Shakotan Celica XX: WIP's

Aaaahhh, Cali. You gotta love it at times. The sun, ocasional rain, snow in the mountains, the girls and days like today make you wish that the sun part will be around. But nooooo it's 8:30am and its foggy, gloomy and no sign of the sun yet. Not only that, but it's suppose to rain tonight! Your probably thinking, "WTF does that have to do with your Celica build??" Well for one, can't paint! It's do damn cold and humid and second, my sinus' are kicking my ass today so I officially am not enjoying the day in more than one way.

Now onto my builds, oh did I say builds?? yup, that plural. I'm currently working on 3 builds, 2 of which I'm hoping to finish for the Citrus Nationals in Riverside on May 19th. But if I keep getting days like this, I will have to enter them as WIP's.

The first one is Aoshima's Toyota Celica XX Garuchan seires. It comes with a lowered stance and some of their Kai series wheels that gives this on a semi shakotan look. I bought this kit back on 2001 at my LHS with the intentions of only using the wheels for another project I had going at the time...haha, I know I'm not the only one that does it..As of a month ago I decided to start on it. Out of the box the stance is not so low and the wheels stick out more than I like. Even if that was the intention of this kit, I personally didn't want it. So I filed away at the inner wheels arches and "rolled" the fender lips. I also lowered it some more to my liking. I started to prep the body for primer by sanding away any mold lines, deepened the panel lines and sanded the body down for the primer to grab onto it. I chose to use Aoshima's Techno Shadows wheels with Hippari tires instead of the kits SSR MKII's, well because I used them on my Shakotan 280ZX already...haha. Next, was the option to use a star shaped exhaust that comes in the new Aoshima "extra posie" sets. They are pretty much bosozoku parts and wheels in a bag.

The 2nd one is a 1967 Impala Lowrider. Hmmmm, something different, something that originally got me back into the hobby some 15 years ago. Even though I have only built one Lowrider and tinkered with a few others at the tender age of 16, I still consider this one my 2nd Lowrider build. I chose this body year do to it curves and aggressive looking front end. It's the Super Sport edition as well, so it's got some balls under the hood and I'm keeping it that way. I using AMT's Street Machine series, it has some pretty good details. Seperate frame and chassis, suspension components are not molded into the chassis and the engine is nicely detailed with some nice extra goodies. There are some down sides to the kit that I ran into and trying my best to fix. First was the bodies panels lines and details around the windows. The panel lines were deepend, one had to be made by the rear window and trunk lid, or else it would look like a lift back Impala. Around the window trims, the body was trimmed down a bit so they can stand out and not get lost when the paint goes one. The hood had some gaps all around, so styrene strips where added to fill that in enough to a more resonable gap. I decieded that I want the front end in a raked up pose, so the rear was dropped as far as possible and the front end was brought up. The front end had to be reworked in order to go in the up position. I made some tubular style A-arms and added a bit of round stock to the lower control arms to pivot them in position. I'll have to take pics of that, just noticed that I didn't do so. I went with Pegasus "D" wheels with their new stretched look tires with thin white walls. As for paint, I'll be using Testors De Ja Blue and Wet look clear gloss. Should be nice.

The 3rd one is a Toyota MarkII for an online forum contest, Stance Wars. I have absolutely no actual progress on this one. It does need work to fit the bumpers on correctly, but it's gonna be bitchin. Slammed stance and some deep offset wheels is always sexy. I am using Aoshima's Welds D1 kit. don't let the cover fool you either as it doesn't come with any D1 interior parts. Yup no gutted interior, no roll cage, hell not even the correct seats to make a replica Weld MarkII drift car. It's all cosmetic, wheels, body kit and decals give it the look of the D1 car. I have chosen to not use the decals from the kit, I'll be saving them for something else. I'm not using the wheels it comes with, I'm not even using the ones in the pictures...It's going to be a slow progress as I'm concetrating on the first 2 builds at the moment.

Here are the pics, I know FINALLY!

Thanks for stopping by. Hopefully I can have some more updates soon.