Elliott Sadler Ford Taurus Citgo "Decades" cars

[Adam Baker]

Got started on this project today.

It consists of 5 Revellogram Nascar 1/24 Ford Taurus race cars.

The cars were driven by Elliott Sadler in the Nascar Winston Cup series in 2000 for Wood Brothers Racing. The schemes were done to commemorate 50 years of the Wood Brothers in Nascar, and each car represents a car driven by WBR from the 1950's to the 1990's.

All decals are by Slixx, here are the schemes:

1950's, ran at the October Martinsville Speedway

Paint will be Testors Model Master Italian Red.

1960's, ran at the July Daytona race.

I've read that Rangoon red is a good match for this color, but I dont know what a good model color is for it, so I'm working on that. The white will be Tamiya Lacquer Pure White TS-26

1970's ran at the May Charlotte race.

Paints will be Testors 1104 Gloss Dark Red and Tamiya TS-26 Pure White

1980's, ran at the April Talladega race.

Paints will be Testors 1111 Gloss Dark Blue and Tamiya TS-26 Pure White

1990's ran at the March Atlanta race

I'm not 100% sure on the paints for this one. The Slixx sheet suggests Testors MM 2732 Chrysler Engine Red, which is an almost pure Red, where as I've seen suggestions for using Testors MM 2731 Chevy Engine Red, which has a very strong Red/Orange tone to it. The couple of images I've been able to find of the car run by Elliott Sadler look more red, but people who saw the original 1990's car, said it had more of the Red/Orange color like the Chevy Engine Red. Unless I can find definitive information saying it should be Chevy Engine Red, I'll most likely go w/ the Chrysler Engine Red.

All of the chassis's and body interiors will be painted a light gloss grey, probably Valspar Light Pewter Grey from Lowes, which is supposed to be a very good match for the very light grey used by cup teams.

As mentioned previously, the kits are Revellogram 2000-2003 Ford Taurus kits.

I started by cutting all of the parts from the sprues since it makes it a bit easier when doing this kind of thing. I then started working on cleaning up the windows. It generally seems that when I do racecar models, the windows get done last, and generally it ends up where my models go into the display cabinet w/o windows, and they never get put in, so I figured I'd start w/ the windows first so that I can get them cleaned up and painted so that I dont have to worry about it at the end. A few of the windows have scuff marks and scratches, so I'll have to polish those out along w/ cleaning all the sprue connections off, and then they will all get dipped in future and then painted flat black where required.

My goal is to have all 5 builds done before the end of the year, but at the glacial pace that I tend to build, we'll see whether that actually happens or not. The nice thing at least by doing this kind of thing, is I can paint in batches. All parts that are painted a certain color will get painted at once, so it makes painting a little bit easier.

 

[ij001]

That's quite an undertaking, Adam.

Ian

 

[Adam Baker]

Just a short update. Made some progress in the last week, but mostly been sanding a ton of parts and that kind of thing. I promised myself I'd never do something like this again (a few years ago, I did 10 Chevy Monte Carlo kits) but when doing a group like this where they are all exactly the same, it makes a bit of sense.

So anyway, I got all the bodies sanded, removing all hte mold lines and doing my best to deal with the molding issues, there were several places w/ pretty sizable steps at the mold seams.

So anyway, what I accomplished this weekend was getting 2 of the cars converted to look like restrictor plate track cars, which had flat noses to reduce the amount of drag the cars made when running at the 195+ mph speeds of Daytona & Talladega.

I started by taking the stock body and sanding & scraping off everything below the horizontal lines on the nose (sorry, don't have any pic's of that part, so here's the stock untouched body to show the areas I'm referring to).

Once the surface was smooth w/ nothing remaining, I glued a piece of .030" thick styrene sheet to the nose, I just eyeballed its exact position.

Once the glue was dry, I trimmed & sanded the strip flush w/ the bottom of the nose, and then I filled in all the gaps w/ Milliput 2 part putty. I did the best I good to clean it up but I think my Milliput might be getting old, I dont think it was mixed completely so I had some spots that didn't want to cooperate.

Once the putty was dry, I went back and cleaned it up. Very happy w/ how it looks. Still going to need a bit more putty to fill in some small voids, and help the transition areas a bit, but that will get done after I can prime the bodies to see where else needs work.

 

[Sherman 18]

WOW!

Now that is a project!

I have always liked the Wood Brothers.

 

[Adam Baker]

Yea, its been a heck of an undertaking. It's taken way more work than I ever expected to clean the bodies up to be usable.

The roof flaps were just horribly molded, so I made the decision to sand & fill them in and I'll use the decals that came w/ the sheets I have.

Here they are before I started. The molding was extremely inconsistent. Some areas stand proud of the surrounding area and others are sunk down, when it should all be perfectly flush.

And this is the first couple I did. You can see how some of it just disappears when sanding it all smooth, which shows just how bad it was. I've since gone back on all 5 bodies and filled the lines in w/ Milliput.

I have 2 finished and a 3rd about half cleaned up. I'm hoping to get all 5 bodies completely cleaned up today so I can hit them w/ another coat of primer. I know all of them will need at least 1 more coat of primer to check how well they've been cleaned up.