RC12L3 Resto: '87 Buick GNX Build: Finished

[Coelacanth]

Coel, are you going to run it on the track or just bomb around the parking lot?

There's a school tennis court where there's a track setup a couple evenings per week, I'd like to check that out. I don't think I'd run it on the street or a parking lot unless I was sure the surface was very smooth.

[Niki]

Do you run/race the car Niki?

It's a runner yes, but I got stuck with 1/10 pancars so badly this one has really low mileage.
Stock class electronics in it so racing would be possible.

-Niki-

[Coelacanth]

So, my goal is to turn this car from a 'Carlo to a GN. I know I could accomplish that with some super-detailed painting with skills I'm not sure I have...but that, and another thing that always bothered me is how painted-on taillights, grilles, side-markers, headlights and such never looked realistic. So what to do? Well, one skill I DO have is 2-D image editing. So I searched online for various pics of Grand Nationals, and took some additional pics of my own, and then made some accurate measurements of the Lexan body, and spent several hours creating images that I'll print on clear sticker paper, then I can simply stick 'em on the body.

It's taken hours so far because the image editing required a lot of clever image manipulation (cropping/pasting, mirroring, resampling/resizing, and plenty of zoomed-in direct pixel editing), but I think the results will turn out excellent. Here's a sneak-peak of my progress so far...I'm a little over half-done, there's finally light at the end of the tunnel!

The stickers will need to be cut out with an X-Acto knife, and are kind of modular like the HPI vintage bodies' stickers, so that they'll be easier to attach to the body; so for example, the headlights & grille is one single sticker, the bumper section below and front/rear corner markers are separate stickers.

P.S. The attached images are JPG's; my originals are uncompressed high-quality BMP's.

[Coelacanth]

Well, the sticker idea hit a snag. I printed out a set of samples on Avery Clear Decals paper (#03276) and the printout looked fantastic. The sizes were perfect. However, this paper (more of a thin plastic film) utterly FAILED to live up to its claims. The sheet is far too transparent, for one thing; after I attached some samples on another body I painted black, you could barely even see the printed objects! Worse still, the areas that should've been white or chrome ended up being almost completely transparent, so you just see the black body beneath. But worst of all, the inkjet ink didn't stick very well to the sheet, and with a bit of moisture, comes right off. So whatever you do, don't use that Avery paper for anything...it's garbage.

I'm still pleased with the progress, because now I know the stickers are perfectly-sized and look great...I'll just need to print them onto vinyl or some other sticker sheet instead.

[GoMachV]

If nothing else, contact MCI racing and see if he would want to print them. As long as you are willing to give him the right to sell them to other people, I'm sure he would be more than willing to take them. They are very friendly and easy to deal with.

[email protected]

For donations they give you at least two sheets for free minus shipping

[Coelacanth]

I'm looking into other sticker paper brands, I think there are at least 2 others I can try that are supposed to be waterproof and non-transparent (when printed)...PhotoPaperDirect and Papilio. They were just not available at the local office supply stores, unfortunately, so I took a chance on that Avery crap. I would rather not send the images that I spent so much time on to somebody else, because I would like to offer the stickers to people who'd be interested in making a 1:12 Buick Regal, Turbo-T or Grand National. Probably not too much interest in that but since I put in all the leg-work, I'd be happy to share the stickers with others.

I might also make 1:10 stickers, because I also have a vintage Monte Carlo body I could design them for.

[Coelacanth]

I got back in gear on this project. Scuffed the inside of the shell and masked off the windows, and a small strip on the bottom of the front clip which I'll paint black on the outside to give it a matte black finish. The 1:1 Grand National has a plastic trim section there that stands out from the gloss black. The rest will be a breeze compared to my other paint schemes: all black! Pactra Outlaw Black, to be exact. I'll tint the windows afterward.

Although the body painting will be the easiest paint work I've ever done, the real work went into designing my own stickers. I've never liked how painted-on headlights, taillights & grille sections totally lacked realism, so I searched the internet high & low for high-resolution pics of actual GN's, and took pics of my own car when I had nothing else that worked, and went to work designing my own stickers, like what HPI does with their vintage car bodies. A major amount of work went into scaling down the images to fit perfectly when printed out, adjusting the final colors, lots of mirror-imaging and test-fitting, and zoomed-in pixel-by-pixel editing when things didn't quite look the way I wanted...and I discovered that I'd need to curve the whole front bumper sticker because the Monte Carlo body has that area of the lower section of the front clip curved upwards. If I left the front GN bumper sticker straight, it would look weird when applied, noticeably frowning downward at the ends.

It's my hope that when applied, the stickers will give the body a lot more realism and make it a convincing Grand National instead of a Monte Carlo. I also spent a bunch of extra time adding GNX and T-Type emblems to my sticker sheet images so I could sell or trade the stickers to people who want to build replicas of those flavors of the Buick Turbo Regal. All told, I probably put at least a week's worth of work into designing two basic sticker sheets; one for a GN/T-Type, one for a GNX.

[Coelacanth]

Finished painting the body & tinting the windows.

[GoMachV]

Needs more black!

Lookin sick Marc

[Coelacanth]

Behold: The first ever convincing Grand National!

The stickers were a good 2 and a half hours of work to apply. The sticker vinyl was surprisingly durable, and sticks very well. However, even though the vinyl is I believe .05mm thick, I didn't want the sides of the stickers to look white (the vinyl sheet is originally matte white printed with the black pictures and a pure black surround on all sides), so after cutting them out with an X-Acto knife, I colored the edges of each sticker with black Sharpie, then let it dry a minute before applying. I think it turned out pretty good.

I decided to make me a GNX, why settle for a regular GN?

[sandkil]

Holy crap! that's good looking

[Coelacanth]

Thanks, sandkil. I had to take pics with flash off as the flash reflection was pretty bad. I'll need to trim down the body posts next, then source a battery, ESC & motor. I'm leaning towards a 1S LiPo, 35A ESC and 17.5T motor...does that sound suitable for a 1/12 pan car?

[slotcarrod]

Damn that looks great, but you need to lose the high body mounts!

[Coelacanth]

Don't worry Rod, I'll be cutting them down from the bottom. Long, protruding body posts are fugly & lazy.

[PlastiZapCA+]

That turned out beautifully! Bravo! Wish I could make graphics like that.