It's been awhile since my last update. I finally got the base colors painted onto the Trailwalker body. I had put it off long enough and finally got motivated enough to finish the body or at least get closer to a finished body. Body painting has never been one of my favorite parts of this hobby, so I struggle sometimes with getting the job done!
A little back story of the paint scheme that I was trying to recreate. Way back in 1993 I purchased an old worn and rusted out 1976 Chevy Silverado 2WD shortbed pickup for $400 bucks. The body was really rough. The floor boards were completely rotted out and the cab corners and rocker panels were rusted out to the point that they didn't even exist anymore. But it had a good frame and a great V8 350 motor and I LOVED it! It ran and drove awesome. It just wasn't that pretty too look at!
I spent the spring of 1994 welding in new floor pans, cab corners and rocker panels. That summer I scraped up enough money to buy new fenders, doors and mirrors. I had a local body shop throw on a coat of silver paint on them and got them installed. A couple years passed and in 1996 I sent it to another local body shop to get a brand new bed and a fresh coat of black paint. When it rolled out of the body shop it looked like a brand new truck. It looked great! Then in 1999 I lost my mind and sold it! Biggest mistake I've ever made and I still regret it to this day.
So here is are a few pics of how it looked when I first got it and how it looked after I had put the new doors and fenders on it. Sadly I cannot find the pics of it after I had it painted black. I have them somewhere, just can't find them at the moment. Once I find them I'll add the pics later on.
I did a Google search just to see if I could find any other pics of this paint style and ran across this pic. It is the exact same color and looks bada$$. It is the only pic I could find of this color, so I'm wondering if this paint scheme they used back in 76' was rare.
So now onto the body painting. Here is the first layer I put down on top of the primer coat. It Rust-Oleum 2X Satin Claret Wine. It is the closest color that I could find to match the burgundy/maroon color.
Taped off the Claret Wine color and sprayed Satin Granite. It is a close match to the faded gray color.
Next up was taping off the whole body to paint the black around the windows and inside the bed. After that had dried, I spent hours taping off to add the chrome/silver accent stripes in between the Claret Wine and the Granite and around the fender well openings and the tailgate to match how the 1:1 looked. I used Metallic Silver on this step. The cap on the spray can looked chrome, but when I sprayed it on it came out like this. I guess it will do.
That's all for now. I'm not sure if I want to try and "weather" it or just let it get "weathered" on it's own when it gets rock rashed out on the trail. I still need to add some black panel lines for the doors and hood. The lines in the lexan are not very deep, so it may be difficult to get a good straight line with a fine tip Sharpie. Also would like to add a thin black line in the chrome moldings like the 1:1 has, but that may be very difficult to do also.
I'm hoping to get the rear taillight stickers on and get all the scale accessories back on the body soon. I'm still undecided if I should keep these wheels or find something else. I thought about painting them chrome and adding some black accents to them. I'll figure that out later on!
My Sendero and Trailwalkers are RTR's and came with plastic. I actually thought about upgrading to alum caps, but I have had great luck so far with the stock plastics caps. I think you would be better off using the plastic bushings. On my race buggies, I have used nitro fuel tubing in the alum shock caps instead of plastic. I works well. You just have to make sure not to tighten down the locknut all the way so that the shock can swivel.
