Spiny

Am I the only one who was looking for a real piece of carpet with a Range Rover shaped paint silhouette? That looks a nightmare with the paint. Can I suggest you might be better off stripping the paint to get rid of all that hair rather than sanding - you shouldn't lose the detail that way even though it will require another prime. Got to admit I've done similar things, although when I did knock a body shell over I instinctively reached out and caught it - fingerprint indentations in the paint after that but at least I it was only primer so I could sand and respray the next weekend. Good luck with getting it sorted out, the colour looks to suit it.

That Datsun could look so nice, but is a great example of the indignities inflicted on so many cars by 1970s US bumper regulations. Now please excuse me while I go and gouge out my eyes after seeing that BMW...

I remember you put up a picture of it (wasn't it that rather weird yellowy green which only seemed to exist on early 70s Japanes cars?) Thanks for the head up on mating chassis and body, I think the instructions just say "Danger the damage" or something like that. Good to hear that it goes together well, it looks a very nice detailed kit (for example, the wheel rims even come with tyre valves). It's definitely worth buying. And thanks to everyone who has suggested steel wheels, that would usually be my go to, but I want to see how the colour coat goes down first. As it's a Halfords metallic, if the flakes look too big I'll probably call it a mild custom and go for the gold Watanabes, if they look ok I'll go with the stock. The kit does allow you to "lowdown", but I think I'll be keeping the ride height as it is, after all in the early 80s the trend was more to lift than drop!

Nothing for it, you will have to write a stern but polite letter to David Llewellyn berating his colour scheme choices from 1990

And very nice it looks too, hope mine comes out looking good too. If I'm honest I don't really care if it matches up to reality, just so long as it matches up to any green decals!😆 Incidentally, the Gaalheri airbrush arrived today. I've only got it out of the box and it's not seen any paint yet, but I have to say that it feels orders of magnitude better than the crappy Chinese "Abest" thing I had before.

Thank you, and I'll forgive you I just wish the black looked as good in real life but the camera has done a (surprisingly) good job of hiding some of the scratches. I tried waxing it with a couple of coats which helped, but the big one on the roof is still there - I've no idea how the camera didn't pick it up. Two tone paints really slow body painting down though, I think it's going to take me all summer with the tricolour paint + decals on that Focus.

You're right, it does look great in the sunshine. Quite unusual too in that the flakes aren't too big despite being a real car metallic. It's proving an excellent choice of colour.

Defintely worth the new coat, the red looks really deep and rich now. It's easy to forget this is only 1/43

Complex decals always represent a challenge, but you must be getting used to them with all these rally cars you're building 😂Nicely rescued too, I imagine the painting was just as difficult as dealing with the decals in the first place.

I think quite a few of you have come across this kit and modified it a bit or not started yet as I've seen quite a few references, but can't think of seeing an out of box build on here. For a basic pick-up, this one seems to have proved a popular kit as it keeps being reissued in various forms. I've just gone for the basic earlier version. For something which doesn't have an engine there seems to be quite a few pieces to the kit, and generally the moulding seems pretty well thought out in terms of attachment points and ejector pin locations (cab floor excepted). This is what you get for your money. At this stage I'm just trying to get some paint on while the summer weather is here, the build won't be starting until after the Focus (assuming I get that all painted and decalled before the weather turns - I'm slow like that!). The instructions start with the body, so first job is to clean it up. The mould lines seem to have generally been designed to accommodate those people who don't clean them up, so for the most part follow edges or trim pieces and have been fairly easy to clean up, just make sure if you're building one that you don't lose detail doing this. The worst ones are on the rear corners, but at least they proved easily sandable. This is how it was looking after scribing out the panel lines some more and cleaning up the mould lines. That does seem very shiny plastic doesn't it? Hopefully the primer grips better than it does on the spoons as I'd prefer not to be having to key it if I don't have to. However, the first thing to focus on was the bed which is made up of five flat pieces. Fortunately they've all fitted about perfectly so a good start. This is another part of the build which is needed right from the beginning, so this was my first task of the build. And today that bed got its primer. I'm really pleased with how it looks, a proper red oxide appearance. If I was doing a well worn example it would have been tempting to leave it like this, but as usual I'm not it it won't stay like this. Rubbish photo in one way as this is the bit of the bed you won't see, but that cutdown BBQ skewer to help with manhandling during painting is preventing it going the right way up. Still, it gives the idea. So that's my first report on this one. I've got a pretty good idea on where I want to go with it (fairly stock). The only question in my mind is whether to go with the stock steel wheels, or to put a set of gold Watanabes on it.

Glad you both like the green and think it's accurate - it had better be as it's the Zero Paint set specifically for this car so it ought to be close. And if I hadn't had to order this one I wouldn't have been forced (forced I tells you!) to buy that Toyota Century so it proved fairly expensive paint 😆 And with regard to the bold bit, on closer examination you're spot on - I think the main problem was a large (well large relative to the size of the part) crack along the side of the airbrush nozzle which I guess got worse when I cleaned it. That would probably account for the strange spray pattern when it was working and the bubbling paint reservoir and general mess just before it gave up the ghost completely. The good news is that the new airbrush is due to arrive tomorrow (despite me not using Prime) so I should be good to have a second go next weekend. EDIT: Incidentally, that front upper grille is no longer silver, I managed to get enough light coats on it that it's black now with no infilled mesh holes.

A little more than an OK result I'd say, it looks great to me. And well done on getting the windows to fit so well.

I'm not going to argue with you about the smooth nose looking much better than the SA grille which does look quite ungainly to me too. They both share the same front bumper (as far as I can tell) so quite easy to imagine a radiator behind there sufficing for a non-turbo car which wouldn't be needing an intercooler.

This is why I hate airbrushing: After spattering on the test spoon it started spraying smoothly, so I moved onto the body while things were going well and the spattering started again. Add to that a great drop landing on the bonnet for no obvious reason and it was obvious this wasn't going to work well. So I took the airbrush, stripped it down, soaked it in thinner, gave the components a zap in the ultrasonic bath in a small tub of IPA and... it seemed to have decided to only let air out with all the paint instead trying to come out of the top of the top of the reservoir (which was how the great big drop ended up on the bonnet in the first place). Result - I've gone and got a better hopefully non-crap Gaalheri airbrush instead (I've read good things about them so here's hoping). Serves me right I guess for having bought a cheap Chinese airbrush a few years ago - at least if things still don'twork I know it's be being clueless with airbrushes and not the kit now. Hopefully I'll be able to have another go next weekend. The pic above is after a little sanding and it's had some more - not perfectly smooth but better than the photo looks.I'm hoping decals and clear coats will hide the remaining imperfections. And thank goodness I started with the green - I might have been struggling if I'd started with the blue as there's a lot more of that.

I did contemplate visiting, suddenly I'm not quite so gutted that I spent the afternoon arguing with a rubbish airbrush. The park walk sounds good though, so not a complete waste of a day for you. Incidentally, it might be worth keeping an eye out for the Welwyn village fete at Singler's Marsh which I think is end of this month - last year there was a very good selection of cars turned up and it seemed to be more a car show with a village fete attached than the other way around.