I have started work on an old Revell XKE. I'm building it as curbside since I was not too sure how the front hinged hood would look closed. The kit body is split in the middle. Up to this point most of the body would has been filling sink marks and hiding the joints on either side of the doors. The joints on the front and rear clips are covered by the bumpers. The wheels are narrowed Fujimi wires mounted on carved tires. The kit tires were far to narrow to fit the Fujimi wheels. I was not to sure about the ride height, but it isa scale 8" which seems about right. Below is the mockup in primer.

Comments?
Russ


https://gallery3.kitmaker.net/showphoto.php/photo/467464/ppuser/56345

Hi Russ.

I dropped the correct link in your post show the image shows up there. Your build looks great so far, those wire wheels are very impressive and the stance works well.

Looking forward to more progress.

Cheers, D

Hi D,

Thanks for the help with the image. I do not post that often so I always forget the correct procedure to get the image to show up. Can you tell what I should have done to display the image inline.

As to the wires. I used Detail Masters wire wheels once in the past but it looks like they are no longer available. Even if I could find them they require too wide a tire to be correct on 60's sports cars.

Russ

No problem Russ.

If you open the image in your gallery, at the bottom of the page is a box labelled "Linked Thumbnail".
To the right of that address is a small brown box. Click on the brown box and 2 more addresses will open up below it.
The first is labelled "HTML Code". Copy and paste that code string into your post and you will have the image there.

Hope this helps, if not, let me know.

Cheers, D

Russ, looking good. Classic Jaguar bodywork has fascinated me always! As D. said: nice stance.

Gabriel

Russ,
Looking forward to following your XKE build. I do fondly remember being a passenger in my friend father's XKE. The body shape to this day still turns heads. It's timeless for sure.

Joel

Which car did Enzo Ferrari himself very publicly exclaim to be the most beautiful car ever made ? You got it. - E Type Jaguar ! Also mass produced , very competitive and a fraction of the cost of Enzo's product !

Richard,
How true. But back in the 1960s it was still way out of nearly all of our pocket books. Still, just the thought I driving around town in my own XKE to this day is mind boggling. Naturally, it would have been BRG and a black interior. I never much cared for the beige leather.

Joel

It has been awhile since I posted an update. After getting the body seams cleaned up and the wire wheels taken care of I had thought I was over the major hump on this build. Just waiting for a few dry days to avoid airbrush problems spraying in an unheated garage.

I was sure wrong and I guess that is the challenge of working with a really old kit. The headlights had no interior buckets which I formed out of thin brass. Which means more primer. The highlights themselves were just chrome disks and needed clear parts out of the old parts drawer. The kit does not include the chrome part on the top of the doors. I formed this again out of thin brass. The rear view mirror is wrong. Most early XKEs had the rear view mirror mounted to a rod running up just behind the windshield. I also realized the XKE has a very thin chrome strip running down the front fenders. I'm hoping that fine solder wire will conform to the shape of the fenders once the body is painted and will have enough shine to look like chrome.

Both the chrome and clear parts have needed a lot of clean up. I'm hoping Alclad chrome will do the trick to cover the bare plastic. I still have no good idea what to do about the Jaguar script on the trunk. It is not raised very much and I'd hate to wreck the paint trying to dry brush chrome on it.

Any comments our ideas would be appreciated. I wonder if old kits are worth the challenge sometimes. In the case of the XKE there aren't any alternatives. It is just going to take a lot of hours.

Russ

Russ,
Sure sounds like you're conquering each and every problem as you encounter it. As for the really old kits, rarely do they come anywhere close to what we've become accustomed to with today's kits, and we "bitch" at anything less then perfect.

I'm not sure if you were referring to brushing Alcad Chrome on by hand, which you can't, as Alcad needs a base/primer to stick to.

As for the Jaguar insignia on the truck, I'd try a artist caliber super fine silver marker. I've got two of them, and they each cost about $10, so they're not cheap, but they will do the job. Just use the side at an angle rather then the tip, and you'll be fine.

Joel

Joel,

Thanks for the tip about the marker pen. What brand do you use? I experimented with a silver pencil but did not like the results. On the chrome I was going to use Alclad black primer before spraying chrome, but do I need to strip the part completely before spraying?

Russ

Russ,
The two brands that I use are DecoColor for the Silver and Faber Castell for the Black. Just go into a Michaels, AC Moore, or a even a local Art supply store and ask them what they recommend. Just be sure that the tips are super extra fine. I've tried Sharpie's and they just don't work well enough. The DecoColor actually has a mixing steel ball you can hear when you shake it up.

I long ago threw out my Alcad Gloss Black. It's enamel bases, and takes days to weeks to really dry. The two best gloss and semi gloss blacks I've found to date are still Tamiya's and Mr. Color.

Joel