1/25 Revell NASCAR Ford Taurus |
UPS #88 - Dale Jarrett |
Gallery Article by Dave DeLang
on
Jan 6 2004
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This is a kit I
built for a guy at work. He was a manager at UPS for years and years until the
office politics started getting to him. He decided a career change was in order
and went back to school for a certificate in computer programming and now he's
here. When this kit came out about a year ago I said to myself, Pete needs one
of those. I picked one up as soon as I saw it.
The kit is pretty
detailed. Much more so than the old MPC kits I built back when I was a kid and
King Richard Petty was still on the track. I believe the chassis is
"generic" in that it's the same for all Revell stock car kits. That is
actually accurate. For research material I bought a "Motorbooks" book
on how they build the real deal and in fact, there are only about three chassis
builders who make virtually all of the body pans and roll cages. They are very
standardized and the only differences between a Chevy and a Ford and a
Dodge are the engine, transmission and the shape of the body. NASCAR has rules
that dictate how almost all of the rest of the car is built and which components
are allowed. As for the body, not a single speck
of it has any relation to what you see in the showroom except for the shape. The
bodies are hand shaped and welded from sheet steel, fabricated directly onto the
roll cage. The noses and tails are usually plastic moldings that are supplied by
the various car makers but aren't the same as those on street models. So much
for the "stock" of stock cars!
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I built it almost entirely
straight out of the box. The only thing that I did with plastic that Revell
didn't supply was punch out a few small disks of plastic sheet that I used
to replace detail that was lost due to sanding a few components to scale
thickness. It's not a particularly hard kit to build. The only trouble I had was
the location of the sides of the roll cage; I couldn't figure out if they fit
inside or outside a couple of locating pins on the fender wells. That and the
wheels. The "Goodyear" markings are decals. When I applied them they
became very sticky. They would stick to my fingers whenever I touched the tires.
I tried spraying on a coat of clear flat, but unfortunately I chose Testor's
lacquer based "Dullcoat". That made the whole tire terribly sticky! I
went to a NASCAR message board and posted a question about it and the answer
was, "Yes, the decals react with the tires and remain sticky and using a
solvent based over coat makes it worse..." Oh well. I just told Pete they
were authentic race compound tires and that's why they were sticky! Then they
didn't snap on to the axles at all well. The application of a little
too much pressure resulted in re-gluing some suspension parts. They aren't even
snapped on. It's a good thing it's in a clear plastic case wired to the base or
they'd fall off.
I used Model
Master aircraft grey for the interior. That may not be accurate for this
particular car as I read that there was some question about it being red on the
aforementioned NASCAR message board, but, the vast majority of NASCAR interiors
are light gloss grey in order to show any fluid leaks. The white is Boyd's. I
think it's the best gloss white around. The "UPS brown" is a home brew
of gloss black, yellow and red. I think I ended up getting the shade right but
it needs a little more red if you compare it to the numbers. Pete says the
number's color is correct so I missed, but not by much. Pete says that the color
is called "Pullman Brown" and was chosen way back when UPS first
started because it doesn't show dirt as much as other colors. It looks pretty
good at arms length. Pete didn't know it was coming; he was rather speechless.
That's one of the best parts about modeling, I think!
Dave DeLang
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