Kodak Olds NASCAR Racer Start-to-Finish Build

Happy Monday.

I changed out the LCD print screen protector on my Elegoo Mars 3 3D printer. The factory standard one was a piece of some kind of film that got scratched in several places. I thought it was tempered glass and was wondering how it got scratched so easily. Instead, being film,e it scratched when I wanted to scrape off some hardened resin. The new protector is tempered glass and should hold up well. The packet came with 3 so I have replacements. 

I was then able to print the redesigned plumbing parts successfully.

Before getting down to that work, I had to paint one more thing on the body... the black panel on the mid-door pillar. I masked the heck out of it so no black got on any yellow.

I airbrusded the gloss black and then demasked. Not great, but should work. There's an "Olds" decal that goes on this pillar.

My strengthened supports enabled the plumbing parts to form properly. That said, they're really, really little, and the getting the braided hose into them is almost an exercise in futility. 

I'm using 0.022" phos bronze to provide the connections between the fitting and the engine. I had to drill the tiny openings on the fittings slightly larger and deeper. This is painstaking and a little frustrating work. I am persistent to a fault.

First was putting the fittings on the separate oil pump and the crankcase oil sump. At first I attempted to put the fitting on the metal and then fit this into the holes in the engine. Wasn't so hot. I then reverted to puttting the metal pins into the block and gluing (med CA) the fitting to these little metal stubs. Worked better... not great... just better.

I got the all installed. Notice that the exhaust manifold on that side is off the engine. It was blocking working on the pump. But that's not why it broke. Seems that attempting to fit the engine into the chassis with the pipes on AND the firewall in place put a lot of stress on the headers and one broke loose... the oil pump... which was fortuitous since I needed that one off anyway to do this piping work. I was fitting the engine to check the air cleaner clearance. I had to put some packing under the cleaner so it would sit firmly on the new and much larger carb. It fits, but the hood probably will not fit right. I'm going to display with the hood off, so no harm no foul.

And then it was time to try and get the braided piping into place. Took a while to get this first one. The plumbing fixture's holes are very deep and the braiding just barely enters. Lots of CA!s

Now that I look at it, I realize that I didn't install the compression fitting on the braid end. I'll pull it off next session and get it right. It's the first time I've ever used miniature braided piping and it's not easy especially at the 0.020" size.

I use a mix of 80% Elegoo ABS-Like standard resin and 20% Siraya Tenacious flexible resin n to toughen up the finished part. It's really important. These little elbows are quite tough and I didn't break any of them in their narrow part even though I was treating them a bit roughly.

With my 3D fully functioning again, I was able to make some customer plumbing fittings and a big ass Holley Dominator Carb that looks a whole more like it means business that the pitifully undersized one including in the kit. 

While the carb seems really large, I was able to download images of the carb from Holley's website and the bolt pattern. From the dimensions on the bolt pattern I was able to scale the entire unit. This is how it looked in SketchUp where I drew the carburetor. It's just a big carb.

Here's the complete drawing in SketchUp. It's not a perfect replica, nor did it have to be. Besides simply being so small AND being partially hidden by the air cleaner, the level of accuracy was sufficient. I also took the liberty of adding the fuel manifold with a pipe fitting on the end for the braided tubing to reduce the level of fussy scratch-building I would have to do.

I got the 2nd coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss after a light sanding with 4000 grit.

After polishing the 2nd coat with 6000, 8000 and 12000 grit plus Novus Plastic Polish I'm declaring it shiny enough for a race car.

After pulling off all the masking I found that I made a booboo. I SHOULD NOT have painted the hood and trunk lids attached to the body since it hid areas that needed to be body color. This was evident on the hood and trunk edges and more importantly, on the panel that covered over the radiator.

 Futhermore; the masking on the spoiler covered part of the body in the back corners.

I touched these area by hand. Remember, my base color is a mixture of Tamiya Flats so the area in the rear is going to need some gloss. Annoying!

I also printed the plumbing fittings. Here are the carbs and fittings set up together on the machine. A reminder: Unlike a string (FDM) printer where the amount of material on the building surface affects the print time, here you can load the plate up since it prints everything in one complete layer at a time. What directly affects time is the height of the part, the thickness of each layer, which in this case was 30 mircons, and the exposure time for each layer. 

I always print many more parts than I need. There are ALWAYS failures.

My first attempt on the pipe fittings was successful, but they were just too small to handle and get the braided tubing into. I redrew enlarging the opening a tad and the over size about 130%. This printed by failed.

Reason: I drew these supports in SU and made them just a bit to fine. The supports failed to hold the parts intact as each layer was lifted to bring in fresh resin for the next one.

Back to the drawing board. I added more meat to the supports and will print again on Monday.

The carbs did print successfully. I trimmed one and post-hardened the whole batch. Of course the glue joint holding the original kit carb on the intake manifold was unbreakable. I had to resort to some pretty hefty flush cutters to cut it off. I had to sand its remains off the manifold and then glue the resin one in place with medium CA.

Notice there is throttle linkage which I can hook up to the rest of the car if I so decide.

Other view showing fuel manifold.

Onward and upward. See y'all on Monday. Have a nice weekend.

Very little building today. After a very light sanding with 6000 grit, I shot the model with AlClad Aqua Clear. This water-based gloss coat requires a good 6 hours cure time before doing anything else with it. I have used it before and it can be polished. Tomorrow I will do a sanding and then shoot it again. 

Meanwhile, with the 3D printer fixed I'm designing my own engine plumbing and will print them. I'm also going to attempt to draw and print a good looking Holley Dominator carburetor to replace the pathetic one that came with the kit. While I'm at it, I'll inlcude it with the riser block that traditional with NASCAR engines.

A NASCAR car resembles a normal car with about same comparison as one of my pencil sketches resembling the Mona Lisa. They are a roll cage with four wheels and a powerful engine. There is absolutely nothing that is actually a Ford, Chevy, etc. 

With the clear coat's show curing time I covered it with a box so environmental dust doesn't get imbedded.

On Monday, I was able to spray the first coat of the "Kodak" yellow. Before spraying, I went over the primer with some 4000 grit wet or dry abrasive. I then mixed up some "Kodak" yellow which is Tamiya Flat Yellow with drops of Tamiya Flat Red until it got a little warmer and fuller, but not orange.

Today I again went over it with some 4000 grit, but even with a very light touch, sanded off paint on the high spots. The paint was a little thin elsewhere anyway so I re-coated the model. Tomorrow I'll try again using even finer grit like 8000 to smooth it out and then shoot it with some clear or another. I have some AlClad water-based clear that's pretty good and it can be rubbed out.

Meanwhile, I fixed my Elegoo Mars 3, 3D printer with a new motherboard and touch pad. So I'm going to design and print the plumbing fittings for the engine bay. I'm using 0.020" braid and need the end fittings for it. This will be used for oil and fuel lines. I'm drawing the parts in SketchUp scaled up 1,000X so SU doesn't have trouble with the segment sizes, and then I'll shrink them .001 and create the print files. I'll let you see what I'm doing. To use Accurate Details metal fittings would have cost way too much money for this simple, non-award winning, project.

While sanding and polishing the filled rear bumper joint, one of them broke loose. The gluing surface was very thin. I reinforced the re-glued area with CA, and added more filler. When set, I re-sanded the area and worked it glass smooth with a series of polishing abrasive clothes starting at 3200 grit and going to 8000. As an afterthought I realized that I should have reinforced the joint from behind with some strip styrene. Oh well...

I then airbrushed semi-gloss black for the entire interior. To facilitate this, I taped the rear deck and hood in place from the outside. 

When dry, I reversed the masking and masked all the interior openings including fastening the rear deck and hood from the inside. This was to keep any exterior color from fouling the newly painted insides. The instructions didn't call out any interior color, but looking closely at the box photos, you could see that the insides were black.

I built the holder when I painted the Fairlane and kept it. Making your own tools is a good use of time.

I don't spray solvent-based paints inside, and the weather was perfect for doing it outside. My "spray booth" is the top of our trash containers. There was a slight breeze and I always do a wind check to make sure I don't spray myself. I used Tamiya Fine White Primer. White is the necessary base color when you're going to shoot yellow.

The blue is skylight reflecting on the white. Trust me... it's all white.

The rear bumper blending worked out reasonably well. This will dry over the weekend and I'll start finish painting next week.

While the body was drying I got the ignition wiring installed. I took the suggestion to just run them all under the exhaust headers. This worked. I painted the brass wires a more appropriate color. I don't know where to run the coil line since one is not evident in the model. There is also a ton more piping on the actual engine than the model shows. I'm not going to worry about it. Many of the NASCAR engine pics online are of new engines, not as they were in the 1980s. 

I also don't know what weathering (if any) to do with the white headers. Like most multi-million dollar race machines. Engines and systems are changed regularly and do not age like normal mortals do. Drag engines are torn down and rebuilt every 30 seconds or so. NASCAR engines are probably pulled and replaced at the end of each race. That would probably include exhaust components also. I may be wrong here since I do not follow NASCAR regularly.

Next up is doing something with the fuel lines. These are braided. I bought some properly scaled braided line, but balked at the cost of the tiny metal fittings. I'm going to design and 3D print some fittings. Unfortunately, that must wait until I get my printer running again. The mother board/LCD input panel failed suddenly. Elegoo was nice enough to ship me new parts for no charge, even though I was out of warrantly for three months. It's a Chinese company, but in my four-years experience with them I find them to make a good product and have very nice customer service. The new parts arrived yesterday and I will install them on Monday.

I also don't have a clue about the throttle linkage and will do some research on the topic.

What is the best clear coat that's also able to be rubbed out to high polish?

All the DADs out there; Have a happy and fun Father's Day. 

Well alrighty then... here's some more inspiration.

After looking at the prototype photos it's clear that there was no seam between the rear (bumper) and the body which is how the front is. Therefore; I had to apply filler to both sides after sanding down the obvious height differences between the separate bumper part and body. I will sand out next session.

Lft side:

Rt. Side:

I then spent the rest of the session detail painting all the little bits. I'm so used to the new massive models by Meng, Takom, etc., that the simplicity of this one is almost boring. I used to churn out a model a week in my early teens since most of them were just like this one. And I'm doing it almost totally out-of-the-box, so I'm not fussing with superdetailing, PE or scratch-building. When I built my replica of my '66 Fairlane GTA I did spend a lot more time opening the door, detailing the engine including turning my own vacuum advanced for the carb, and making scale hood hinges. The hinges were drawn directly over pictures of real '66 Fairlane hinges found on eBay.

By their nature, NASCAR autos are much simpler beasts. They don't seem to have hood hinges, fender walls in front, AC or power brake cylinders, etc., so no matter what, they are simpler to build. Oh... and they don't have any doors at all.

After detail painting the engine I fit in in the chassis for this image. Note the shiny "chrome" lower part of the oil filter. I used decanted Molotow Chrome ink to give a very nice chrome finish by brush. Carb color is base Tamiya Flat Aluminum overcoated with Tamiya Clear Yellow. Belts and pulleys could be defined better...

Here are the rest of the parts: The coil springs would have been nice in real springs. The call out is steel blue. I painted aluminum with Tamiya Clear Blue overcoat.

After painting fins aluminum I used Tamiya Black Panel Accent to fill in all the slats. I did the same with the oil cooler that's slung on the frame in front of the front left wheel, and the spaces in the faux coil springs.

The crappy instrument panel is the best I could get it with the gauge faces glossy and the surrounding panel flat to differentiate the two. I like painting instrument panels, but I like them to give you more to start with. This is under pretty heavy magnification. Looks better to the naked eye.

I still have to finish that rear bumper and then paint the body. Then assesmbly will begin in earnest. A model in less than three weeks. Unbelievable. Compare that to 11 months for the Iowa Turret.

I hope it will inspire me. I do recall getting a set of Desert Storm decals for some driver who has long since died just to give me a reason to build it; a camouflaged race car!

Maybe I will be an inspiration so you can build it.

Yesterday was a painting day. First up was masking the reinforcing strips on the glazing. Who would think you'd have to do glazing masking on a MODEL CAR? The ribs were in relief on the inside which I don't know if that's prototypically correct. I used Tamiya tape, laid the tape to the rib edges and trimmed, then added the next strip and so on.

After airrbrushing with gloss black this is the end result. There were some tiny areas that needed some hand brushing to get it right.

The rest of the session was spent detail painting the parts I had painted on Tuesday. I wish the kit had instrument decals. I dry-brushed the gauge faces. I don't know what these gauges even look like and don't know what the background colors are. Right now the dry-brushing was silver. Nothing was note worthy enough to photogragh. I will takes some images on the next session.

Today is an exercise day which cuts my work time short.

Nice, I haven't been up to the club in ages, since 2012 when I started working nights at GE.

30 years ago, my mother-in-law in Bardstown bought me a NASCAR for a gift because she knew I built models. I still haven't touched it!

Thanks for the reassurance Rick!

Finished the roll cage, painted it and all the rest of the black chassis parts. I also cleaned up some mold lines on the body. Frankly, not having built car models very often in my later modeling years, I really don't like the lackluster engineering especially after recently completing Meng and Tamiya products. The bar has been raised considerably and these old ERTL/AMT kits just don't measure up.

I did one more pinning job on the rear fuel cell guard rail. Again, very little gluing area and not-so-hot mounting pins vis-a-vis their respective holes. There is a rear plate that supposedly closes off the fuel compartment from the rest of the cabin. This part had no locating indexing. The drawing showed it glued to the apex of the rear wheel wells. I did it the best as I could. There were no notches, pins, bumps, etc. to guide and hold it. It just glues on a very narrow edge to the wheel well "sheet metal", which itself was ridged giving and almost non-existent glue surface area. I ended up filling the bumps with med CA.

Here's another view of that rear panel and where I put it. You can see how it's just sitting on those ridges greatly reducing gluing area. It doesn't contact the lower surface at all, further complicating the gluing.

When I test fit the body onto the chassis, that panel really doesn't look like it's in the right place.

When everything was glued and set, I airbrushed gloss black over the entire chassis with only the top of the firewall piece left out because I wouldn't be able to install the brake/gas pedal part. I tested to see if I could install the seat with all the roll cage braes in place before gluing in the last brace that went down the upper center-line. I could get the seat in so I went ahead and glued in those last bits.

Next session I will paint the gray safety net when the black is fully cured. BTW: This is Tamiya Gloss Black.

I also airbrushed all the black chassis components while they were on their sprues. I realize that this means touching up all the places where the sprue connectors were. So be it.

I substituted a piece of like-sized steel for the continuation of the steering shaft that connects to the steering box. It says to paint "steel". What better way to simulate steel than using real steel. The two parts—real and plastic—are within 0.004" of each other with the steel being 0.059" and the plastic 0.054". As I used to say in my college R&B band when tuning up, "Close enough for Rock and Roll".

There were some mold line misalignments at the front and rear "bumper" area. They aren't really bumpers on Nascar racers. Reminds me of the Pixar movie, "Cars" where the protagonist's girlfriend nicknamed him "Stickers" since he really didn't have any headlights... Just graphics.

I was able to file and sand the front defects.

After sanding the rear area there were still some low spots which I filled with Tamiya Fine Filler and will sand out next session.

I made a test mix of the Kodak yellow. Straight Tamiya flat yellow is too yellow. Kodak seems to have a touch of red in it. I made a very small trial amount, but think it will work okay. I'm going to paint it with flat and then gloss it for the decal application. I'm not sure this is the best way to go. I could go with gloss yellow and red and be gloss from the get go. Thoughts?

Some of those engine details will be hidden as you get farther into the assembly.  The carb is completely covered by the air cleaner.

The plg wires can be routed inboard of the headers all the way so it's not a problem to weave them around the exhausts.

And same for the top corners of the roll cage.  once the body is on, there is no way to see the top corners.

Rick