Jeep Gladiator

Just a little something I put together quickly to get the juices flowing again.

Airfix Quickbuild Jeep Gladiator. If anyone hasn’t built one of their quickbuild kits, they literally go together like Lego. So quick build, which allows to do some detailing. Put a wash on the seats and then used a matt coat on the center of the seats. As well did some detail painting on the dash, and once the instruments were in place, I gave them a coating of gloss varnish. Not that you can see any of it after it is finished.

Exterior, pretty much just gloss coated over the sticker lights to give them a bit of a glass look. Gray pin wash in the doors and other lines just to make it a bit more interesting. Little aluminum paint on the molding around the driving lights on the bumper, just to break up the all gloss black look. Also back cut the 2 blobs on the bumper that are supposed to be the towing hooks, and painted the red color you usually see on these (however in hindsight, this kit is supposed to represent the Overlander version of the Gladiator, which is the base model, and apparently the tow hooks didn’t get painted on those, the red painted hooks reserved for the Rubicon and up models, oh well, looks better IMHO)

Chromed the plain grey plastic wheels with AK Super Chrome.

Couple of layers of over thinned paint to add a dusty layer, which didn’t really work out that well, but looked fine after the final weathering.

Then final layers of weathering (aka mud and grass) with Vallejo Thick European mud & Mud & Grass, followed by Vallejo European splash mud, brown mud, and light brown mud.

Overall a fun build. Surprised to learn that it scales out pretty close to 1/25. I am not sure if the other kits in the Auto Quickbuild series all scale out to that or not, but was pleasantly surprised with that fact.

Weak points of the kit. While the roof is supposed to represent a soft top, is has no rear window. No real way to leave the top off either, without modifying the glass in it.

And the steering wheel is pretty much a solid blob that kind of just looks like a steering wheel. Thankfully can’t see much of it with all the mud.

Would like to build another, but maybe add some 3D printed off road parts, wheels, snorkel, roll bar and spare tire carrier for the bed, and maybe some other misc. items to fill up the rest of the bed. Front grille bars and winch, etc, etc. And a different color, which on this would be very simple, as all of the white parts are separate, pretty much just the outside sheet metal, which makes it super simple to be able to do a color change if you didn’t want just white!

For anyone that wants a Jeep Gladiator in their collection, this is pretty much it without having to go down the resin and 3D printed road.

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Brilliant build and weathering!

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The weathering really stands out nicely against the white paint- you can appreciate the work that went into creating such a muddied up look.

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Great looking weathering on your Jeep. Very well done.

Jim

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Looks real! My Wrangler is about that dirty… never been off road.

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Great weathering and good idea for the headlight stickers. I need to get a bottle of that AK Super Chrome

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