Stage 21. Several people on this forum had good success with using water-soluble paint or markers to highlight speaker grill perforations. I decided to go a step further and drill them out. After drilling a couple of holes and breaking a 0.4 mm (1/64 inch) drill bit, I figured out that I don’t need all the way through the plastic and just deepen the indentations a bit. The broken-off piece of drill bit in a manual pin wise worked well and I was able to finish each grill (over 120 indentations) in about 20 minutes. Then I used a black marker to deepen the shadows and installed the sills after giving them a buff with carnauba wax automotive compound. Looks quite convincing!

Installed the rear window assembly, and now eagerly awaiting the next pack.

Very nice looking parts in this kit. Hope you are getting lots of fun building this one.

Doing a great job. My favourite child hood car. Might look at this soon.
Chris

2) My kit-supplied rear window was quite a bit scratched; the transparent plastic is so soft, even rubbing it against the coarse PE kit bag creates shallow scratches; they should have put protective film over it. I tried to polish it using Novus No. 2 & 1 polishing products and covering with Johnson Wax Pledge Floor Care Multi Surface Finish (formerly Future Floor Polish) but the results weren’t very good.

So I removed the kit rear window completely and used it as a template to cut off a piece of 1/8” thick Lexan sheet. It has much better transparency and came covered with protective film on both sides. I drilled holes for the screws and attached the piece to the rear window assembly. I also cut of cylindrical knobs in the center of the assembly as they are extraneous; the screws hold my newly cut window nice & tight against the frame.

3) Pictures of the actual car show that there is a decal on the rear edge of the rear wing saying “Automobili Veloce” (I guess “Speed Cars” in Italian) and a narrow Italian flag over the word “Automobili”. So I recreated this sticker in Paintbrush and printed it on Testors white film decal sheet. The sticker is abt. 1/2” long and 1/8” wide in scale.

I cut out and attached the decal to the rear wing and after it dried, I carefully brushed on with 00 brush some Testors dull coat lacquer. You can’t see it very clearly in the picture below but it does look good!

Pack 08 will be arriving in about a week; there will be some custom modifications!

Nicely done

Excellent work Dave, love the dio's.....

Regards

Alan

While waiting for Pack 08 to arrive, I took time to make some extra mods.

1) Lined fog lamps with Bare-Metal Foil and added silver-plated plastic cylinders to simulate lamps. They now have more realistic look; you can see how well they reflect light now.

3) Disassembled the front part of the engine, painted oil casing chrome silver and dry-brushed, added extra details with tubing, photoetched hose clamps, and miniature screws. Looks much better now.

4) Added some extra parts on the left side of the front compartment using nuts & bolts, coated wire (for A/C heat-exchange piping), bare wire and wire mesh.

5) There is a thick bundle of wires in the real car which I had simulated with thin coated and uncoated wires and some heat-shrink tubing, and connected into place along the front edge.