At the moment, I am finishing a lot of older projects, cleaning out my closet so to speak. Even though I am finishing those, I did wanted to start a new build too. A somewhat simple build, good for practising my airbrush skills.

When I held the two body parts together, it dawned on me; it’s not a hippe, it looks like a gator! So this is going to be a first for me. Where I am ok with abstract and materialistic airbrushing, I am horrible with living things. I just can not get that done properly.
But, if one doesn’t practise, it will not succeed. The plans are made and the goal is set: Create a gator paintjob on the rail-dragster and make it look ok.

The alignment of the two halves is off and some carefull sanding is necessary. Because the two body halves can not be cemented together before paint, it is key to get it as straight and fitting as possible, before painting and assembly later.

When sanding on a part, leave all the tapes in place, except for the part you’re working on. It makes the body halves shift as little as possible.

And finally some putty on the rear quarter panels

And here we go; trying to work on something ‘lively’, Can tell you now that I need way more practise, but I showed it to my kids of 2 and 5 and both, indepently said it looked like a ‘gator.  So I did something wright.

09-02-2017:

Today I worked some more on the Schnappy, the body was clearcoated and looked ok. I painted the inside of the tubs red, almost starts to look like a watermelon instead of croc, and painted the inside of the wheels red.

After painting the parts, I started assembling the (poorly molded and executed) engine, ofcourse it was hemi orange with black valvecovers, just looks so much better than those chrome covers.

The kit had a clear oil-pan and I thought that gimmick was cute, so I left it. The crankshaft is somewhat funny, looking closely, it looks like a crankshaft for a 4-banger, not a V8. But nobody will ever notice.

The blower was added

And I did a dry-fit to see how things will go.

It is time for detailing, first I made small pieces out of insulation wiring,

Put small wire through them

And we have ignition cables. I thought of a new way to make consistent small pieces and it shows, all the black little pieces look similar and gives a more even look

Hooked it up to the distributor and presto: an wired engine, but that’s only the beginning.

17-02-2017:
This is a modelkit with low partscount, just slapping the thing together would be too easy and too quick, so I decided to give it more detail.

I added the throttlelinkage to the blower and added the fuellines to the fueltank.

Because a single fuelline would be unlogical for a dragster, I added 4 more fuellines to the collector and hooked it up to the fuelpump in the front.

Added some seatbelts

And started assembling the askewed frontend. Which is horrbile.

I drilled a few holes in the body and used some wire to hold the frame in the right position and cut the steering linkage in halve, making it possible to get the wheels straight.