'81 Chevrolet El Camino

I have had a life long attraction to Chevrolet El Caminos. The whole car/truck concept has always intrigued me. While I like all versions, my favorite El Caminos were the fifth generation, produced from 1978 through 1987. I guess that is because I like the look of the Chevy Malibu, which is of the same time period. The El Camino shared the same front end sheet metal.

I have always wanted to build a model of a fifth generation Elky, but never liked any of the model kits that were produced at the time. One day I was looking around on Ebay and found this 1/25 scale, '81 Chevy El Camino promotional model (promo) that looked a little rough. It showed signs of wear, like it had been played with by a child. It had a broken bumper and the chrome plating was coming off the wheels. The sale price of $9.00, included the shipping charges. That was a great price! This Elky would be the perfect canidate for a restoration and the hot rod treatment I envisioned for it.

I completely disassembled the El Camino to clean and make repairs the body, in preparation for primer and then paint. I sprayed several coats of Testors One Coat Lacquer. Firey Orange was followed a week later, by numerous coats of Testors Wet Look Clear Lacquer.

All I can say is WOW! 

The one coat lacquers made such a difference to the quality of my paint job. This was one of my best painted model cars to date. If you take your time and remain patient as you paint, you will get outstanding results. Painting is fun again!

The door lines and the grille was highlighted with Pigma archival ink, and Bare Metal Foil was applied to the window trim and the rear side markers The turn signals, were painted with Tamiya clear red and orange. Pegasus 23" Phat Daddy wheels, along with brake rotors, and red painted calipers finished the look.

The interior and tonneau cover was painted with Rustoleum Sandstone enamel, and Detail Master brown flocking was used to simulate the carpeting.

This El Camino was definitely a blast to build and the experience I gained working with the Testors Lacquers will fuel my hunger to paint more cars and trucks.

Check out my other models at my Fotki photo sharing website. http://public.fotki.com/Wheels4ever/

           

'96 Chevy Tahoe Custom

AMT's Chevy Tahoe Snap together kit is a great starting point for the project I had in mind. I wanted to build a slightly lowered custom cruiser that the whole family could ride in.

Since this kit depicts a stock four wheel drive Tahoe, that meant I needed to make some slight modifications to the body. The first modification was to remove the running boards. I did this by using a razor saw and then after they were removed, a little sanding was required to clean up the bottom of the rocker panels. The rear roll pan, seen in the photo below, was added from an AMT Chevy Dually kit. The roll pan required a good bit of sanding to get the body work to look just right. In the end, I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. 

The hood came from the AMT Chevy Dually kit and the air dam came from an AMT Chevy 454SS kit. It was added to the bottom of the front bumper. I dechromed the Tahoe's front bumper using Castrol Super Clean. Then Tamiya primer was applied to all of the body parts before I shot Testors Gloss Yellow to the entire body. Wow, it looked like a school bus! That's not exactly what I was thinking of. I immediately made the decision to go with a two-tone scheme. After a few generous coats of Testors gloss black were applied, it looked so much better! Then a red stripe was applied using automotive pin striping. I detailed the grille for added realism. The Chevy emblem was painted with Tamiya gloss red.

I decided to with Pegasus 23" Chrome T's Mag wheels in addition to the Pegasus brake disc rotors. The rotors come chrome plated, so I sprayed the discs with Testors Dullcote to give them a more realistic look. The calipers were painted red. I lowered the suspension all the way around, with a slight downhill rake to the front, for just the right stance.

It was a fun project to build and is among one of my favorite models.

Check out my other models at my Fotki photo sharing website. http://public.fotki.com/Wheels4ever/