Updates On My Projects

As usual I seem to leave the updates on my projects last. I try my best to keep this spot up to date, but life just gets in the way of doing so.

The Celica has some chassis detailing done and sits on it's wheels now. First I started by modding a cross member from a Fujimi Ae86. I cut off the oil pan and splash guard details adjusted the arms and got a better looking member than what it had. Then I lightly weathered the chassis with the Tamiya weathering sets and a bit of a black wash from Citadel paints. The tail lights were painted with Tamiya clear red sprayed through my airbrush. I have also been working on the interior. I flocked the rear deck and carpet area with some flocking powder from Michaels art store. The seats were taken from aoshima AE86 kit that I "dirtied" a little using the citadel wash. I also used the shifter boot and gauge cluster decal. Im using the shifter from the Aoshima Kai wheel sets. They come with some extra parts and one of them are the clear shift knobs that come in different lengths and designs. I also used some Pioneer TS-X11 speakers, yeah old school beats..I'm a Wu Tang Clan fan, so thats what I'll be bumping..lols

Now, the Mark II has been getting some love as well. I mentioned that it's for an online contest on the Model Scientists forum. Well the deadline is this saturday...I'm pushing myself to finish it on time. I lagged it a bit on this one, but it's getting really close to being done. Now I'm thinking "damn, is it possible? I'm actually going to finish not only one, but 2 models this year??" of course it will be more than 2, but I'll save that for later.. I painted the details on the chassis which consist of the molded in engine, transmission and exhaust. The front and rear suspension is glue in place, which can only mean that my Stance is locked in. Rotors were painted with titanium silver and titanium gold. The calipers were done in transparent yellow. The chassis still needs a couple of parts to call it done, but they are on the way to being glued in place. The interior parts were painted in tan. I'll be using some Recaro seats. I printed up some plaid pattern decals that I hope will work. if not then maybe next time. Now, the body has recieved it's final putty call and has been sprayed in mica silver from Tamiya. I tried to find the .5mm set for my Iwata airbrush, but had no luck on finding the last part needed to use it. So I wipped out my Badger 350 and got the large tip out and went to town with. Unfortuantely I was asked by the dude running the contest to leave that update till saturday...ooooh the suspense...lmao.

My 67 Impala is just chillin and waiting to get done...lols how ever I did chrome up the frame using Alclad II gloss black base and chrome. It came out good for my first time using chrome the proper way. I also sprayed some of the interior tan from duplicolor vinyl paints. I person it looks just like vinyl..

Thats about it for today. I'll be getting back to work on these tonight, so I hope to have some more later on.

Thanks for stopping by.

Zokusha Celica, Impala & Mark2 Update

Today is the day of the Bull, well at least for me it is. It's my 31'st birthday and I'm spending the first half at work...haha gotta make that money..lols So far, so good though. All 3 of my builds have some updates due on here.

First the Celica, it's the one that is coming close to getting done and hopefully before the weekend. I have clear coated, painted the window trims black, added decals to the body, painted the interior, chassis and wheels. I still need to make a muffler for the star and do some detail painting to the interor.

Second is the Impala. This one still has a ways to go but I have applied some BMF to the window trim, lower sills and wheel arches. I only have one picture of this one...so it's like a teaser. Although I have primered the chassis, frame and rear end and painted the some of the interior in a tan color.

Third is the Stanced Mark2. This one so far has been one of my favorite builds cause it's coming along pretty nice and it will be the first build to ever get a paint job with nail polish. So far I have worked on the front bumper(has been puttied since that last pic) and painted some of the suspension parts. The chassis has recieved its coat of paint. It's a teaser to my choice in color, it's called "apple mint" my wife thought it was a nice color and I thought so too. A color like this on a big ass 4 door sedan slammed to the floor should look sick, the only thing now is, what color should I do the interior?? typically it would be a tan color or even black..but I already have done several black interiors, might just go with a darker tan.

That's about it for now. I promise to take more pics of my progress as it's more than I am showing you here. Till next time.

Thanks for stopping by.

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.