Mini Muscle

Yet another Hot Wheels project. This time, the Kevin Bartlett Camaro. Now, Hot Wheels do indeed have a 1981 Camaro. But, it’s an IROC car, so it has a bonnet scoop as well as a roll cage. Win some, lose some.

The bonnet scoop had to go. Asking around at work revealed a colleague who had a Dremel tool. Ever heard of these? An electric diegrinder with lots of attachments – a real boon to a modeler. Cutting, grinding, smoothing, polishing – all are made easier with a Dremel. And Paul didn’t want this one back! Winning!

After drilling out the rivets, the body was the start. I cut out the scoop, which was the easy part. To ll in the massive hole, I got a sheet of modeling styrene and glued (with Araldite) some on the underside of the bonnet. The hole was then lled in with Tamiya modeling putty. A few days to let the putty cure, then sanding back (with the Dremel), more putty to ll in small imperfections.

Seeing I was ddling around with modifying the body, I decided to have a crack at ared guards. I used a thicker styrene this time, the thickness being a pretty good match for the original ares in this scale. This nearly proved the undoing of the whole project. The ares kept popping out of their spots. I tried both Superglue and Araldite and neither wanted to work. The answer was to score the surface of the styrene that was supposed to be glued, so the Araldite (that’s what I settled on) had something to key into. But this took several goes to get right. Patience and persistence are the key, here. The ares were too wide, so out came Mr Dremel again, to trim them back. Then paint. Oh, so much paint. Flat grey as an undercoat, then more body lling, ling, sanding, then another grey, then the blue and nally a set of stickers from Pattos Place. (Just google ‘Pattos Place’ – you’ll nd them). Making an air dam for the Camaro was beyond me. Kevin will just have to put up with understeer in high-speed corners... I reckon all this took me 50 or 60 hours. Learning as you go makes it longer. I have more such projects in mind; the trick is to nd suitable donor models. Finding Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars of the right model (or nearly so) can be difficult.

I’d love to see your attempts at this sort of modi cation – it’s a step beyond just paint and stickers.