Chevrolet Super Sport Roadster

[Spiny]

This has been one of those weekend where I've done a lot more at the car than the pics suggest (honest guv!).

 

First of all I finished off the rear suspension setup. According to the instructions, the dampers should be satin black but everything is satin black here, and google suggests the dampers should be light blue. I don't have a light blue to hand, but PRU blue wasn't too far off so I gave them a lick of that paint then went over with clear gloss. I'm reasonably happy with these. The rear ARB had to be threaded through the rear suspension, but once I'd twisted and turned it through it sat in place quite nicely. And the only other bits added ot the chassis were the wheel hubs - painting was more timeconsuming than tricky and as with much of this kit so far they fitted nicely.

 

 

Much of the time this weekend was spent on various body parts. The body has had a 4000grit rub down so isn't looking the best at the moment. I burned through to the primer at the front of the deck but that has been touched up (hence me not getting it done any further) and also added some Molotow Chrome to the reflectors. I'll go over that in a week or two with coloured clear.

 

Other bits of body are shown below. The masking was pulled off the inside of the decklid and a couple of bits touched up with purple where slivers of paint came with it. I will paint the sound-deadening matt black in time. The bonnet has had a 12,000 grit polish, compounds will follow in future but this is pretty much done now. The rear bumper had it's redlectors chromed and was lightly sanded with 4000 grit while the headlining on the hardtop has had its ejector pin mark filled, mounting glue from spraying scraped off and the whole thing sanded before first coat of matt black.

 

 

Finally I made a start on the front suspension. With yellow inners, the springs show up which is good, but demands a particularly neat job (yes I do still need a coat or two of yellow adding to the arms). I thought I'd managed it, but the photo of the one on the right is particularly brutal. I'll decide over the week whether to live with that as I hadn't noticed it being that bad even with the headset so I doubt it will be noticeable.

 

 

And that's it for this weekend. Thanks for looking,

[Spiny]

The aim this weekend was to get the front suspension done. But before that, I had to take advantage of the decent weather to do something about the metalwork on the front of this - having seen a few photos it had struck me that its not chrome and therefore kit chrome just wasn't really going to be right. So into the bleach those parts went, and yesterday afternoon they got a coat of primer. Hopefully the weather will allow me to get the silver on in the next couple of weeks.

 

 

This pic also shows the start of assembling the front subframe, although only two parts here with the steering arm fitted to the front subframe. Once this was assembled, I was able to dry-assemble the sub-frame, springs and struts before fixing with Tamiya Extra Thin - all that's left it to fit the top arms (painted, just need to dry) and the front suspension will be done.

 

 

That's where I am now - with a bit of luck I'll get the engine installed next week and it will look a bit more like a vehicle.

 

Thanks for looking.

[Spiny]

Another weekend, and despite only adding four parts I have near enough got the chassis done now (just a couple of decals to add to the radiator hose). On the other hand, I did notice that there are indicators hidden in the front grille, so rather than use the kit decal I decided to do the same as for the side reflectors - namely brush on some Molotow chrome, leave for a week, then cover with clear orange/red as required. Worked surprisingly well on the side, fingers crossed when I get the clear on the front indicators it does too.

 

Basically, it was a case of adding on the exhaust and radiator pieces then sticking those and the engine together in the chassis, although I did have to fill in a sink mark on each resonator of the exhaust. Generally it was pretty easy apart from fitting the exhausts to the engine - the manifolds had a little bit of play and I managed to get them about 1mm too wide for the exhaust so had to stretch a bit and then add some CA to the second (left) exhaust pipe to hold it in sort of the right place. Unusally the photo makes it look more in line than it actually is, but it won't be very visible once the car/pick-up is finished so I can live with it.

 

 

As there's not a lot else to photograph, I figured I'd add a close-up from a differnt angle which gives a decent shot of how the whole front end goes together. Incidentally, I did try dry-fitting the body and at the moment it all seems as though it shoudl fit together well. So far, this is proving to be a surprisingly well-designed kit.

 

 

That's all for this week (unless you count making a start on spraying the next model with the decent weather), thanks for looking.

[johnlambert]

That's a very neat chassis.  The yellow spring struts are a nice touch.

[Spiny]

I'm hoping that they've be visible when I've finished as they were a pain to do with such a contrast between the strut and the spring. Best advice I can give on those is to avoid the yellow and black combination for springs unless you need to or you're a masochist - the contrast is very unforgiving on any slight wobbles in painting!

[Spiny]

Didn't even get the glue out this weekend, just painting, So not a massive amount to write about.

 

Well, nearly all painting, I did get the decals on the radiator hose to start things off. If anyone in the future is reading this and building the kit, the best advice on these is to fit the decals before you put the hose in place as one of the curly one wraps around the underside of the host - I did get it fitted but it was more hassle than it needed to be.

 

As for the painting, the biggest piece was the interior which has already been sprayed, and the body-coloured parts polished. So I just had to paint the arm rest and centre console silver. After that it was onto the engine bay. The painting on the instructions are very basic (apart from the black and body colour there's no other paint colours called out) and this piece is the most complicated in the instructions with no other piece (that I've noticed) having more than one colour called out. Personally I feel the kit deserves better as it seems to be pretty well designed, so for the engine I've gone with white for the reservoirs similar to the real thing. Still need another coat or two of white as it doesn't cover black brilliantly but you get the idea.

 

 

Other than that it was seats, dashboard etc. But the paint wasn't playing ball so I only got the bolack on these - looking very plain and both seats and dash need some silver (aluminium I should say) paint adding. It could be a push to get much assembling done next week as well as the door cards will need similar works.

 

 

And I'm afraid that's all for this week. Other than this I did a bit of polishing on various pieces, and somehow it was warm enough this afternoon to let me spray the silver grille pieces so I'm now in a position where no more spraying is needed on the car.

 

Thanks for looking, shame I'm at one of the slow stages in the build.

[Spiny]

Another week with almost no gluing (one piece!), but I did at least get the body polished up a bit (half of it is at the Fine compound stage now, the other half is at the 8000 grit / Course compound stage and that sucked up a LOT of time.

 

As for painting, the dashboard on this is even more fiddly than most, in large part due to the aluminium trim, Most noticeable of that is the aluminium bar across the front, which gave me a chance to try out the Tamiya 1mm masking tape I got as part of the 6R4 order.

 

 

Got to say I'm impressed with this - it's thin both in terms of width (1mm obviously) but also in thickness of the tape so it moulds around contours easily, noticeably better than the 2mm plastic tape. I think I will be using this quite a bit where there are curved window frames to paint. Once that was painted, it was a case of getting the decals on. Needless to say, the decals on the dashboard knobs took a bit of solution to set down correctly, but in the end a bit of the strong stuff got the carrier film to drop down the side of the knobs and out of sight. Everything is ready for assembly now, so that will be the job next time I'm on the bench.

 

 

The other work was on the interior and engine bay. Having got the white painted, I just had to go around with the black paint tidying up the various bottle caps where I'd gone over with the white. Still some decals to add here. As for the cockpit part, that's all painted up and would have had the seats fitted now (these are finished too), but then I noticed the handbrake still sitting on the sprue. It's got the first coat of paint on now, but will be much easier to fit before the seats go in so that's another gluing job for next week. Incidentally, the gear stick represents my gluing for the weekend.

 

 

That's it for this week, thanks for looking.

[Toftdale]

Very clean work, especially so on the dash.

[galaxyg]

It's coming along, interior looks very nice. Some builds just end up going slow. I've had a few of those.

[Fnick]

On 14/03/2021 at 21:05, Spiny said:

Got to say I'm impressed with this

Good because I just got some too!😄. For masking around windows.

 

Good job on the dashboard. Even if it's not visible it's always one of the parts of the build I really enjoy doing

 

Nick

 

[Spiny]

21 hours ago, galaxyg said:

It's coming along, interior looks very nice. Some builds just end up going slow. I've had a few of those.

 

I think with mine it's usually that there are certain parts of the build which are slow. And the dashboard is usually one of those, not helped in this case with that silver trim. The bad news is that the doorcards have silver trim as well so I'll have to fiddle around with those soon too.

 

14 hours ago, Fnick said:

Good because I just got some too!😄. For masking around windows.

 

Good job on the dashboard. Even if it's not visible it's always one of the parts of the build I really enjoy doing

 

Nick

 

 

I get where you're coming from on the dash, there is something quite relaxing about getting it detailed up, even more so as there's no pressure as nobody can look too closely with it being inside the car. Of course, with a convertible like this one that theory goes out of the window... same story with everything else in the cockpit which will also be pretty visible.

[Spiny]

The good news is that this finally looks to be moving forwards, the bad news is that there is one tiny part holding things up...

 

First of all, a revisit of the dashboard. I noticed during the week that the silver around the binnacle extends back further than I'd painted it, so a little masking and that was easily sorted. Then I could get on with assembly. The instruments are set in quite deep recesses, so for this kit Revell have provided a flat piece which you apply the decal to then fit behind. At first glance it looks as though the decal could be difficult to alight, but when fitted it turns out to be the height of the piece of plastic (so fixed in the vertical) and the width is spot on to fit between the two fixing holes (so position fixed in the horizontal). As with much of this kit, simple but effective. Occasionally the instructions aren't great, but I have no complaints about this kit at all (yet!).

 

 

You can just about see the dials in the pic above,and I can't complain about the way they line up. After that, it was just a case of adding on the steering wheel and column. In both of these photos, the camera has made the aluminium paint look much worse than it is.

 

 

I also got a bit more done with the cockpit, decals on and handbrake and seats fitted. And that's where the tiny part comes into play - the brake master cylinder has three colours of paint on it (or one if you follow the instructions...) along with decals which has meant with paint drying this has taken all weekend. The decals are still setting now, and I want them secure before I fix to the firewall. And the firewall is best placed before the doorcards... which need to go in before the dashboard. So this one little piece has held things up, but everything is ready to go together once I have the decals sorted. In the meantime, the cockpit looks a little more complete than it was:

 

 

The other big step forward is that I've finally got the bodyshell polished up. This might be a nice kit, but the shape of the body makes it a pain to polish. Still, I avoided any major, irreparable burnthroughs and it's ready for me to add a bit of brush paint next visit to the bench.

 

 

The light on my bench is a bit flat to show it at its best, but I held it in the sunlight after polishing and the pearlescent paint is really doing its thing. But for now that's all. Thanks for looking.

[keefr22]

That's a good update - the interior is coming on well and that's a lovely shiny body!

 

Keith

[Spiny]

Good news! After the last few weeks of painting and preparation, I finslly got the interior tub assembled yesterday. Happily everything stuck together just as well when glue was added as it did when dry-fitted as a check. Biggest problem was the door cards kept wanting to pivot inwards at the bottom when I just had them in place, but once the dash was in it all held solid until the glue dried.

 

 

I also test fitted this onto the chassis, and into the body, and apart from having to enlarge the holes for the pegs (paint thicker than the tolerances) everything looks as though it will fit ok, although the chassis warp is still visible - hopefully once I put the body on as well it will be better.

 

Next up was the first few bits for the body. The windscreen is just a standard case of masking then painting the surrounds, while the rear view mirror is chrome piece where you paint everything which isn't the mirror bit. Nothing much to see on either part. I've still got to assemble the headlights, but jumped ahead to the front fog lights. These bits are just single chromed items, so I decided to try and make them have a bit of a contrast between the bexel and lens. My idea was that I would clear-coat the lens and the lower reflector would give the impression of a glass lens rather than just a weird chrome ornament. Trouble was, the clear was a bit too clear and it looked no different, so onto Plan B. Silver paint on the lens area, then a couple of coats of clear. It's not perfect by any means, but at about 3mm diameter hidden away in a recess low down I think they will give the right impression.

 

 

The other job this weekend was adding some paint to the body. So satin for the window rubbers, bonnet catch and scuttle, matt black for the interior and sun-visors and brushed Molotow Chrome for the light reflectors and it's ready to fit various parts next time I'm on the bench. If I'm right, I'm approaching the stage where this should all start to come together (relatively!) quickly but for now here's how the body looks. Of course, knowing my usual builds, that also means I'm approaching the stage where something goes badly wrong.

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

 

 

[Spiny]

Back to the bench after missing out over Easter, and the hope was that I would get the body on the chassis. Turned out that was a bit of a forlorn hope as when I dry-fitted things together the intake plenum did not go into place if installed after fitting the chassis and interior together as the instructions would have you do. So before I could think about that, I had to get the plenum painted, then given a light coat of dark grey wash. At least that's one part which got fitted - you can see it here sitting on top of the engine with the tub sitting (but not yet glued) in position. The lighting makes it look lighter than it is, in reality there's much less contrast between the plenum and the engine, and much more between the plenum itself and the fuel rails which I didn't give a wash to.

 

 

On the bright side, I did get all I wanted fitted onto the body. The front foglights aren't due to go in until later according to the instructions, but again I felt they would go in better before the body is fitted rather than after. Windscreen and rear=view mirror went in without any dramas, but the headlights were another matter. Although the shape is right, it's easy to get the lens misaligned with the reflector, and if you do it will look terrible when the front bar goes on. I had to remove the right-hand side light (LHS on photo) and have another go. But the worst bit is they are so awkward to handle, and just keep wanting to turn around in the your fingers while the round shape and location makes them hard to get right with tweezers. Got them in in the end, but not a process I have an urge to repeat. Anyway, the good news is the body looks a bit more vehicle light rather than just like a shell.

 

 

I might have had time to get the body on this weekend, but I would have been relying on everything going right to get it done before the oven was done. And as that's a sure-fire way to make things go wrong, I figured it was much better to start with that next weekend.

 

Thanks for looking.

[Fnick]

That's looking really good. One trick next time you need to fit round headlights: hold the lense with a small amount of blue tack on the end of a cocktail stick. Saw that I can't remember where and wished I had seen it before doing my DB5 build where I had the same fun as you ensuring the lenses were correctly aligned...

 

Nick

[Spiny]

That's a good idea. Thanks for the suggestion, but what gives the real kick in the teeth though is that hiding in plain view behind the tubs of paintbrushes on my desk are a few chopped down barbecue skewers with bluetak on the end and it never occurred to me to use them for this application (mostly used to hold small parts in place for painting). While I don't think they would have helped with fitting the lenses onto the reflectors (which needed to be felt into the final position), they would have been perfect for holding the completed headlamp assembly while it was fitted into the body, at the very least they would have stopped them trying to flip the wrong way around.

[Sabrejet]

Neat job: that blue suits it perfectly!

[Mr Mansfield]

Your engine bay is looking pretty smart. Are those decals on the screen wash & coolant bottle lids?

[Spiny]

Yes they are decals (I presume you're referring to the symbols rather than the caps) - the kit comes with quite a few for the engine bay which all helps.

 

The good news is that the warp of the chassis seems to have gone with the engine fitted. The bad news is that something is rattling inside the model, and I haven't worked out what yet 😬

[Spiny]

A bit of shaking, and the rattling thing fell out. Turns out it's the starter motor which should be buried deep in the engine bay. That's bad because it can't be refitted without significant disassembly, but good because it's pretty much invisible even if you do know where to look. Looks as though this is one part which won't be on the final model...

 

As indicated above, I started the weekend by fitting the body, interior and chassis together. Interior tub glues down onto the chassis, nice and easy there. There's a couple of holes on the deck at the back of the tub which take pegs on the body to help locate everything together. As the pegs had grown and the holes shrunk with paint, I had to drill out the holes a bit to get things to fit. The body isn't glued on though, it fits in place well at the front, and there are screws in the rear wheelarches the fit the body to the chassis. Crude but effective. And with the body on, it suddenly looks much closer to completion (as well as a lot taller!)

 

 

After that, it was onto fitting the last pieces to the engine. Another easy process only delayed by waiting for the decals to set and paint to dry. This is the end result as far as the engine bay is concerned.

 

 

And now it's just a case of fitting various bits and pieces to the body. I'm not 100% convinced it was a good move dechroming the front grille pieces, but it is starting to grow on me.Side skirts needed holding in place to ensure they were in the correct position, but each skirt has two tabs which slot behind the body so once fitted should hold in place ok. Rear bumper just needs reversing lights fitting, and then there are wheels, rear lights and assorted bits of trim to so. It's starting to look nearly complete (although the camera does keep making the purple look lighter than it really is).

 

 

Trying to decide whether to put a front number plate on it. The instructions show it in the centre below the 3 purple bars, but to me that would look a bit rubbish. My feeling at the moment is to say it's for one of those states which only use a rear number plate

 

Thanks for looking.

 

 

[Fnick]

Wow the finish line is in sight!

 

My two cents worth leave the front number plate off. Or you could use a bit of blue tack to temporarily put the front number plate on to see what it looks like. Useful thing blue tack...😜

 

Nick

[johnlambert]

33 minutes ago, Fnick said:

Wow the finish line is in sight!

 

My two cents worth leave the front number plate off. Or you could use a bit of blue tack to temporarily put the front number plate on to see what it looks like. Useful thing blue tack...😜

 

Nick

You could even try something like Tacky Wax, which holds surprisingly well but not permanently and is less bulky than Blutac, although it might leave more of a residue on the paint.

[Spiny]

One of my main concerns with either of those is indeed the stain/residue it might leave behind. But I did hold the rear numberplate decal up in place of where the front plate would have gone (using fine tweezers) to see what it might look like. Obviously I would need a 3rd hand to get a decent shot, so here's some of the real thing (will just link as they're not my images).

 

With plate:

https://www.reezocar.com/en/occasion/annonce-chevrolet-ssr-RZCATSDE9E919FC8C346.html

 

And without...

https://images.carstory.com/-1341939701337659463/3/t/704x-

 

Given that it will probably need a bit of fabrication to get a proper bumper mount for the plate, and given I think it looks a lot better without the front plate, I get the strangest feeling I won't be going to the effort of making a plate carrier just to make the pickup look worse There's a bit of me that likes the idea of the challenge to make it up, but I think I'm going to leave it as it stands.

 

 

 

[Spiny]

Mostly pleasing progress with the Chevy this weekend - I reckong I should get it finished quite easily next week barring any major problems rearing their heads.

 

First job was getting all the little bits fitted. Those door handles come as chrome, and have annoying little sink marks on the outside (due to the fixing peg) so they got a bleach bath, then a smear of filler over them to get a smooth finish. If I'd paid attention earlier, I'd have given them a spray when I did the grille pieces, but I didn't so had to go for brush painting. Figured I could get away with that given they're such small pieces and I think I have. The kit comes with the tail and 3rd brake lights in clear red plastic, so no need to bother about painting them up - just put some UV resin in the recess or back of the glass, fix in place (thanks to @Fnick for the bluetak suggestion by the way, that 3rd brakelight would have been a nightmare any other way) and all nicely done. The exhaust tips are metal, and a light coat of flat black dried quicker than expected and let the metal shine inside show through for nice finish. One happy accident there.

 

 

The only other bit left to glue onto the body is the rear bumper, but first I had to fit the reversing lights into that. Last weekend I painted the back surround of the lights black, this weekend I used aluminium paint to paint the back of the lenses. This bit at least was quite painless. Less painless was fitting the bumper itself, which brought back shades of the Challenger (albeit to a lesser extent). While the bumper is the right size, the front of the bumper does seem to want to sit slightly out of line of the body, As you can see, I had to bring some heavier bottles than just paint to hold it in place while the CA dried, but it held in place second time of asking.

 

 

Just need to clear a little bit where the CA got onto the body on the right hand side - fortunately it's not very visible even before I clean as you will (hopefully!) not see on the last pic of this post.

 

The final job was to fit the wheels, so now it looks like a proper car. The rear wheels are on a solid metal axle which all went well. The fronts are on pegs, and various layers of paint had built up in the holes by the looks of things, but a quick drill out of the holes sorted that out). I'm happy with the way this is looking, I'd definitely say it's one of Revell's good kits.

 

 

And that's the build of the main pick-up done, at least from a gluing standpoint. I just need to add some decals next weekend, and finish work on the hood (as it folding roof) and the bed cover and it will be complete.

 

Thanks for looking to all who watched this.