'60s Style '56 VW Bug street rod - Updated 5-04

[Bernard Kron]

Lately I’ve been continuing my experiments with large area decals as I develop techniques to replicate various lettering and paint styles. This time my guinea pig is a Gunze Sangyo ’56 VW Bug which I’m doing as a 60’s style customized street rod and weekend drag racer. The front end has been lowered 3 scale inches. The rear tires are the little narrow slicks that come in the recent Revell Slingster kit. Other than that the mockup is straight out of the box. The areas that will get the 60’s style panel treatment have paper cutouts of the decal templates I’ve made. The kit is a curbside, although, in typical Japanese style, quite well detailed. The wheels will be either period mags of the type offered by EMPI at the time, or perhaps Moon discs. I plan to cut out the engine cover and pop it open across the upper edge, a cooling trick popular with these types of cars. I haven’t decided whether I’ll customize the interior, since the emphasis is on the paint, stance and wheels. Paint will most likely be either a red or green candy metallic with complementary fogged panels.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

These are the EMPI wheels I’m contemplating. Oddly enough both styles can be found in the various Revell “Rat Rod” ’29 Ford Roadster Pickup and ’30 Ford Sedan kits.

[img src="https://pptprd-performanceplust.netdna-ssl.com//wp-content/uploads/imagesProducts/13952.jpg" style="max-width:100%;"]
[img style="max-width:100%;" src="http://cdn6.bigcommerce.com/s-khh1v/products/7905/images/16367/large-WHL-E9736__29805.1421970309.500.750.JPG?c=2"]

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[rsxse240]

Only problem with the 29 Ford wheels is the offset is way wrong for a Bug.  Not that it is a big deal.

[espo]

I like your decal ideas. Another thought on the engine cooling idea. It was very common and inexpensive to just put a stack of washers or a spacer of some sort between the engine cover and the top hinge, but another method of that time was an after market fiberglass air foil that mounted between the bottom of the rear window and the top of the engine cover. This directed the air flow coming over the roof into the air intakes located in that area. I had a '67 Type 1 Baja Buggy in the early 70's that had the whole fiberglass fenders, front hood and the headlight area along with this type of intake. The Empi Wheels that I used were the solid centers that look very much like a Centerline Wheel only it was all steel.  Just addition thoughts. Are you going to make your decals available at a later date ??

[Snake45]

 

These are the EMPI wheels I’m contemplating. Oddly enough both styles can be found in the various Revell “Rat Rod” ’29 Ford Roadster Pickup and ’30 Ford Sedan kits.

I'd never realized it but you might be onto something. The wheels in the '29 truck kit DO bear at least a passing resemblance to those! Interesting!

[curt raitz]

Wolfgang will be proud...

[Randy D]

Will be following along Bernard !!!

 

Randy

[DrKerry]

Looking sharp Bernard. Love the fades in the decals!!!!!!

[Rider]

Dig the fade paint decals, I'm a fan of  this era of paint style. Looking forward to watching what you do with this. 

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks everyone!

The Bug is up on its wheels with most of the final mechanical work completed. I’m going with the shallow offset Torq-Thrust style wheels from the Revell ’29 Ford Roadster Pickup kit. They’ll pass for EMPIs to my eyes. The chassis is assembled and paint detailed. There’s no engine in this curbside kit but the engine compartment is finished out in matte black in the hopes it will “disappear”. I modified a rill bar from an AMT ’40 Ford kit and installed it. The stance is set and the wheels adapted to the Gunze kit suspension with, as mentioned last time, the front suspension lowered about 3 scale inches. I cut open the engine cover and fabricated offset hinges to represent the typical popped-open hood on modified Bugs. The interior will be largely stock other than the roll bar. Now for the critical part: paint and trim.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

[Bernard Kron]

I’ve been concentrating on the paint and decal art. Everything isn’t quite settled yet, but it looks like I’m going towards gold paint and white decal stock with contrasting red graphics. I’ve also included a vintage EMPI trade logo for a race car flavor. I’ll be trying out a roof panel, and perhaps fender scallops, although I’m concerned that the design might get too busy if I include the fender details. We’ll see… The decals you see on the car were an interim design before I added the EMPI logo. That's the cool thing about working with decals, you can make some pretty radical mods without trashing the paint.

Here’s where I’m at so far.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[DrKerry]

Awesome!!!!!!!

[microwheel]

This is gonna be one cool looking Bug Bernard.

[Bernard Kron]

Thanks guys!

I’ve been concentrating on the decal design side of this project. One decision I had made was to use white decal paper in order to get white backgrounds and color into the graphics. As many of you may know, inkjet printers “assume” white paper and overlay transparent inks onto the white to make color images. If you use clear decal paper the white disappears and the base paint color on the bodywork shows through. White decal paper is very opaque and results in a true color when you print. But white decal paper has some serious downsides. One is that you must cut your decals out very accurately in order to avoid any white edges. Even then, because white decal paper is significantly thicker that clear decal paper, some white may show along the edges. Wherever possible you should design around this issue.

The other significant negative about white decal paper is that is much stiffer and less stretchable than clear. This means that if you are applying white decal stock to a compound curve the decals may bubble or fold on themselves. They may even crack along the surface. The roof of my VW bug is very much compound curved, curving continuously in all directions with virtually no flat surfaces. I attempted to make a single sheet decal for the roof, and while dimensionally it was extremely accurate, the decal would  not lay flat and conform to the roof’s shape. It wrinkled and bubbled and cracked. The ink layer broke up as a result. A true disaster!!! Take a look:

So I went back and redesigned the roof art so it could be assembled from several smaller pieces of decal. Here’s the result:

I also experimented with additional panels on the sides as well as the tops of both the front and rear fenders. As I had feared, the overall look got too busy, so I opted to only put scallops of the front fender tops, leaving large areas of gold on the sides of the front fenders and the rear fenders untouched. It should complement to areas of gold on the roof redesign. Here is the final decal art:

Unfortunately all the experimenting meant that I ran out of white decal paper. I ordered some but for now I can’t show pictures of the final art. Below are a couple of pictures shopping the additional scallops on the front fenders and the rear quarter panels.

Once the decal paper gets here I’ll apply the final graphics and can move one to clear coating and the remaining mechanical and interior work.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[Lovefordgalaxie]

Looks like the gold paint was too hot, and crazed the plastic. 

Maybe using a different primer can solve the issue. 

[Bernard Kron]

After a brief break to finish up a Revell ’29 Ford Roadster, I finally got all the decals applied. There are 20 separate decals on this car. Some are very large like the two side panels between the fenders. Others, like the star-shaped scallops at the corners and the Raus Haus text strips, are very small and thin. The white decal stock is thicker than clear decal stock and far more rigid. It also doesn’t adhere as well. And, because of the white color you have to cut them very precisely if you want to avoid white edges on everything. The bottom line is they are a real PITA to apply, big or small. I actually had to print out additional copies of several of them in order to get them down right. Phew! But it’s done now.

Below are a couple of photos of the final decal applied. Next steps are to clear coat everything and then move on to (hopefully) fabricate a stinger exhaust and then final assembly.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[Slotto]

Looks great! very 60's looking, you nailed it

[Bernard Kron]

Thanx!

With all the decals applied and the color coats well cured I applied three coats of Duplicolor Clear. Once the clear was cured I foiled the basic trim and then fabricated a stinger exhaust from styrene rod and a paint brush ferrule. And lastly I glued the wheels and tires in place. Here are two photos of where I’m at. Next up is the interior and then final assembly.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

Edited July 13, 2017 by Bernard Kron

[John Pol]

I’ve been concentrating on the paint and decal art. Everything isn’t quite settled yet, but it looks like I’m going towards gold paint and white decal stock with contrasting red graphics. I’ve also included a vintage EMPI trade logo for a race car flavor. I’ll be trying out a roof panel, and perhaps fender scallops, although I’m concerned that the design might get too busy if I include the fender details. We’ll see… The decals you see on the car were an interim design before I added the EMPI logo. That's the cool thing about working with decals, you can make some pretty radical mods without trashing the paint.

Here’s where I’m at so far.

Thanx for lookin’,
B.

what progam do you use to do your decals and it is a easy program to use great project

[Lunajammer]

The full roof decal looked fine, but it didn't contribute so much that you couldn't go without it. Still looks racy. If you're using laser printer decals, the ink tends to flake off if you do tight cutting with a knife. 

[Greg Pugh]

Cool project!

[PARTSMARTY]

Very very nice !!!

[Bernard Kron]

what progam do you use to do your decals and it is a easy program to use great project

Thanks guys! I use Photoshop to design my decals. It's very powerful but very expensive. Fortunately I've had a copy for years. There is a wonderful freeware program called Gimp (go to: https://www.gimp.org/ ) that's just as powerful. The learning curve on both these programs is steep, but the results make it worth it. And decals can be a powerful creative tool in your modeling. Highly recommended.

All the broken Photobucket links have been repaired. I hope to get back to this project real soon. Thanx for following along.