Ford Mustang GT Convertible [Tamiya] 1:24

[Andrey Z]

Hi all, 

 

It's been a while since I started new project and have already made some progress but decided to share build process here. Hope you will find it interesting.

My plan is to build nice and shiny fourth generation Ford Mustang from mid '90s. I made my mind long time ago and want to have it in bright yellow with black and white interior.

Something like this:

 

So this is what we have to start with - quite simple and descent quality kit from Tamiya.

 

Nicely moulded body with some minor issue required a bit of sanding. Model can be build in two ways hardtop or roof can be cut off to get convertible version. 

 

 

Large sprue with bumpers, chassis and interior parts:

 

Smaller one with suspension, exhaust and some other parts:

 

Really nice tyres and wheels. The are not too shiny - exactly as it should be. 

 

Sprue with clear parts and yellowed decal sheet. Luckily there are only couple of emblems and dashboard required so won't be a big problem.

 

First of all I did a dry test assembly to see how all parts sit together.

 

A bit worrying about huge gap between body and rear compartment. Hope it will be hidden with window installed.

 

Obviously this is not the top quality kit from tamiya so some work on removing pin marks and putty needed.

 

 

Also I decided to glue fenders. Looks much better to me.

 

When I started sanding and preparing body

 

Usually I prefer to re-scribe panel lines as deep as possible but in this case body has mirrored panel lines at back side which caused extra headache.  

 

First thick layer of primer to see imperfections:

  

 

 

Painted exhaust and suspension parts:

 

The most annoying part of the build so far was masking and painting chassis with engine imitation:

 

 Thanks for watching.

 

Edited May 16, 2020 by Andrey Z

[JeroenS]

Nice work on the body prep! The rescribing works well.

[Mr Mansfield]

I agree, the bumpers look better glued before painting, Will it cause an issue when mating the body to the chassis?

[Andrey Z]

On 5/16/2020 at 11:13 AM, JeroenS said:

Nice work on the body prep! The rescribing works well.

Thanks! I usually pay a lot of attention to panel lines. IMO, It helps to improve model look significantly.

On 5/16/2020 at 2:21 PM, Mr Mansfield said:

I agree, the bumpers look better glued before painting, Will it cause an issue when mating the body to the chassis?

Bumpers were not glued yet, just test fit. It will be much easier to paint and polish body parts separately.

 

Ok, time to post some update... 

Chassis has been painted and assembled:

 

Then body... first layer of primer was sanded off. There were too many minor scratches and imperfections so I had to work on body very hard

 

This time I decided to try new primer from MRP.

 

didn't want to flood fine details on the front window panel with layers of paint and clearcoat so painted semi-gloss black and will mask it later.

 

Also sprayed headlight reflectors with Alclad chrome

 

 

[JCH]

Very nice work.  Very nice.  I wish Tamiya would do more American muscle cars.  The pin wash on the undercarriage looks good.  Please continue posting.

[FunkyChiken]

I always struggle with the order of what to paint first... Like trim interior, what to mask later... I've never seen trim painted and masked before final busy colour, I hope it works out! Impressive quality on your build so far

[JeroenS]

Do you use a standard line scriber? I struggle with those things, the ones with the hooked blades.

[Spiny]

Well if nothing else, you've definitely earned the title of masking master. Superb painting so far, keep up the good work.

[Mr Mansfield]

I’ve not seen a metallic primer before, this looks seriously clean. Makes me think I should spend longer on the prep stages when spraying 

[Andrey Z]

On 5/21/2020 at 2:03 AM, JCH said:

Very nice work.  Very nice.  I wish Tamiya would do more American muscle cars.  The pin wash on the undercarriage looks good.  Please continue posting.

Thanks! So do I! The only excuse for Tamiya is that they have a lot of gems in form of fast red Italian cars. I am a big fan of them as well. 

 

On 5/21/2020 at 11:11 AM, FunkyChiken said:

I always struggle with the order of what to paint first... Like trim interior, what to mask later... I've never seen trim painted and masked before final busy colour, I hope it works out! Impressive quality on your build so far

Yeah, it's always a challenge to find optimal subsequence of masking and painting. I prefer to keep number of paint layers to minimum in order to save fine molding details. Thanks for your kind comments!

 

On 5/21/2020 at 11:29 AM, JeroenS said:

Do you use a standard line scriber? I struggle with those things, the ones with the hooked blades.

Actually I've tried a few of them and my main scriber tool now is broken blade from x-acto hobby knife.

As you can see on the picture bellow, I use needle-like tool for curved lines ans small radius circles like a fuel flap, then hooked blade (0.2mm) for thin and very fine lines. It works extremely well on straight lines but you need to be very careful with curves.

And finally backside of broken blade is a winner among scribing tools for me. But I had to practice a bit with sharpening before it started working as expected.

On 5/21/2020 at 8:51 PM, Spiny said:

Well if nothing else, you've definitely earned the title of masking master. Superb painting so far, keep up the good work.

Thanks! To be honest It's very annoying to spend 2 hours on masking and then just 5 minutes to spray paint. 

14 hours ago, Mr Mansfield said:

I’ve not seen a metallic primer before, this looks seriously clean. Makes me think I should spend longer on the prep stages when spraying 

Thank you! I am not sure why manufacturer positioning that liquid as a primer. It makes impression of basic lacquer metallic paint with quite large flake size. Same smell and consistence. At least it bites well into the plastic so hopefully will not come over with masking tape.

 

Right, a few more photos...

 

Body was painted with Tamiya Chrome Yellow. Experiment with new "primer" didn't went really well. I had to spray 8 or 9 layer before was able to cover that grayish base completely. Only white primer for yellow colour next time! 

Unfortunately Zeropaints' 2k hardener transformed into some form of crystallised mass so I had to use TS-13. There is some orange peel can be spotted so I'll give a week for paint and clearcoat to cure before sanding and polishing.

 

And the most painful part of the job was masking and painting taillights made of clear plastic but needed to be partially in body colour.

 

[Spiny]

Still looks a pretty good finish to me.

 

Just a thought on that primer though (obviously for a future build) - the silver seems to have done a much better job of covering the blue plastic than white usually does. If the yellow doesn't cover the silver very well, would it save on layers if you did the silver onto the plastic, cover with a layer of white to help keep the yellow bright, and then move onto the yellow?

[Mr Mansfield]

Paint looks really good. No sign of orange peel in those photos 

[Andrey Z]

Thanks guys!

 

@Spiny I think the main problem here is known very poor covering power of yellow paint from Tamiya. Also that new primer is quite transparent as well so required many layer to hide blue plastic. I believe it should work well for pearl or metallic base paint. Let's see on my next project

 

Nevertheless I am making some progress on current build and body is very close to finished. Slightly used 2000 grid sand paper and Tamiya's polishing compounds then. Painted seals in rubber black, done masking on windows and glued them in.

  

 

Assembled rear bumper and spoiler.

 

 

[CrazyCrank]

It's a perfect and lovely painting job for a newbie, that you aren't, isn't it ?

 

[Andrey Z]

On 6/7/2020 at 10:06 PM, CrazyCrank said:

It's a perfect and lovely painting job for a newbie, that you aren't, isn't it ?

Thank you! I hope five completed models should be enough to advance to the next level 

 

Right, let's go on...

Interior this time. Started with sanding and removing pin holes. 

Due to some restrictions (this build has to be completed purely out of box) I am not able to use flocking or any other materials so decided to leave deep scratches and finish floor covering with textured paint.

 

First step - white primer

 

A lot of annoying masking and semi-gloss black to imitate leather, then masking again and finishing with a few dry layers of textured black paint.  

 

One of the Zero paints which I've got in my stash makes very realistic leather effect when plastic melts after wet layer of paint applied. Unfortunately it will be almost impossible to spot this on the assembled model. 

 

Finally, checking out how it looks altogether 

[JeroenS]

Nice work on the seats there!

[Spiny]

I was just thinking the same, while it looks as though the black has taken a lot of effort (and has ended up a good result), it was those grey seats which stand out for me too.

[HOUSTON]

Andrey  Z,

 

I dont think I have seen such EXEMPLARY  and FLAWLESS work on the underside as you have done.

 

NEAT job ....

 

 

Looking SPLENDID  and Smart  from here.

 

AMAZING work so far..

 

[Andrey Z]

Work on interior has been finished. 

The only details I decided to add were seat belts and buckles,

 

[gt6mkiii]

Looks great! The belts and buckles look really good - are they scratchbuilt?

[dbostream]

Fantastic interior really like the color combo and the extra details.

[Andrey Z]

18 hours ago, gt6mkiii said:

Looks great! The belts and buckles look really good - are they scratchbuilt?

Thanks! I was using this detailing set

 

13 hours ago, dbostream said:

Fantastic interior really like the color combo and the extra details.

Thank you!

[Andrey Z]

Work on the Mustang was finished a while ago so today is a final update.

It's very frustrating that I can't do anything with awful headlamp deflectors because of contest rules which I am building this model for.

Molotow marker and thick drop of glue to imitate laps:

 

Then I decided to hide them applying light coat of Tamiya's smoke over the clear parts

 

 

Looks a bit dirty on macrophoto but turned OK after assembly

 

In the end everything was put together and I've got minus one box from the stash and plus one model on the shelf.

Finally, there is "intriguing" photo before it goes to ready-for-inspection area:

[mustang1989]

Exceptional build going on here. I do like these cars a lot but also wished that Tamiya would turn out the earlier Fox body cars as well. 

 

Love your attention to the details and paint work.

[Anteater]

Well done on capturing the full horribleness of that interior, very much of its time. And I mean that as a genuine compliment!