Another day, another model car that took seven months to build!
That's mostly my fault.
If you've seen the movie Ford Vs Ferrari then you'll remember in the beginning we're introduced to one Ken Miles played by Batman. Having retired from crime fighting, Batman has traveled to the 60s, started a family and is now happily racing in the SCCA championship for Team Shelby. (Which in 1964, out of nine races Miles won two and placed second in one other, while in the top ten in most of the others. In 1965 the 289 Cobras last race was in Laguna Seca and Ken won that one too.)
This kit is a model of the first Cobra, the 1962 289, which has Mile's number (and it was Shelby's favorite number), 98.
Which brings us to a bit of a conundrum about this kit.
The kit is displayed in blue and has the 98 numbering. And yet, there are quite a bit of inaccuracies. I like Revell of Germany kits, they're a bit higher quality than the typical Revell kits we find in Hobby Lobby or Walmart (in the past anyway), and include full color instruction booklets. I have a few Revell Germany model kits and I'm looking forward to building more. However this kit isn't a true Revell Germany kit. It started life in 1985 as a 427 Cobra from a brand called "Sunny Tri-S".
The 427 origins are clearly still present, as the iconic bumpers and side windows are from the 427. The 289 did not have those items. The model also lacks the truck deck "flares" that were present in the racing version of the 289 which were put there to meet the FIA requirement that a suitcase had to fit in the trunk of the car. (In Ford vs Ferrari Batman hammers the trunk until it can fit a suitcase.) The racing strip is also different and I don't really know why.
In 1990 the kit because an "Academy" branded kit and got some new parts, and was purchased and released as a Revell of Germany kit in 2020.
So this is an old kit and a lot of the old parts were still in the box which let some some confusing instructions. The Instruction sheet itself while large and in color, wasn't very forthcoming with the placement of some parts either, which is due to this kit's history and changes. Sometimes it feels like they said "it goes somewhere in this area, figure it out." Which is fine.
This was the 98 289 Cobra:
There are some obvious inaccuracies. While I think Ken Miles is on the greatest race car drivers ever and I wanted to do his car justice, I also felt like since the kit was going to be inaccurate anyway, I might as well do something different and interesting.
I started with the color, a blue Cobra is classic, but I had found a color called "Seafoam Steel" that I really wanted to do a model in, so I figured why not.
So way back in April, I primed and pained the body in Seafoam Steel.
This is what "Seafoam Steel" is supposed to look like:
And this is how it turned out:
To be fair (to be fair...) you're supposed to go off the label for color, but come on!
Which is quite a bit different. I felt this "june-bug" green was a bit harsh for a car body, and so in my disappointment I shelved the whole project for quite a while.
Until I had the bright idea to paint transparent blue over the green!
I was curious how a transparent color over the bright green would end up looking, and hoped that it would turn out much closer to the original intention for the color.
The results were fantastic!
Yay! Not bright green!
The blue subdued the green and toned it down quite a bit to more of a sea-foam color that I was originally hoping for!
So I started building the model, and only stopped to do the Lancer group build.
I also clear coated and polished the model, before putting on the decals. The decals went on very good and I'm quite proud of them. I then clear coated the model again, but I didn't quite get the results I originally got on the Lancer.
I put a lot of detailing into this model, I pained the transmission steel and the engine block blue as a Ford reference. I detailed the interior and all of the suspension pieces as well.
Because of the age of the molding, there was lots of flash, pieces didn't really fit well together, and there was a bit of improvisation along the way. Also, the tires bug me. I think they're the wrong scale, and the stick out too far.
Nerve Racking: cutting a decal so that it conforms to a panel line.
There was quite of fitment issues and some frustration, but in the end, everything came out quite nicely!
I pained the inner rims gold and left the spinners chrome, and I attempted to do the "gills" and side pipes in a black chrome, with varied success. Still learning how to use Alclad metal color paints.
Overall I'm please with this one, and it was quite enjoyable. I have a newer Revell 427 Cobra that will do sometime down the line and while that kit has it's own issues, none of them are insurmountable and the kit is considered quite a bit better than this one.
If you haven't seen Batman as Ken Miles and Will Hunting as Carol Shelby in Ford vs Ferrari, you should give it a watch. It's a great movie and a bit of racing history. If you want to learn more about Ken Miles and "his" 289 Cobra, I got you covered there too.
I would really like to build the Number 1 Ford GT40 (1966 mk II) that Ken Raced at Le Mans, but I having trouble finding one.
And finally, the gallery!
😁
The 289 engine, complete with tiny decals that had some issues.
Way back in the waning days of 2005, I purchased a Mitsubish Lancer. No it wasn't the Evolution version of the Lancer that was a chief rival of the Rally World Championship darling, the Subaru Imprezza WRX STI.
It was a yellow, shittier version of the Lancer.
But not all was lost, because despite the 2.0 liter 4 cylinder that only produced 120 HP, my "Mitsu-shity" had a really nice 5 speed transmission, and as everyone knows, there's a lot you can do with a car with a small engine if it's light and has a stick shift in it.
While it wasn't top of the line, it wasn't bottom of the line either, with steel alloy "OZ-Rally" branded wheels and some cosmetic upgrades like side skirts on the exterior and a leather wrapped steering wheel. Most of all, it was a fun little car to drive. I often got asked about it around town as the youths would mistake it for the Evo IX, which was the one you really wanted but couldn't afford to insure.
It cornered well, accelerated decently, and was nible in Seattle traffic.
In snow, however, it could do fuck-all.
For a front wheel drive car, it was one of the most difficult to drive in slick conditions. Living in a neighborhood at the top of a hilly area I spent a few days walking home in the freezing rain because the car wouldn't get up the hill and I'd have to park it. (Sliding downhill is never fun.) And just two years after, in 2008, I would drive a Kia Spectra hatchback literally anywhere in the snow.
Bad tires I suppose.
However, Seattle never really got any snow, so it wasn't something I (nor the city) had planned for. In early January of 2007, a snow storm hit the whole area, dropping two or three inches of snow (more in some areas). Many places didn't have snow plows; King County did, but many of the cities did not.
Around noon, most places were advising people to get home, or stay wherever they were, as the snow was predicted to start that evening.
From Bellevue Washington, where I worked, to Maple Valley Washington, where I lived, was just a 35 minute or 22 mile drive. East on I-90 and then south on WA-169. This was the path I normally would take and intended to take on that day. I left work at 3 pm after finishing some items up, not really all that worried about it. After all, these Seattle people were losing it over a couple inches of snow and it wasn't even snowing yet.
From 3 PM to 6 PM I sat on Bellevue parkway, maybe moving a few inches at a time, while everyone was in gridlock. Around 5 PM the first snow started falling. The radio said that all hotels were 100% booked already and the King County Sheriff's office were working more accidents due to panic than they could keep up with. It started getting dark around 5:30 and at 6, I finally had made it to I-90 and was on the overpass that would take me down to the interstate.
Crawling so slowly that the cars in front of me would slide to the left if they stopped, as the overpass was a banked curve, I looked down at I-90 westbound and saw a sea of headlights, all sitting still, and a lone Sheriff holding a flare in front of them all.
Behind the Sheriff, on the "floating bridge" that leads over to Mercer Island and further into Seattle, was a dystopian movie scene of cars dark and sideways, and even a bus, littering the bridge and blocking all traffic.
It remains one of the most eerie memories I have.
I had hoped that the going would get easier once I got onto the interstate but it did not, and by the time I made it to Issaquah, where the junction with 169 was, it was two hours later the snow was much deeper and I had to pee so bad my teeth were chattering.
One thing was for certain, I couldn't stop, if I stopped, I knew I would never get going again. So, I took my chances instead and exited into Issaquah and stopped at a burger king to use the bathroom and maybe eat. I was in that burger king for about 30 minutes, I ordered two cheeseburgers and a coke to go.
When I got back out to my car the snow had already stacked up to the bumper. It took a couple tries but I got backed out, and I had a decision to make. Turn right, and go down 169 which wasn't traveled very much and was very dark, or take my chances back on I-90 and head further east to WA-18. This added almost 10 miles to the trip but had the advantage of being a major state highway that was traveled much more. The chances were likely that the snow wouldn't be as bad and that 18 might be mostly clear.
I took the chance on 18.
The exit for the highway 18 junction was only 6 miles away from Issaquah and I was actually making okay time just following the cars in front of me, but it was getting frustrating as drivers inexperienced with snow made mistakes like breaking hard when they got scared and would spin out, creating an obstacle to have to get around and thus having to drive into deeper areas.
None of which was good for a Lancer with small tires that had already proven they couldn't hold their own in the snow. I fought and fought and somehow was able to get out of every bad situation I was put into by the people around me but just two miles from the highway 18 exit, I had to stop with traffic and I couldn't get it going again.
While stopped we all were sliding to our left, deeper into the snow. Trying to get out of the bank I found myself in I ended up getting the car mostly sideways and miraculously, over the right shoulder and mostly straight.
But I couldn't get it to go forwards again. I tried rocking, I tried starting in second gear, nothing worked. The temperature was well below freezing at this point and the snow kept falling. I called for someone to pick me up and we left the car where it was, hopefully out of the way for others, and finally made it hope an hour or so later. (Highway 18 was 99% clear after all.)
The next day the county had plowed the interstate and I went and dug the Lancer out of the snow.
It didn't take us long to dig out and after warming it up for a bit I was able to drive it home.
It was very dirty but nothing had run into it in the night, which was a miracle of it's own, really. I took it to the car wash and had it washed twice to get all the sand and slush out from under it.
The kids at the car wash though it was an Evo, of course and all commented on what had happened, even though it was a bit of a lame story.
Alas, my time with the Lancer came to an end not long after this and I ended up in a Kia that was only defeated by the snow one time when it got simply too deep for the little car to push through.
But that was my experience with the Mitsubishi Lancer, a fun car that stranded me more than once because it simply wasn't made to do "slick stuff".
Well, until the Model Car community on Reddit announced a sports car group build and contest, anyway.
The group build and contest rules were simple: any sports car (and that was a pretty loose definition) with two doors whose model year was post 1975. Exceptions would be made for Imprezza's and Evos and any "hot hatch" with four doors. The model kid did not have to have an engine but if it did the judges would not grade on that. You had to submit a photo of a sealed box or an open box with instructions and all the parts sealed in their bags to enter, and you had two weeks to complete the build.
Two weeks isn't a lot of time to complete a kit, by the way. The finished entry had to show the top, front, back and two sides of the car. You also had to provide a picture of the "interior" before you put it in the body.
Sounded like fun and the model I chose to enter was a Aoshima "C-West Service Factory" customized Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. I chose this car because I thought it would be fairly unique and because I thought it looked like a sweet kit.
And I was right. It is a sweet kit, but one that I let down right at the end, proving that one mistake can ruin the entire thing.
But first, the kit!
My entry photo of a sweet kit.
The kit itself is well detailed, and very very well produced. There was little to no flashing, the detail was high, and the wheels were in a dull chrome that looked amazing. If it wasn't for the specific look I had planned on, I would have left them with this default chrome/silver.
Model kit chrome is often not very good, so it was nice to see this one have such high quality. This kit was less than $40 too, and I will certainly be happy to purchase more from this brand.
It also came with a lot of options for the front valance and hood, where you could do what you see on the box art (which is what I did) or you could have a less aggressive more "stock" looking front end and bumper area. There were even options for round or oval exhaust tips.
No engine is included with this kit, which makes this a "curbside" kit, which is fine because the contest wouldn't be judged on engine detail and the allure of this kit was the exterior anyway.
The started date came and we all got to work. Unfortunately I didn't take many "in progress" pictures because of the time constraints and keeping up with a brutal work/life schedule at the time. I also was having problems with painting, so I was still learning a lot as it did this.
What I wanted to do was employ a technique I had seen a bit of time ago, probably last year, where a kit was started with grey primer, then black surface primer, then a gloss clear. After that it was painted silver, then a final coat of clear blue, giving a really unique silver/blue type of effect to the finished product. That's what I wanted to do with this.
So I set off to do just that, starting by prepping the body parts with some high grit sanding (3000), cleaning with a pre-paint degreaser (by ProScale, love their stuff) instead of washing with soap and water. I then used ProScale light grey microfiller primer to prime the body. The reason why I went with the microfiller primer is that it will fill any microscopic pits in the plastic and once sanded, will give a really smooth surface for your paints to adhere too. The scuffing with the 3000 grid sanding sponge lets the primer fill in those scuffs, which let the primer adhere really really well to the plastic.
After I sanded the primer (3000 grit again) what I was left with was a primer that was so smooth you could almost describe it as "soft". Just amazing, really. The foundation coat, your primer, sets the stage for your whole paint job, so spending time on effort here will pay off later. And boy did it ever!
So instead of using a black surfacer and then gloss coating, I opted to use a gloss black paint. This is where I have been having problems as I haven't yet seem to get gloss paint to really look right, or at least what I think it should look like by viewing other people's examples.
I painted the car with Tamiya X-1, which is a solvent based acrylic gloss black. Great paint. But my results were confusing. The color looked good but the application looked splotchy. In some places the paint would be nice and glossy, but in others, splotchy and flat.
I assumed it had something to do with the sanding of the primer, so I'd sand it down again and re-paint and get no better results.
I asked in the International Scale Modeler's group I'm a member of about this and the admin, who happens to be the guy that makes the ProScale paint line, told me I wasn't using enough paint. For example, if you use too much paint right away, you end up getting runs and or a bad reaction between the layers called "orange peel" because the paint will wrinkle up and look like the peel of an orange.
I've tried to avoid this at all costs so I paint in layers that go mist, light, then i try to get heavy, or "wet" coats. However, I was letting my fear of orange peel push me to a place where I was using very very light coats. The advice I was given was to get good coverage with my light coats, a little heavier than what I was doing with my "mist coat" but not much more. Let that dry for a couple minutes then hit it with a "wet" coat and don't be afraid of it.
Oh My.
Putting some faith in someone with a lot of experience, I painted a decent light coat then blasted it and the difference was amazing. The gloss black looked like glass.
I was so excited when I saw what happened, and it really helped me understand what I should be looking for when putting on the final coats. Completely changed my game.
After curing the black in the dehydrator overnight, I put on a coat of Mr Hobby Super Metallic 2, Super Titanium II, which is the absolutely best name for a paint I've ever had to type. Thank God for ergonomic keyboards.
The thing is, metallic paints, especially silvers and chromes and the like, look their best over glossy black bases. This is why the original technique I saw used a gloss clear coat on top of black primer. This enhances the brightness of the metallic. And putting a transparent color over a well done metallic has its own properties and benefits. The catch is that you want the transparent color to be fairly light, so that you get almost a "tinted silver metallic" look. Too much of a transparent color and it will just be opaque. So less is better, but you still have to get coverage.
I used transparent blue from Tamiya, again a solvent based acrylic, because I think Tamiya transparent are some of the best and easiest to work with.
In the end, the blue ended up being a bit deeper than I was looking for but it still turned out very very good. So now it was time to clear coat the car.
I didn't use a 2K clear like most people in the contest, instead I went for Mr Hobby Super Clear III (GX100) which is a gloss clear coat.
This stuff is super thick and you have to thin it 2 parts thinner to 1 part paint OR MORE. I used 2.5 mil of clear and 5 mil of thinner, put on 2 mist coats to get it tacky, giving it about 5 minutes between each coat, then I went in for the kill. Remembering the lesson I learned from the black coat I put down a true wet coat for the third coat and it looked phenomenal. By FAR the best result I've ever had with clear coating.
I was completely out of my clear mix at this point so I put some more GX100 into a cup and a whole bunch of thinner (probably a 3 to 1 mix) and after about 10 minutes I put that on top of it. The result was an absurdly shiny and wet looking clear coat, and I couldn't be happier nor prouder of it.
I wish I had taken more pictures of it through these stages, but I didn't. I did take this one after it had dried and was sitting in my dust off box.
A lot of folks will put four to five coats of clear on their car bodies. I didn't. I only did the two wet coats and the two "tack" coats before. I've also read that with the GX100, you can just spray thinner all over it at the end to "melt" it even further. I haven't tried that yet, though with that last coat it was mostly thinner, and I have to say if I were to do it again, I think I'd have done at least one more heavy 2:1 coat, then try the thinner trick. The clear went on after the decals (which were few and well made) and the panel liner.
In the meantime, I was building the interior "boat".
I didn't want to do "black" because everyone does black. I wanted to do grey, I felt like grey would be unique for a blue car and also true to source. I remember from my old Lancer that the interior was a very low key affair with plastic all over the place. I don't think the Evos were much better. The point of the evo was the turbo'd engine and high horse power and the four wheel drive system. I think Oprah visited the Mitsubishi Motor Company in Japan and declared "you get grey plastic, and you get grey plastic and you get grey plastic!" and so on and so forth.
But I wanted to do a good job. I painted the seats black, with a blue accent. The steering wheel black with silver accents. I used gunmetal to paint the "middle strip" on the dash and doors, with silver door handles. I would have like to flock the interior so it looked like it had carpet, but adding anything to the model that didn't come in the box, except paint and glue of course, would disqualify your entry.
Welcome my son, welcome to the grey
I had great success with the decals for the dials and gauges. I painted the lcd screen black and the handbrake and shifter black with silver accents as well. Mostly, this was a black and grey affair.
I did use a black wash to add some black to the defroster vents and the AC vents to add contrast.
Overall it's a good interior that I was very proud of.
Grey is not super interesting.
Then it came time to do the undercarriage. I knew that details would be make or break in the contest and I wanted to try some new things. So I painted everything I thought that made sense to paint using pictures on line and the instructions.
I also used some weathering dry brushing paints from Tamiya to made the silver exhuast look like the metal had been burnt yellow and blue, well that was my intent anyway.
What I had seen online showed that most high output exhaust systems would turn the metal pipes blue on the bends, while the rest of the pipes would stay silver or event golden depending on the temperatures they would get to. With the Evo being a turbo street racer with high performance everything I wanted to express that as much as possible, and I was very happy with the results!
This was really fun and I'm excited to do more with it in the future. I painted the brake caliper's red and added the "brembo" logos to them as well, I'm happy with how they turned out.
The kit was coming together quickly at this point, and it was time to revisit the body details.
The rear wing was gloss black, but I hadn't painted the high gloss clear coat on it, only the two "tacky" coats to seal the two decals on the side of the wing. I did this because the wing would be an aftermarket part, and wouldn't have the same gloss shine as the factory body paint job.
There were some front "wings" as well that I also didn't clear coat, I just left them as gloss black painted for the same reasons.
What I needed to do now was mask off and paint the black areas of the front valance, paint the black trim of the windows, and the black trim pieces of the back bumper and the door frames.
I masked the model all up and painted the parts that needed to be black as nice semi-gloss black.
And this is where tragedy struck.
Much like James May crashing a Lancer Evolution into a wall of ice during the worlds dumbest race, I cocked it all up.
The mistake I made was, I masked off the body to protect the amazing job I had done painting the blue, so that I could safely paint the black parts. Then, stupidly, I put it all back into the heat box to cure. I didn't need to do this. I should have just let it touch dry for half an hour or so and I could have then taken off the tape and everything would have been fine.
Instead, for six hours, I baked the adhesive into the clear coat of the car, and when I took the tape off I was excited because my masking has been perfect, but it left adhesive everywhere, and it was not coming off.
I tried everything. Polishing, white spirits, goo gone and even peanut butter (yes!) but had no luck. The adhesive that was left behind you couldn't even feel it was just, part of the car now. In my desperation I used some rubbing alcohol which burned through the clear, the blue and down to the silver before I could stop it. My only option was to sand the clear back down all the way to the blue and re-paint the clear coat, and hope not to sand through the blue any further.
This however, happened on the last day, so I had no choice but to either withdraw for finish what I had.
Like James May, I had completely destroyed a Mitsubishi Lancer. And thus my bad luck with Lancer's continued.
I was on a deadline and I still had to assemble the final bits of the car. However, because I had wasted so much time trying to get the baked in tape adhesive off, I didn't have enough time to do a couple of items. One thing I missed, is there should have been a decal of the windscreen, but I didn't do it. I also missed the "Lancer Evolution" badge on the trunk, as well as the license plate decals. All and all, the hours I spent trying to save it kept me from really addressing the minor things that I could and would otherwise have done to make this something really special. But that's okay, it's the journey, after all.
But, due to the amazing reddit group, and my amazing girlfriend, who all sympathized but encouraged me to finish and submit it anyway, I went ahead and did the final assembly, submitted the required pictures and went and had a dinner with my amazing partner who never stops encouraging me.
In the end, it didn't look awful, but certainly no where near where it did before my cock-up. I will pick up this kit again sometime, and do it properly. This was an amazing kit that one mistake, made by me, utterly ruined. For now, even though I know it won't place in the contest (though I could still win a prize in the raffle for everyone who submitted a completed build), I am proud of it and will display it.
And now, James May and I have something in common! I learned a whole lot and had a lot of fun, and I'm happy to present it, damaged paint and all.
I chromed out the wing struts and used "BBS Gold" for the wheels from Splash Paints.
The spotchy-ness is the effect of the adhesive that's unfortunately all over this. It made the panel lines looks clumsy, the decal off-color and dulled the amazing shine it had previously.
I will say I love how the inter-cooler turned out. Painted with the same titanium as the body's undercoat and the used a black wash on it. Next time, this one will be perfect.
Now that the contest is over, I'll get back to my long in the tooth Shelby 289! And honestly, I am excited to get feedback from the judges on build, One already messaged me and said I could tell the amount of effort I put into this, which was nice to hear. It really is a good group.
