AI Desert Racer RC Vehicle part 3

Once the 3D printed main hull was completed it was time to go old school and fill in thge undersides with kitbashed detail. In the picture below is a few parts from a Wall-E truck toy, a Bruder dozer and a bunch of bits of old transformer toys. Mixed in is a few plastic kit parts and some garden hose fittings.

The large black rear exhausts are the bass reflex ports from a Sony mini hifi, the same one as is being used as the front of this unfinished spaceship project, Sony Spaceship Two

This was all adhered to a 3mm sheet of foamed PVC. Once all the nurnies were in place I cut the excess pvc backing away at the bottom right up to the edge of the detail.

The rear detail block is mostly made from a couple of Duplo blocks with the requisite kit part details added.

After priming with grey primer I then added a lot of pipes made from some single solid copper core insulated wire and some thicker black multi strand electrical wire. This type of wire can be bent and stay bent due to the solid core. One problem with this insulated wire is that some types of grey primer remains sticky once painted, I think due to the plasticizer in the insulating PVC sheath. I have tried dusting it with talc which removes some of the stickiness. I think it is fine if painted with water based acrylic hobby paints.

Just visible below is a large thick pipe/hose made from solid foamed neoprene rubber.

Nurnies were added to the top surface as well.

Finally all the detail including the pipes recieved a final coat of grey primer.

It was then time to add the final colours. In this case I used Montana MTN94 spray cans, a grey, two shades of  off white and an orangy-red. I am big convert to the MTN paint. It is designed as grafiti paint but is perfect for these large models. It is a matte finish not affected by the oil wash weathering process and sprays really nicely with excellent cover. It also doesn't smell so bad and is available in 200 colours.

You can see in the opicture below I added a couple of headlights (a last minute addition) to the nose. I carefully drilled through the 3D print and added a couple of 12 volt "eagle-eye" cob leds. They have the lens covered in masking tape in rthe photo.

After the paint had cured for a week I started on the vinyl cut graphics. Using inkscape, the free open source graphics editor, I made copies of the vaugue AI graphics depicted in the AI artwork. These were then cut from the appropriately coloured self adhesive vinyl on my Silhouette Portrait cutting machine.

The cut graphics were weeded of the unused bits of vinyl just leaving the symbols on the backing paper. I just used a low tack masking tape as a transfer tape to apply the graphics in the right spot on the model.

A few random rectangles of vinyl were also added here and there.

Next up is the last phase of the build - weathering.

Thanks for looking.

More soon...