Team Rahal's Reynard CART cars

Modeling Descriptions and Photos - Initial Assembly

Comparing the 1998 and 1999 Reynard Chassis
The Revell's CART series kits are becoming popular among scale modelers. The construction of the kit is rather simple with no engine details. Revell offers numerous kits to build different CART team cars, but they all share same parts except decals and wheels.

The kit itself isn't the finest, the moldings are not crisp enough to make this kit sharp. And there are some questionable areas where body shapes are actually different between the car and the kit. Having said that, overall building process is a fun one. ^_^ The kit contains both: raining/slick tires and road course/speedway course wings, so four possible configurations can be made with this one kit.

Let's compare two different kits featured by Revell: the top parts will build into 1998 Reynard cars and the bottom one will build into 1999 version. The red arrows show the different aerodynamics between 1998 and 1999 Reynard chassis. I think I will build both of them, adding moderate details. I am also planning to make few scratch-build parts to enhance the overall quality of these models.

Sanding Off Tires
These are nice BBS wheels with Firestone tires mounted. The original tires are way too shiny, I gave some sanding to tone down the shine. I used 400 grade sand paper for this.

Finishing the Tires
I applied decals and gave a black wash. I used 50% Windex and 50% semi-gloss acrylic paint to formulate a wash. The black wash also helped chrome parts to look realistic. BTW, look at these cool "Miller Lite" decals! We must be adults, huh?

Front Wing Replacement
The vertical panels on the front wing are very thick and dull, I decided that I could use little bit of scratch building here. I cut "Plastruct" sheet (I believe the thickness I used was 0.3") to exact shape of the side panels. I slightly sand all around edges so they are sharper. Then I began adding the Gurney flaps to the sides.

Gurney Flaps
I completed the process of adding Gurney flaps. Then I carefully cut "L" shaped Gurney flap supporter with sharp hobby knife. I sanded off uneven edges as well.

Assembly of Side Panel
I drilled small holes through out the Gurney flap supporter, adding some details. The picture on the right shows the completed side panel.

Finished Side Panel
I did not forget to drill holes where "wing adjustment pin" goes. The newly built side panel looks much better than the thick original panel!

Modifying Aerodynamics
The tail fin and a panel from sidepod cover were removed because I wanted to give two different aerodynamic settings for each car.

Initial Painting on Parts
The major snow storms have hit Chicago twice in three days and everything is still closed. The picture shows my drive way covered 12+ inches snow and it was still coming down. A good thing was that I was able to stay home and relax watching some day time talk shows (actually I was trapped in the house due to tons of snow). ^_^ I was in a modeling mood, I continued to build these CART cars.

Various aerodynamic parts were first painted with gloss white. I used different grades of polishing cloth ranging #3600 to #8000 to bring out a fairly decent shine. I did not use any polishing compounds at this stage since I still need to add decals and apply another paint coat on top of the white.

Painting Exterior Aerodynamics
Until I started masking these parts, I thought building this kit would be an easy task. Not so! I spent some time finding a correct position where I need to mask in order to apply the gloss blue.

I had to duplicate several decals (red strip decals which separate blue and white) on a piece of paper and used them as a masking guide. The problem I found was that these decals were somewhat thin, the masking line can be seen through the decal. Thus it was necessary for me to find "exact" line where the color shades change from white to blue and place red stripe decals in a way they touch the shade line by edges.

I was supposed to go out for Christmas shopping thirty minutes ago. "Okay, okay, I will get ready now! Give me another 5 minutes! Please!" ^_^

One side pod cover is done now and I am finally satisfied after a long frustration of masking process.