Been working on a DW tide lumina but have not posted anything up to now. the plan was a box stock build with a free hand neon orange to yellow fade but of course that never happened. i decided to try and blend the front bumper into the fender as the real cars are. revell used a separate bumper that glued to the outside of the fenders so they would be able to upgrade different re developments of the bumpers and still use the original body. worked well mostly for them except they never addressed the change to the side quarter windows. i’m not either.
Then i decided i wanted to try and make my own hood hinges made out of a coke can rather than use a PE set. i had an idea that if i taped the pe set to a cut of the can and misted flat black over it i would have a silhouette of the part i could cut out. it worked reasonably well.
here are the procession of build photos.
blending the bumpers using spot glaze
checking the stance. i lowered the ride height and tucked the tires in a little bit which sacrificed the ability to turn. also allowed me to line up the hinge brackets on the hood.
tires stencils were sprayed on and after a dull coat i wrote on the markings with a white artist pencil. i scraped off the black paint on a ridge of the wheel and used a red sharpie to add the red stripe
chassis was finished up waiting for the body to be painted. i did not document the making of the hinges but i will say they were not perfect. not bad for the first time though and maybe if i decide to try it again it will have better results. the pivot points are a little wobbly, i will have to be ok with it.
a short 2 week break as i went for stem cell injections to fix my broken spinal cord
then the painting began. first after an overall tamiya pure white coat the neon yellow was masked and sprayed. this was neon yellow rattle can lacquer from MCW decanted and airbrushed with a # 3 needle in my new neoeco AB.
then the neon orange also from MCW but in pre mixed airbrush form using first my iawata neo .35 needle to do the orange to yellow fade then switching to the neoeco with a .5 needle set up.
the camera doesn’t show the neon effect.
that is where i am now. i need to wet sand the finish and there is some AB touch up i need to do on the white. i don’t like how the front wheel openings look so i may work on that a little. they make it look like the nose is bent down even though it’s straight.
after that i need some type of glosscoat but not one that will yellow the white areas. i wanted to try a 2k for the first time but wanted to put that over the decals.
more soon
Joe
thanks ryan. i touched up some rough spots with the airbrush and wet sanded the body tonight. wish i had some neon orange left, i would have liked to blend some uneven spots but i’m not ordering a whole bottle of paint for a few spots even though i intend to do other tide cars in the future.
Joe
Well bella got her wish. decals are done.
i temporarily glued the rear window in with white glue so i could put the right side tide decal on. i will slice the decal along the edge of the window and pop the window off before i gloss coat.
Please let us know how the 2k in a can works. I’ve read several good stories about the product (sprayed by air brush), but I only spray acrylics, so out of concern about gumming up my airbrushes, have not used it. I’m hoping it works well for you!
Finished the Tide lumina a few weeks ago. I didn’t use the 2k can on it. i tested it on a spoon with some decals both through the can and airbrush and it looked ok but some decals wrinkled around the edges. turns out they did the same thing with the testors clear too so maybe it was the decals.
I did use it on the trunk lid though. i burned through when polishing so i masked and repainted it then airbrushed the 2k over it. looks good and i will try using it again.
i tried making hood hinges out of a soda can and they didn’t turn out so good so i didn’t photograph them. the bumper blend came out great but it meant i had to reshape the front wheel well openings and i do not like how they turned out. next time i will pay more attention to them. i ground down the backs of the wheels to open up the slots. you can see the rotor now through them. the front upper grill is 3d printed and covered with a piece of mesh filter from a old french press. the lower grill intake is scratch made. exhaust dumps are also 3d printed.
body was gloss coated then wet sanded down and polished with a rotary pad and tamiya polishes.
not my neatest work but i am happy with the body work and paint.
