There’s a first time for everything, and this build was the first time I’d built a resin kit. While the build itself was fairly straightforward, the kit was not of a particularly high quality.
From a distance the model doesn’t look too bad. But up close, it’s got some rough spots…
The Car
It’s the 1956 Indianapolis 500 winner, the John Zink Special driven by Pat Flaherty. This was the first chassis built by legendary mechanic-turned-car-constructor, AJ Watson. It was the classic front-engined Roadster design of the era; tubular chassis with torsion bar suspension powered by the ubiquitous Offenhauser 4-cylinder engine.
The Kit
It’s a 1:43 scale kit from American manufacturer MA Scale Models, kit number 196. It has a resin body and base plate, various white metal parts, rubber tyres and vac-formed windscreen. I am unsure of its heritage or production numbers. There’s nothing on Scalemates that’s not already on the box and enquiries to the manufacturer never generated a response.
Small box because there’s not many parts.
A one-sided page of hand-written instructions is all you get! The kit also included two photos of a completed model. Strangely, the wheels in the photos are a blue/grey colour. I have yet to source a photo of the real car wearing wheels of this colour.
Scan of the decals. It’s a small decal sheet and has a rather matte finish. I have no idea how old they are as I was not able to find the kit’s release date (I know MA Scale Models started in 1978 and suspect this kit is from the 80s). The decals would prove problematic later.
The casting on this thing is ROUGH. The base does not fit inside the recess properly.
There are HUGE panel line gaps and the body surface is rather pitted like orange peel, not smooth.
Jagged surface around inside edge of the cockpit.
Looks like the manufacturer has applied some epoxy (the shiny bit) to the base plate/interior where the resin casting was really really thin. Seat belts and basic transmission (offset to the left for Indy) are cast into this piece.
The Build
First step, parts clean up.
I’ve read that getting paint to stick to resin can be an issue if the resin is not properly cleaned, so all the resin parts were thoroughly scrubbed with warm soapy water.
I wanted the model to live on a base, so it’s best to get the mounting holes etc done early in the build. I drilled a couple of holes in the chassis base (with fear it would shatter – that’s sunlight shining through the wafer-thin middle section!) then marked where the holes need to be drilled on the underside of a homemade MDF plinth.
The car ran various types of wheel in 1956 and the kit includes these three types. The castings are not very good and the style at the bottom of the pic has bits missing! I’ll be using the top two sets on this build, as they best match the pic below.
The centre hole in the wheels need to be drilled sufficiently for the knock-off wheel nuts to fit.
There are holes in the body to accommodate the axles and suspension mounting points, but they need to be drilled out to get the metal parts to fit.
Despite utilising the kit’s mounting points, that axle is not square in the chassis.
Test fitting the front end. These Roadsters ran torsion-bar suspension, much like the dirt Sprintcars from which they evolved.
Checking how the ride-height will be with wheels and tyres.
Filing mould lines, drilling holes, scraping rough edges, test fitting. Those white metal parts bend so easily…
Making sure the assembly and mounting holes and screws all match up and work before going too hard on the body prep. There is a lot of porosity and general ugliness on the underside of this thing!
A lot of wet-sanding was required to get the base to fit properly into the main body. I wet sand to avoid dangerous resin dust. The dashboard and shifter are glued in place. These parts are now ready for primer.
First paint is SMS Black Surfacer. Makes it look like a stealth sub!
Very crude interior detail is hand painted a mixture of metallic colours, plus flat black on the seat belts which are cast into the seat.
Once Tamiya Grey Primer is applied, the poor finish is far more obvious. I considered filling those Grand Canyon-sized panel lines, but decided to just go with how it was manufactured and push on with the build.
Lots of bubbles in the casting from the inside. A question to experienced resin builders: is this normal for resin models?
Imperfections under the tail tank.
Several applications of Tamiya Liquid Surface Primer were used to fill the holes.
Wet sanding the primer to remove pits and smooth the body. Note the damaged sanding block? Yeah, can’t wet sand with SMS sanding blocks…
After several primer/filler-and-rub-back coats, a coat of white primer was applied ready for body colour.
A couple of coats of Tamiya TS26 Pure White for the body colour.
After painting some semi-gloss black inside the cockpit, first decal to apply was the dash dials. All went ok, so I ploughed on…
The pink panels for the sides had to be trimmed to fit. After taking the decal from the water, it soon became apparent it is unusable 🙁
For some reason (insanity?) I moved all the pieces from the backing paper to the model to see if I could patch it back together. The answer is a definite No!
So, the broken decal pieces were removed and the body masked up to spray the pink panels.
Both sides received a couple of mist coasts then a heavier coat of a custom paint mix.
I could not find a pink lacquer to match the decals, so eye-balled a mix of Clear Pink with a dash of Strike Me Pink (a GM/Holden colour) from SMS.
It’s not an exact match to the kit’s pink, but it’s going to have to be close enough for this build.
I got my hands on a friend’s bottle of Liquid Decal Film and brushed that on the remaining decals to try and keep them together.
And it worked! The rest of the decals stayed intact, though lots of setter and softener (the strong stuff) was required to get them to stick.
As can be seen in these photos, the print quality of the decals is not particularly good compared to what we get in modern kits. Unfortunately, the pink ink in the decals reacted with the Liquid Decal Film and started to bleed – notice the slight pinkish tinge of the white circles inside the number eight digits on the tail?
Once the decals had thoroughly dried for a day or so, the body was clear coated then mounted back on the base. This makes it so much easier to work on the model when doing hand painting and final assembly.
After two coats of SMS Gloss Clear (in two sittings with a light wet-sand in between) I still wasn’t getting the finish out of the airbrush I’ve been able to get with Tamiya TS13 clear, so resorted to the micromesh system and polishing compounds for a reasonably decent finish.
Semi-gloss black was brush painted into various areas to black them out, plus silver on a couple of the suspension fittings. I also added some Tamiya panel-line wash to the panel gaps. In hindsight, I think that was a mistake – it’s almost overpowered the body finish due to the massive width and depth of the panel lines.
I sometimes wonder what this would have looked like if I’d just filled in the panel lines (like I’ve done on NASCAR builds) and forgotten about them altogether?
The tyres are soft rubber and all had this injection nub that needed to be cut off. It left quite an impression in the tread (front tyre). This imperfection will be rotated to the bottom of the wheel when mounted on the model to reduce its visibility.
Gloss black was sprayed on the rims, then scraped off the edges. I wanted to expose the metal underneath to simulate the machined edge of the rim seen in some photographs, and didn’t want the paint building up too thick beforehand.
A mix of Aluminium and Titanium was sprayed onto the rims. After this pic, the edges were scraped back to bare metal once again.
Tyres fitted to rims, ready for the final assembly stage.
The tyres have Firestone branding moulded into the sidewalls, but it’s on the extreme outer circumference of the tyre and not particularly crisp. I don’t think it would look right if I tried painting the raised surface by hand.
Back onto the tyres – I decided to sand the writing off the sidewalls (left tyre) and use the kit decals instead of trying to hand paint the raised letters (right tyre).
The tyres were then cleaned and re-fitted to the rims. (You might notice the wheels are more gold than earlier. I painted them a second time to try and match the magnesium colour of the real wheels. In hindsight, I could have tinted it even further.)
They were then hit with some gloss clear to help the decals adhere to the tyre.
Unfortunately, the radius of the Firestone lettering did not match the radius of the tyre! How do kit manufacturers screw that up?? After this pic was taken, they were sprayed with flat clear to restore the rubber look. Circular masks were cut and applied to shield the metal finish from the flat.
Running gear test fitted – axles, wheel, uprights/torsion bars and brake discs – but it looks like it needs a wheel alignment! Nothing is glued here, just re-checking that parts fit into the body after painting, and that the ride-height is still ok.
Despite not running square in the chassis or parallel to each other, the axles must be used to support the suspension and brakes. CA glue has been used to fit these parts. I’ve significantly shortened the axles so just a small nub protrudes beyond the brake disc to roughly locate the wheels later. Because the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has left-hand corners only, the brake discs on the right side have a larger offset than those on the left.
Almost ready for wheels, which will be added with epoxy glue to allow time for adjustment while the glue dries.
One rod connects the steering arm to the front wheels. Close-up photos like this reveal how rough this build is!
The knock-off wheel nuts were painted gloss black, then brush painted with Green Stuff World Chrome
The exhaust pipe is natural metal finish. After cleaning up, I polished it, then hit the headers with a little blue and yellow for heat effect. SMS clear was sprayed over the lot to prevent corrosion, but it’s taken away some of the natural lustre of the metal.
The remote starter guide pipe fits into the drilled hole in the nose
After opening the end a little, some black was added to deepen the exhaust outlet.
Cockpit padding was brush painted semi-gloss black. Fuel cap was polished then glued into the blackened hole with Kristal Klear.
The windscreen needs to be carefully cut from this weird-shaped vac-formed piece. It was glued in place with Kristal Klear
I’ve purposefully made the wheels a loose fit on the axles so there is some play to adjust them. A stone/marble straight edge (it’s the base off an old karting trophy!) is used to set the wheels parallel and vertical while the two-part epoxy sets.
And then the other side.
Final piece of work was the silver strip down the middle of the bonnet to replicate the central metal hinge. This is a thin strip of Hasegawa mirror film in matte metallic. It turned out to be the neatest part of the whole model! For some reason there is a silvering effect happening in some of the tread lines of the tyres.
Complete and ready to join its cousins on my shelf of Indy 500 winners! If you followed the build on the Wixy500 Facebook page, you’ll understand what the musk stick is about… :p
