Ford Shelby - Finished

After ruining the roof's varnish during final assembly, I let it rest a month, before I masked it up again and gave the roof a (very heavy) layer of varnish. Some dust got into the varnish and the regular painter's tape I started using recently for bigger surfaces (to cut cost on the more expensive Tamiya tape) left some glue residue on the hood.

Because model cars were never my thing in the first place, I'm calling this one finished and gave it a place in my display case.

Price : € 9,95

Number of parts : 44

Time spent : 5.5 hours

Project completion time : 40 days

Paint : (Vallejo)

• White primer
• White
• Black (skirts and details)
• Insignia blue (stripes)
• Aluminium (details on the underside)
• (Revell) Ferrari red (taillight details)

Other :

• Tamiya X-22 gloss varnish
• Tamiya lacquer thinner (to thin the varnish)
• MicroScale Kristal Klear
  I used this to simulate the glass in the rear view mirrors, over a little piece of aluminium foil. The result is not to my liking, which is why I didnt take a close-up shot of the mirrors. This has nothing to do with the product itself, tough.

Ford Shelby - Almost finished

With at least 6 layers of gloss, the Ford is finally starting to feel and look shiny, so I can finally proceed towards the final assembly. The clear insert that makes up the front and rear windshield is one piece, glued against the roof of the car. It wouldn't sit flush, so I clamped it down. I added a piece of tissue to prevent the clamps from scratching the roof.

I should have added more paper or a thicker piece of cloth, because the clamps made deep rectangular indentations in the roof :-(. I guess it takes a lot longer for the varnish to truely harden 100%.

Clearly visible in real life, but it requires a sharp eye to spot the faults in the pictures, so here's the finished result. After taking the pictures, I masked all but the roof and sanded the varnish as far as it would go without damaging the colour. I'll add new varnish next visit to the workbench.

For now, here are the pictures. I'll try to make better ones for the final post.

Ford Shelby - Stripes

After about 4 or 5 layers of white, each time with sanding in between to remove imperfections (like specs of dust getting in the wet paint), I've decided it's good enough and time to move on to masking for the characteristic stripes.

About 1 hour of meticulous masking resulted in the pictures below.

Once masked, the first thing I did was spray on a diluted layer of varnish. This is a trick to minimize the risk of paint running under your masking tape. As there are always little imperfections in your tape-job, paint will unavoidably run under it and create little hairlines where you do not want them. The higher the contrast in colour, the better these faultlines will be visible. By first "filling" these imperfections with clear varnish, the risk of actual paint running under the tape is reduced to almost zero.

After a layer of Insignia Blue, I started removing the tape. Here's a shot of the result with the masking tape still in place, except for the central line, because I couln't resist taking a peek to see if the "varnish trick" had worked.

And here is the end result. I dare say I'm very happy with it. There are a few imperfections, but they are located on the extreme front and back, and do not ruin the first impression the overall body gives. It will look even better once the black "carbon" pieces are in place, but those will have to wait until I've added a few layers of gloss.

Ford Shelby - A few details

I emphasized the underside details with Vallejo Aluminium (71.062). The Model Air version is actually too thin for brushpainting (I would need the bottle from the Model Colour range), but it's a little ridiculous to have 2 bottles of the same colour in 2 different viscosities, especially since it's only a detail colour that will probably last years.

It is too runny, so the paint tends to flow open even were I don't want it to, but as soon as it was dry enough (less than 1 hour), I went over it again with black to touch up little spots.

I initially painted the seats with Model Air white (also too runny), which would give no coverage at all, so I kinda overdid it. I tend to get impatient and then I do stupid things. You can still see it, particularly on the backseats. I have since ordered the Model Colour white, which is not as thin, to add more (and thinner) layers.
I made an exception to my above statement about different bottles for the same colour, since I'm always using white to lighten paint anyway (the Enterprise base colour and highlights all require 80% or 90% white).

I have to retract my statement from the previous post, about not finding reference photo's that match the model, because I found the perfect match. I haven't found any white Super Snakes yet, but the leather seats seem to match the outside colour, so white stripes it is.

I printed the reference photo to scale and cut off 2 pieces for the dashboard. The picture does not do it justice. I swear it looks 10 times better in reality. When the model is finished, you will only see it sideways, but it's much better than a flat black surface.

Ford Shelby - priming

I primed the red plastic with Vallejo white primer, which went decent. 

When dry, I added a first layer of 50% white, 50% gloss varnish. Thinned a little to promote a better paintflow, it still wouldn't spray very well, resulting in a not-so-smooth paintjob. You'll just have to forgive me.

I'm thinking of giving up on the Vallejo varnish, as it is only giving me trouble. Maybe it's coincidence, but I always have airbrush-problems as soon as I try this gloss varnish.

I'll try the next layer with Tamiya gloss, although I've heard it has an insane drying time. We'll see.

The inside was primed black, to hide all the red plastic, but there's a lot of overspray from doing the outside. Most of it will be hidden by the interior parts, so only a few spots will need to be handbrushed black.

The inside and underside are primed in black. They actually look better painted black than just the bare black plastic. I left a few parts unpainted, namely those that are carbon on the real model as well. We'll just see which parts look better, painted or not.

I like black leather seats and dark interiors, so I'm not going to do too much inside, except maybe for the dashboard.

The chrome wheels look nice. The tires fit excellent and require no glue. As a detail, I painted the break calipers red, as on the real car.

Warning : remember which wheel goes where! The rear wheels are slightly bigger and there's a difference in the left and right break disc and tire threads, so make sure you don't switch them around.

The dashboard was left unprimed, because I misplaced it, but I've got it back in the meantime. I don't know which model Shelby this is supposed to be, because the dashboard matches none of my reference photos. I'll be trying to add a very small picture of the navigation screen, to liven it up a little.

Academy 1/43 Ford Shelby GT 500 "Super Snake" - Unboxing

It's not really an unboxing, because I washed the parts many months ago, but for the purpose of this blog, let's pretend it's the first time we open the box.

I was aching for a new quick project, on which progress would be quick ("Quick" should be interpreted rather loosely) and picked Academy's 1/43 Ford Shelby GT 500 "Super Snake" (#15517) from my stash.

I'm not going to start building model cars now, but I bought this model last year because I am in love with the actual car. If I ever win the lottery, this would most likely be the car I'd buy. Well, after settling my mortgage with the bank, putting at least half of my winnings away for "later", throwing a huge party, go on a superlong vacation, etc. 

Two black and two red sprues contain the majority of the parts. Details appear very nice, all parts are flash-free and ejector-pins are located in places that won't be visible once assembled.

There are 4 vinyl tires with decent threading and 2 chrome sprues for the rims and breaks. One clear sprue for the windshield and the lights. The rear and front windshield are in one piece, which will be a major help when assembling.

Decals are provided with black stripes and a few markings. An extra bag contains 2 screws, to close the body, and 2 axles for the wheels.

Assembly looks ridiculously easy. There are many locator pins and matching holes, leaving no doubt as to where what goes.
The coloured sprues, large locator pins and the screws make this an excellent model to just put together in a couple of minutes, with only a few parts that will require minimal glue.

The building instructions is a six-page booklet, all in Chinese (I assume). All I could decipher was something about "small parts", but I'm not sure whether not to swallow them or cook them with rice. Just do what feels logical, it looks supersimple.

As for the colour : I didn't like the harsh red. If I were to buy it, it would be black with white stripes, but for this model that would render the decals for the skirts and other details useless, so that's not really an option. I googled several colour schemes, fell in love with the lightblue version, but settled for white with a blue stripe.