Randy Ayers Nascar Modeling Forums

[Billy Kingsley]

Finished all of these up in October, but just got the photos taken this week.

Builds are:
1950 Curtis Turner
1950 Louise Smith
1953 Jim Romine (This is actually a MARC car)
1956 Larry Odo
1960 Herman Beam
1973 David Ray Boggs
1977 Ron Hutcherson
1979 Cale Yarborough
1982 Jimmy Means
1986 Grand Adcox
1987 Dale Jarrett
1987 Jimmy Means
1988 Connie Saylor
1990 Bobby Hamilton
2002 Greg Biffle
2003 Jason Jarrett
2006 AJ Allmendinger
2007 Kevin Lepage
2007 Kevin Lepage COT
2008 Kenny Wallace
2009 AJ Allmendinger Kansas
2009 Dale Earnhardt Jr. Amp Sugar Free
2010 Mike Bloss
2011 JJ Yeley
2014 Brett Moffitt
2016 Bobby Pierce
2019 Corey LaJoie
2020 Ricky Stenhouse Jr.
2021 Justin Haley

This is the first time I've built a car of Turner, Smith, Romine, Odo, Beam, Boggs, Hutcherson, Yarborough, Adcox, Saylor, Jason Jarrett, Pierce, Stenhouse and Haley in this scale. I have built Yarborough in large scale before. I have now built 266 different drivers in my preferred 1/64 scale.

Can post more photos and story behind any of the cars if there is interest.
_________________
Billy Kingsley
https://public.fotki.com/ElCaminoBilly/
https://public.fotki.com/CardboardHistory/

[jh63fan]

Unreal !
That's one a day average.
Are these refinished cars or can you get them unassembled in a kit? What about the decals, do you print your own?
Don't look in the diecast section that often, but glad I did today.

[DaveVan]

Some 'Obscura-forsurea' cars there!!!!
I'd like to know more about how you do them and decals ! thx

[TN Vols fan]

Those all look great! I have so many questions. DaveVan and jh63fan pretty much covered them. I know nothing about diecast customization.
_________________
"Many men fish all their lives without knowing it is not the fish they are after." Henry David Thoreau

"I am, Sir, a brother of the angle" quote from The Compleat Angler, lzzak Walton 1654

[Billy Kingsley]

Thanks guys. They mostly start out as released cars (aka donors) which are then drilled, stripped and painted. They do not make kits. The older cars are usually street cars that I convert over, although there are some NASCAR specific diecasts from the early days. Not enough for my liking. Some of the NASCAR specific donors are nearly impossible to find.

They are riveted together so I use a power drill to drill them apart. Search for "ElCaminoBilly" on YouTube and I have a video up of drilling one of them. They are stripped with nail polish remover on a q-tip, a messy process and each car takes at least 4 q-tips to do. Then they are washed and have to wait at least 24 hours for the base factory applied paint to harden back up - going to bare metal is bad. It makes the cars chip super easily. I did that once on one where I had to sand it and the paint was so fragile that I chipped it with my finger nail during the decaling process.
Next comes any body work that needs to be done, which I will do if the base factory paint is chipped, or if I burn through the factory paint while stripping (some brands are easier than others to do that with) it gets filled with bondo and sanded down. Then it's primed, usually with Tamiya Gray primer and then tamiya white if a light color, then painted with rattle cans.
Decals work just like large scale model decals, only smaller. After the decals are on I clearcoat them. I know it's not accurate for cars before the 2000s but it's a compromise I had to make because I had too many decals get damaged when I tried to not clear them. I determined I'd sacrifice some accuracy to preserve the build.
I then glue the chassis back on with super glue, leaving the car sit upside down overnight so that the windows don't fog.
Then photography and then integration into my albums on Fotki- my diecast images are copy and pasted into albums for each year, NASCAR division, driver and car number.

The decals are the hardest part to get. There are only a couple of decal makers who do decals in my scale. Slot Car Fever provided the decals for all of the top two rows except the Yarborough, they are Road Race Replicas. Pattos provided all but two of the rest, the Bobby Hamilton 8 is Stock Car Miniatures and were actually issued in 1990. Those were kits but they were very crude...best to use the decals on real bodies. The 84 Red Bull Allmendinger is JH Designs decals.

Some of the street cars require significant effort to convert them over to NASCAR usage.
This is what I used for the Louise Smith car:

I had to grind off the molded in fender skirt with my dremel. I had to fill side view mirror holes on the 1960 Ford, too.

Most of the COTs started out as this:

My best friend and I split a lot of 40 of them so I will be doing a lot of COTs in the near future I actually have 5 or 6 more in progress right now.

My least favorite part is doing the tire lettering. It's difficult to see the white lettering on the decal paper and the decals are just so small that it is a challenge. I do it when I have to- the 53 Boggs, Broadway Means and Hamilton all had to have the tires decaled.

I'm working on building up my skills so I can resin cast some of the rarer donors and make as many as I need. But I have not gotten my casting skills to those levels yet. I have been able to make my own wheels and tires, but none were used in this batch of builds.
_________________
Billy Kingsley
https://public.fotki.com/ElCaminoBilly/
https://public.fotki.com/CardboardHistory/

[Papadoc]

Great post Billy!!!

I wanted to add that in 2000 Racing Champions did make diecast kits in both 24th and 64th for those who want to test the process without the drilling and taking apart of a donor

Seeing your posts inspired me to buy one of the 64th scale kits and customize it. Would have never thought to do it before

[Billy Kingsley]

I forgot about them. There are at least two cars that were only made in those kit forms, not any other way. I found one on eBay in 2021 that I needed but had no idea it existed.
_________________
Billy Kingsley
https://public.fotki.com/ElCaminoBilly/
https://public.fotki.com/CardboardHistory/

[MarkJ]

That makes my head hurt just thinking about taking on a project like that. Excellent work going on here.