Alright I made some decent progress on finishing up the Bug over the last week or so. Luckily the Weather cooperated and I was able to finish up the paint.
I always end up spending an obscene amount of time getting the paint perfect even though I plan to scratch it up and weather it and this Bug body was no exception.
Now to scuff it up and expose some of the other layers of paint.
I know this should be fiberglass and shouldnt rust but... shhhhh quiet and no one will know
Getting ready for a wash, I use some tiny little water based paint samples that the hardware store has cheap. Water it down, let it sit and dry up and dab it off to get a nice natural dirty look.
Real rust was applied (its an iron paint with an activator thats used to get it to oxidize) in a few spots. I really like how it made the headlights look, the lenses were also hit with a light dusting of the darker color (Tamiya Nato Black).
Some lexan mirrors were glued onto my 3D printed side view mirrors. It came in square sheets which I cut into little squares, marked the circle and belt sanded to its rough shape and hand sanded to finish.
The E6000 had a reaction to the reflective back of this material which I actually ended up liking so I'll keep them like that.
I designed up a front bumper, the first version ended up being way to big and ugly so I slimmed it down as much as I could and came up with this.
Behind the yellow lenses (which I still need to weather) are 2 m3 screws used to mount it, I thought this would be the best way to hide them. There are also 2 screws on each side going to the chassis rails.
I worked up a rear bumper which ended up way too wide as I was trying to accommodate the side exhaust on the engine, but I think I'll be cutting off the exhaust and rerouting it so I can make a much narrower rear bumper.
Here you can also see the Junkyard Stance rear louvers which have been weathered and rusted.
I decided to stick to the engine I had instead of downloading a much more detailed model for a few dollars. I had already made mounts and messed with fine tuning its placement so decided to stick with it.
Instead of masking up the paint job I spayed the majority silver, then came back to the fan case with a lid full of black paint which I poured on the case and let run around. This worked surprisingly well. I then got an old can of black that was low and sputtering, sprayed it from a distance to get that dirty greasy speckled look. Later on I used some paint pens for coloring in the coil and distributor.
Not trying to flex! just trying to get some light on the side.
I've already got the new narrower rear bumper mostly designed and should be able to print it tonight and have something tomorrow morning to test.
