Early morning all,
I have not been on here in quite some time due to work details but I am pretty stoked that I am finding more time at the bench along with my son within the last couple months
When I initially started this Nova build back in 08, this was one of the first Revell brand new "Special Edition" Kits.
I did not actually take me what 6 years to complete but the build was on and off again in between other builds so maybe all together 3 years combined lol
Overall the kit went together rather well with a few exceptions such as the front seats did not fit properly. There was some tlc involved with light sanding in order to get the halfs to fit right when joined.
The other notable fit issue was when the tires were mounted in place onto the front suspension/rear axle. Revell supplied you with metal push pins that slipped through the rear inner wheel from behind. Which at that point made the tires droop a lot when the chassis was picked up.
Again a little work and some evergreen plastic rod did the trick by placing some of the plastic rod in the locator holes. Afer that the tires actually had more of a "natural sag" look if model was ever picked up.
Other than that the engine, interior and under carriage assemblies went together very well with really no fit issues.
I moved on to the chrome plated parts which I used amonia to strip off the chrome down to bare plastic. Once this process was taken care of, I base coated both the front and rear bumpers, door handles, side mirror, wipers and rallys with alclad gloss black.
After a few coats were applied and the paint had a drying time of about a week, I applied alclad chrome to the above mentioned parts except for the rallys. I used airframe aluminum on the rallys which produces a very nice deep chrome sheen which I really liked.
Then came the tedious work of using bare metal foil on the window trims... I have heard horror stories of how the new stuff is very hard to work with yet bare metals original formula was easy..
Well I wish I had their original bare metal because wow talk about a slow process to apply.. And yes this was my first time using this stuff. I have mixed emotions on this method at the moment..
Finally after looking reseaching all the color specs for the 69 Nova, I decided to go with a color that was used on the 66-67 Chevelle and the color I chose was Madeira Maroon Poly(color code NN).
I know that this color was not the right color option for the 69 model year but I figured it could of been a special order paint.. Yeah yeah I am sticking with that theory
Once the I was happy with the over all finished, I ab'd plastikote gloss with wet sanding and buffing in between coats..
I used Novus's two stage polishing kit as the final coat to finish off my Nova!
For my first true car build I am pretty happy with the over all outcome and I hope you like this build as well.
Thank you for looking and comments/questions welcomed!!
Flaps up,
Mike