Carrying on from my previous post, as promised I’ve been trying some new things recently for The Road Crew, buying new bodies, new chassis, and new wheels to change some things up and try some things I haven’t tried before. Let me run these by you, dear readers, and see how they came out…
From Chrome to Red and Back to Black
In the shop tinkering during the bad weather, I thought I’d mess around with wheels and try some new things. First I put a set of red 5-lugs on the white Johnny Lightning Charger to replace the chrome ones; all 7 of the Chargers in the Crew have the chrome 5-lugs, so I wanted to do something a little different on one of them. Of course this isn’t the first time I’ve used a 5-lug wheel other than chrome, but they are few and far between, and I thought the red wheels looked pretty good on this one, matching the red tail stripes as they do, since this is the only one of the Chargers that has tail stripes that aren’t black.
A while ago, quite by accident, I came into possession of a pair of stock-style Aurora wheels in black, which I’d never seen before. At first I was like, well, what am I gonna do with these? But then an idea occurred to me, and I thought I’d try putting a set on the mysterious red Toyota Land Cruiser I acquired during my pre-X-mas trip to Aladdin’s Cave. I thought they looked rather smart on the black & red truck.
The results above got me thinking: what would a set of black 5-lugs look like? That might be interesting…
Dash Motorsports ’69 Roadrunner in TURQUOISE with black wheels
So here was my experiment of taking a couple of remaining sets of red Vincent 5-lugs and running them through the paint shop to make them matte black. Easy enough: just spray some Testor’s in the garage and wait a day, and while waiting for paint to dry, I opened a package which contained this turquoise Dash Motorsports ’69 Roadrunner. These are sold as kits, and up to this point I’ve only ever bought one of these (in medium blue) and I wasn’t all that happy with it due to scale; it’s a bit undersized in comparison to the other cars, similar to Dash’s ’65 GTO.
Its still a decent body though, a little vague on detail overall but correctly proportioned and has a good grille/headlight assembly, and when I saw this turquoise one for sale from a vendor I am well familiar with that claimed it was the last one they had in this attractive color, I decided to jump on it. I thought this model would look particularly good with those black painted 5 lugs, and judging by these pictures, I daresay I was right! I set up the last of the original “Tuff Ones” chassis I had in my stash, with its original brown/white field mags, and replaced the original wheels with my painted Vincents. A set of Jel Claws finished her off. How does she look?
Model Motoring ’67 Chevelle in “color keyed” ORANGE with black top and black wheels
This was a definite “new try.” I found an orange Dash Motorsports chassis online one night, bought it, and then wondered about using that last set of black painted 5-lug wheels on it…and then thought that could only go with a black or an orange car, so I picked one that was black and orange, namely another of my favorite ’67 Model Motoring bodies that I am now sodden with, the Chevelle Malibu.
It all came together in minutes once I had all the parts assembled, and once oiled and broken in its fast on the track. To be honest (with myself), I’m not thrilled with how this one came out. It seems like its just…I dunno, too much orange. I think the body would look better on a standard black chassis…and with chrome wheels…so I’ll probably just redo it at some point.
A ’55 Hot Rod Gets Hotter!
If the orange Chevelle was a misfire, however, the colored Dash chassis idea worked much better on this awesome flamed ’55! I’ve already profiled this car as a recent purchase but I decided to punch it up even more with a yellow chassis that runs exceptionally well, and to the chrome 5-lug wheels I added the detail of a dot of red enamel paint on the end of each axle. Subtle touches like that make a difference, and this already great looking car now looks better than ever!
So that’s about all the Road Crew action that’s fit to print this month! Always more coming, of course, because I can’t stop buying this stuff no matter how much I should be spending my money on “practical” things. Gotta do what makes me happy, I always say!
I think these look terrific but you have always had a great eye for color, design, and effect. These changes add some cool variety to the races and look great doing it. Well Done!