Fastback GT up with that MCW color and was amazed at how good it looked on that car.

Say, I see that you use Image Shack for a photo hosting service like me. Are you posting pictures from your phone? If so, I may be able to help you out with the picture sizing.

[eaglecash867]

Nov 17, 2023 6:16:39 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

That's definitely weird about the tabs on the firewall eagle and I guess they can't get everything right. lol. In any case, they have definitely upped their game to bring the standards up to alot of the other model makers out there on the market now. That Acapulco Blue does look good doesn't it? I painted my '67 Fastback GT up with that MCW color and was amazed at how good it looked on that car.

Say, I see that you use Image Shack for a photo hosting service like me. Are you posting pictures from your phone? If so, I may be able to help you out with the picture sizing.

Heh...I'm one of those dinosaurs who doesn't use his phone for much of anything other than taking pictures and making phone calls.  For everything else, I'm on a laptop or desktop PC.  I have been posting all of my photos as the smallest possible thumbnail to help conserve bandwidth on the forums, while letting people click on them to see the bigger picture on imageshack's web-site.  I could always post them as larger thumbnails if that won't create a bandwidth problem for you guys. 

Definitely loving the Acapulco Blue, and I think I have settled on painting all of the striping with MCW Silver Metallic Lacquer.  I also have Argent Silver Enamel, but its just too sparkly.  Hopefully should be able to make some masks on my Silhouette machine, and I actually found some 0.5mm masking tape if I end up needing some of that.  Settled on masking and painting the stripes instead of using the decals.  I found an instruction manual on Scalemates for the European release of the kit, which is for the Acapulco Blue paint, and even in the finished build photo they put on the cover of the instructions, the edges of those stripe decals are very prominent on the hood.  Definitely don't want to go that route if I can avoid it.  

Got my order yesterday of 30 gauge hypodermic tubing and even smaller rod to see what I can do about making an antenna and some door lock knobs.

[406 Silverado]

Nov 17, 2023 7:53:32 GMT -5 eaglecash867 said:

Nov 17, 2023 6:16:39 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

That's definitely weird about the tabs on the firewall eagle and I guess they can't get everything right. lol. In any case, they have definitely upped their game to bring the standards up to alot of the other model makers out there on the market now. That Acapulco Blue does look good doesn't it? I painted my '67 Fastback GT up with that MCW color and was amazed at how good it looked on that car.

Say, I see that you use Image Shack for a photo hosting service like me. Are you posting pictures from your phone? If so, I may be able to help you out with the picture sizing.

Heh...I'm one of those dinosaurs who doesn't use his phone for much of anything other than taking pictures and making phone calls.  For everything else, I'm on a laptop or desktop PC.  I have been posting all of my photos as the smallest possible thumbnail to help conserve bandwidth on the forums, while letting people click on them to see the bigger picture on imageshack's web-site.  I could always post them as larger thumbnails if that won't create a bandwidth problem for you guys. 

Definitely loving the Acapulco Blue, and I think I have settled on painting all of the striping with MCW Silver Metallic Lacquer.  I also have Argent Silver Enamel, but its just too sparkly.  Hopefully should be able to make some masks on my Silhouette machine, and I actually found some 0.5mm masking tape if I end up needing some of that.  Settled on masking and painting the stripes instead of using the decals.  I found an instruction manual on Scalemates for the European release of the kit, which is for the Acapulco Blue paint, and even in the finished build photo they put on the cover of the instructions, the edges of those stripe decals are very prominent on the hood.  Definitely don't want to go that route if I can avoid it.  

Got my order yesterday of 30 gauge hypodermic tubing and even smaller rod to see what I can do about making an antenna and some door lock knobs.

I hear you on the decal edges. I'd be trying to work my around that too. Looking forward to seeing more of this one.
As far as bandwidth, 800 x 600 plays pretty well with the forum.

[eaglecash867]

Well...after screwing around with trying to get some masks cut to do all of the striping without using the decals, I came up with what I thought was a good solution using the Silhouette machine.  When I was trying to figure out how to get the first mask positioned on the hood, centered, and with the correct longitudinal position, it occurred to me that I'd probably be exceeding the limits of the silver lacquer I was going to be using.  I should have known from the instruction manual, but that 3.8mm border around the silver area ain't that big...and I was trying to airbrush a 0.3mm stripe somewhere inside that area?  LOL.  I can see it now.  I go through the brain damage of doing all that masking, and half that new stripe flakes off because its just so thin and there isn't enough surface area to hold it onto the blue paint as I pull the masking off.  Oh well...guess I'm just going with the instructions and using the decals.  Not ideal, but it'll look good enough I think.  Got the silver part painted today according to the instruction manual, and somehow managed to get a little schumtz in the paint this time around.  I'll be Micromeshing that out tomorrow, but I definitely like the color combo.

[eaglecash867]

I put the stripe decal around the perimeter of the hood today and, just as I was afraid of, there was a HUGE color difference between the silver paint and the stripe decal.  I kept playing around with different spoon shots of all the different silver paint I have, and not one of them came anywhere close.  Then, I got a wild idea and grabbed my little Testors square bottle of Metallic Silver and brushed a tiny spot of it on the hood, right next to the stripe decal.  Turns out it was a perfect match.  But, how do I fix this when the decal is already on, and I have already detailed the under-side of the hood?  Well...I just loaded up the airbrush with that Testors square bottle paint and painted right over what I had already done on the top of the hood.  There was a little overspray that got into the blue borders of the hood, but the cool thing about that oil-based enamel is that I can wipe it right off places I don't want it with a Q-tip dampened with mineral spirits and it won't do a thing to hurt the MCW enamel or lacquer since they're not oil-based.  Pretty happy with the result, but have a few blemishes here and there.  There's also a lot of orange peel at this point because I had to shoot it unthinned to keep the metallic particles from migrating, but I'll polish everything out in a couple of weeks when the Testors paint finally cures enough to polish.  I'll now be able to move on with painting the other silver body parts now that I have a color match...and Revell's paint they tell you to use isn't even close either.

Testors square bottle Metallic Silver for the win!

[406 Silverado]

Dude you are a wildman pulling off that feat. I hear you on paint matches with Revells paint recommendations. It's best to go your own route like you did here with the Testors Metallic Silver.

[eaglecash867]

Dec 9, 2023 10:33:28 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

Dude you are a wildman pulling off that feat. I hear you on paint matches with Revells paint recommendations. It's best to go your own route like you did here with the Testors Metallic Silver.

Thanks Joe!  I kinda borked the whole thing though.  The measurements the kit gives for masking off the silver area are fine for the sides, but the front end, they were probably a little more than a quarter of a millimeter off, so the original MCW Silver Metallic lacquer was showing through between the broad part and the narrow part of the stripe decal at the front.  I got the "brilliant" idea of trying to bring the blue back between the stripes by using a dark blue Sharpie, which sorta worked, but apparently decal film doesn't respond well to Sharpie ink.  The stripe decal started disintegrating in that spot.  Its cool though, I had some things that I was having some serious hindsight about anyway on the hood, so I stripped it down to start over.  Used my go-to method of a bath in 99% isopropyl alcohol.  Now I can go back and deal with the ejector pin marks that I forgot about, and I also scratched up some intake vent boxes which the kit doesn't have.  With the stripe measurement issue in mind, I'm just going to repaint the hood with the Acapulco Blue, put the decal on, and then paint the Testors square bottle Metallic Silver without masking.  I'll wipe away the overspray with paint thinner and a Q-tip.  Should look fine after that.  Luckily, I had started making it a common practice to get 2 kits, so I have a spare decal ready to go.

[eighty3studios]

Looking good! I had the same issues with the black stripes.. they don’t match and also they just leave a line from the thickness even though they are super thin..
I’m just gonna strip mine and not use any markings lol.. little disappointing on an otherwise great

[406 Silverado]

Dec 9, 2023 11:56:34 GMT -5 eighty3studios said:

Looking good! I had the same issues with the black stripes.. they don’t match and also they just leave a line from the thickness even though they are super thin..
I’m just gonna strip mine and not use any markings lol.. little disappointing on an otherwise great

I've gotta tell ya......that car body looks great James. I do hear what you're saying about blacking out the hood. That's right in line with a move that I would do.

[406 Silverado]

Dec 9, 2023 11:37:53 GMT -5 eaglecash867 said:

Dec 9, 2023 10:33:28 GMT -5 406 Silverado said:

Dude you are a wildman pulling off that feat. I hear you on paint matches with Revells paint recommendations. It's best to go your own route like you did here with the Testors Metallic Silver.

Thanks Joe!  I kinda borked the whole thing though.  The measurements the kit gives for masking off the silver area are fine for the sides, but the front end, they were probably a little more than a quarter of a millimeter off, so the original MCW Silver Metallic lacquer was showing through between the broad part and the narrow part of the stripe decal at the front.  I got the "brilliant" idea of trying to bring the blue back between the stripes by using a dark blue Sharpie, which sorta worked, but apparently decal film doesn't respond well to Sharpie ink.  The stripe decal started disintegrating in that spot.  Its cool though, I had some things that I was having some serious hindsight about anyway on the hood, so I stripped it down to start over.  Used my go-to method of a bath in 99% isopropyl alcohol.  Now I can go back and deal with the ejector pin marks that I forgot about, and I also scratched up some intake vent boxes which the kit doesn't have.  With the stripe measurement issue in mind, I'm just going to repaint the hood with the Acapulco Blue, put the decal on, and then paint the Testors square bottle Metallic Silver without masking.  I'll wipe away the overspray with paint thinner and a Q-tip.  Should look fine after that.  Luckily, I had started making it a common practice to get 2 kits, so I have a spare decal ready to go.

Looking forward to your recovery efforts eagle. This is a superb looking build so far and hate to see it give you fits at this stage of the build. Will be watching for updates.....

[eaglecash867]

Dec 9, 2023 11:56:34 GMT -5 eighty3studios said:

Looking good! I had the same issues with the black stripes.. they don’t match and also they just leave a line from the thickness even though they are super thin..
I’m just gonna strip mine and not use any markings lol.. little disappointing on an otherwise great

Looks good in red!  Glad to know I'm not the only one who had issues with the stripes.  I was thinking about going with a color that would make use of the black ones, because I figured "Its black!  How could I go wrong with that?".  Looks like that presents its own set of problems.

Got the hood all stripped down and worked out all the little pin marks on the underside.  Scratch-built my antenna, along with a very Mustang-looking base for it...just working on chroming the base now.  The stainless steel hypodermic tubing and wire worked like a champ, so I have a two-segment, telescoping antenna that actually telescopes.  Got the 1mm hole drilled for the antenna base on the right fender, so I committed to paint.  The freakin hood is STILL giving me fits with getting a good, even gloss on the top, but I just have to do a minor repair there once the paint cures.  I was expecting a fight with the body, but I finally caught a break...the body paint is pretty much flawless.  In my experimentation with the lacquer and enamel versions of the Acapulco Blue paint, I ended up finding out that starting with the lacquer to get basic coverage of the primer, and then finishing with the enamel, produced a completely smooth, glossy finish.  Pretty happy with the results.








Working on chroming the antenna base today, along with re-chroming all of the kit "toy chrome" parts.

[handiabled]

Just caught up with this, what a beautiful paint job!

[kyledehart5]

Beautiful blue. Nicely done.

[eaglecash867]

Thanks guys! Now...if I can just get this freakin' hood to cooperate, I'll be in business.

[eaglecash867]

Finished the tail light panel tonight. The other two items (rear spoiler and lower front valance) that got painted with the Testors Metallic Silver square bottle paint didn't go as well. I have been extolling the virtues of AKs Gauzy Agent Shine Enhancer for metallic finishes, but I think I'm going to stop using it, at least for Testors Metallics. Its fine unless you end up with a situation where it pools somewhere on the part...which the stuff tends to do really easily since its so thin. I had to paint the two other parts in two stages, and clearcoat in two stages, to get complete coverage on the top and bottom of both parts. Everything was fine until I painted and clearcoated the underside of both parts. The spots where the Gauzy got underneath and pooled literally had that nice silver paint eaten right off of them. The damage was so bad, I really couldn't even sand and recoat. I tried, but there were spots in the paint that looked like a Cookie Cutter Shark had eaten them. Such a disappointment. Oh well...at least the tail light panel wasn't harmed by that garbage. I think it'll be going into the circular file tonight. I'm going to try stripping and repainting, but I think that ultimately I'm just going to dig into the spare kit again and just use fresh parts. Already decided to do that with the hood...just couldn't get it to look right, and it had already passed the point of diminishing returns. The body paint coming out as nicely as it did is keeping me motivated.