Here’s part 3 of the Porsche 356 coupe resin kit build project!
Color: so many choices! I often find myself reversing the official racing colors of Italy and Germany; I think a lot of German cars look great painted bright red, while most Ferraris, Maseratis and Alfa Romeos look terrific in silver. But of course, it’s a personal choice: choose the color that works for you, but consider the color of your primer along with your final topcoat choice; a lighter, brighter color is going to look more vibrant over a light colored primer, while a darker color will appear deeper and richer over a dark primer.
A look on the interwebz confirmed that I wanted my 1964-(ish) 356C “Outlaw” coupe to be bright red with yellow racing stripes, a color combo I always thinks looks great on a racing track (and which I’ve used, in some variation, on both a Ferrari and a Jaguar in my racing fleet). I originally went looking specifically for a replication of the famous Porsche color “Guard’s Red”, but quickly decided on an enticing shade of bright red from Testor’s that I thought would fit the bill nicely!
For some reason, I can never seem to find white primer in a hobby store made by the usual firms that make hobby paint, so some time ago I opted for a full 16 oz can of Krylon white primer from Lowe’s. Krylon paint is great for a lot of things, but I don’t necessarily recommend it for plastic model kits because I’ve noticed that it sometimes doesn’t play too well with some of the more commonly found brands of finish paint. Nonetheless I opted to use it, so after a dip in a TSP-infused bath and a blow dry to clean off the surface, I carried my little car out to the back yard with a hook tool (so as not to get oil from my hands on it), and sprayed a light coat of white primer. About 4 hours later, I went back and sprayed a second coat. And that was it for painting for that day.
The following day I picked up the now dry body and went over it with 1000 grit wet sandpaper and then washed it, dipped it in the TSP and rinsed it again, and returned to the back yard to spray my first top cost. The color was stunning: I knew I’d made the right choice!
The Testor’s appeared to go on OK, but I got into some trouble with my second coat. You know the golden rules with spray paint: not too far away, but not too close; not too fast, but not too slow! I broke one of those rules, because I wound up with a run on the driver’s side rocker panel.
The unfortunate thing is that it took an entire week for the paint to cure enough to handle. It is outside the scope of this post to discuss the merits of different brands of paint (maybe that’s a good topic for a future post!), but I find this is often the case with Testor’s gloss paint: their pigments are fantastic, but they seem to take FOREVER to dry! It probably doesn’t help that I sprayed it over the Krylon primer; too bad I can never find Testor’s primer in white!
This timing would up working out for me because I had to make a 3 day trip across the state for work, during a heat wave in which the Denver area sweltered in 100 degree temperatures every day, so my garage was like an oven helping to bake the finish dry. Even so, after I got home I took it down into my basement and let it cure in the cooler conditions for 2 more days before feeling it was dry enough to be handled without damage to the finish.
That was when I found the run (my eyes aren’t what they used to be, I admit) so I had to sand out the run and it was back to the yard for another couple of coats and another week of waiting. Yeah, 2 weeks of waiting for the paint to dry! Not fun, but anyone who’s done any real automotive body work-which I have-knows that these things simply cannot be rushed!
Eventually I got a finish I was almost happy with, but there was some orange peel and overspray that displeased me, so out came the 1500 grit sand paper, and that was followed by a session with Turtle Wax polishing compound and finished off with two buff sessions with the incomparable Meguire’s cleaner-wax. Yep, it’s just like working on the paint on a real car!
All of this took a LONG time and a LOT of work, which is why I said-going back to part 2 of this saga-you don’t want any surprises at this point when you go to fit your body on your chassis and do the final assembly!
In the next part of this build process, we’ll install the window insert (there are important “gotchas” to watch for in this process!) and then start fitting the appropriate decals and decorations to give this “Outlaw Porsche” the attitude it should have on the track!