'78 Chevrolet Malibu 4D Sedan.

[W-409]

After a long break I finally sat down on my workbench and did something with model cars! Last spring and summer went pretty much with Drag Racing our Stock Eliminator car, plus that now in the autumn I've been busy in the garage with my 1:1 '62 Chevy II. But now I felt like I wanted to work with plastic a bit, and instead of continuing older projects I decided to start a new one which might be a bit easier, Monogram's 1/32 scale '78 Malibu.

The kit doesn't have too many parts, but the few parts that are attached to the parts trees are actually surprisingly good. Even the body looks great even though grill, lights and that kind of parts are molded as one piece to the body...

It was clear right away when I got this kit that I'm not building it as a Cop Car. Since several of these G-Body Malibus were sold as new here in Finland, I want to build this to look like something that could have been cruising on Finnish roads when it was new. And because the American Cars around here back then were usually pretty poor models (four door, small engine and very few options), the 4D Sedan body style is actually a good thing.

First thing was to fill the holes from kit's roof. They were meant for the emergency lights. Also those "high spots" or whatever they're called right next to the drip rail had to be removed as well...

Next step was the wheels and tires. Kit comes GM steel wheels and Good Year tires with raised letters. Those raised letters just didn't fit to the original look, so I sanded them away. But then I noticed a set of AirTrax resin wheels and tires that looked just right size for this Malibu. Also those wheels were the basic steel wheels that I'm a huge fan of... So I decided to go with those instead.

But how to make those AirTrax wheels fit to the kit axles? Well, I cut the piece where kit axle goes in from the original kit wheels and glued that piece to backside of the AirTrax wheel... Simple.

And then the seats... I wanted to have a bench seat, but the kit comes with buckets... Well, I cut the center console away and made a rough basis for the 3rd person to sit in. I guess the final shape will be done with Bondo and sanding...

[R. Thorne]

Welcome back, Niko.  I always enjoy your builds.

[1972coronet]

I really , REALLY wish that those GM A/G ( A-Special ? G-Special ? ) were done in 25th scale .

Certainly , I'm not alone in this .

As many of those as I built as a kid , this is the first time that I can recall seeing the Mount Prospect 'P1' livery ! Wonder if Monogram was capitalising on the Blues Brothers ? 

[W-409]

Thanks, I appreciate the kind words!

And I'd definitely like to have this G-Body Malibu in 1/25. I'd find use for several of them immediately as this body style has potential for several different builds... And if for example '78 Malibu was done as a kit, it wouldn't be tricky to modify into other G-Body models either (Resin Transkits?)...

 

Anyway, the bench seat is slowly coming together. I had to build a rear "wall" for the seat from sheet styrene. Then I started smoothing everything out with putty. Usually I've used the same putty that I use on 1:1 cars, but because this part is a bit tricky to sand smooth, I used Green Putty this time as it's much easier to sand. I'm sure there are still some minor sanding required, but probably I'll shoot a coat of primer next to see how much more work it needs...

[W-409]

Something minor has happened since my last update, the front seat was sprayed with a coat of filler spray to smooth out all of those minor flaws at once. Then after a bit of sanding I brush painted it with a Humbrol color. Not perfect, but good enough to be hidden inside the car...

Some filler was also applied to the roof as well. And at the same time I also removed the spotlight hole from driver's door and smoothed that out with putty.

And the chassis was painted too. Everything is done with a brush and that required some very careful painting in some areas (And some trial and error!) as everything was molded as one piece. But luckily it turned out decent in the end.

[DumpyDan]

Nice job, I have never seen one of these done.  So far pretty awesome work, keep it going now I want to see it done.

 

[W-409]

Thanks Dan! I haven't seen any of these built either, so I have no clue either how this kit looks when it's done.

After a bit of sanding and scribing the panel lines a bit deeper the body was ready to be shot with Primer. But before that I had to mask off the molded in grille and tail lights, as otherwise some of the molded in details could be hidden under paint. My plan is to BMF those when the body is painted, clear coated and polished...

After the first coat of Primer the body looked surprisingly good. Usually at this point I find a couple of small errors that need to be fixed before painting, but it looks like this time I can spray some color on it next.

And last here's a picture of the interior tub that got some color on it as well. The floor is Revell's Flat Black and backseat and door panels are painted with the same stuff as I used with the front seat. Of course I need to add some details to the door panels before I can install anything on place...

[Reuhkapelti]

Great to see progress on this Malibu again. It's gonna look so sharp when finished. Thanks for the info regarding the FCMA forum, I noticed that new address too, but this morning though. 

[PARTSMARTY]

Very cool indeed !!!

[W-409]

Thanks Gents!

The first attempt at painting the body didn't turn out quite as good as I hoped. It's not a disaster, but I guess somehow the paint reacted with the primer creating a horrible looking finish. I'm hoping that once I let it dry for a few days, light sanding and repainting would fix it... The body looks better in the pictures than it really is, if it was that good I wouldn't have to repaint it.

[randyc]

LIke it!  Nice.

[W-409]

Thanks Randy!

I'm happy to say that I got the paint job fixed. After it was completely dry, I sanded it with 1,000 grit hoping that I won't go through the paint as then I would have to start all over again. Luckily that didn't happen so when the paint job looked smoother, I went back to the garage and sprayed another light coat of gold on the body. This time the result looks much better, so now I'll let it dry and then I'll shoot some clear on it...

[Sledsel]

Lookin good... Nice color.

[moparfarmer]

Keep this progress coming..Lookin' real good so far..

[W-409]

Thanks Andy and Wayne! Somehow I've always liked this (or something close anyway) color the best on these G-Bodies. So I just had to paint mine that way.

Now I decided that the body had dried enough so that I could clear coat it. I sprayed two light coats, one kind of "almost-wet-coat" and then one wet coat of clear on it. I'm not sure if that's enough to be polished, but I need to try as I can't spray any more clear on the body or otherwise some of the smaller details and chrome trim will be hidden under the paint...

And of course as I finished shooting the clear, a couple pieces of dust landed to the hood and roof... Luckily polishing should take care of them.

[geewhiz]

I remember when this kit was in the hobby shops years ago but I never bought one of them.  I wish I would have now.  Niko, this build is absolutely fantastic!!!  I look forward to seeing more progress!!!  ?????????

[W-409]

Well, it's been a few years since I've worked on this project, but now that I got my '41 Plymouth done that had also been stalled for a long time (and several times) during the build process, I thought I'd finish something else that has been boxed away for a while. And this one came to my mind.

In 2017 I clear coated the body so now that the clear coat was properly dry, it was time to polish it. I had sprayed a little lighter coat of clear than usual because I didn't want to lose all of the thin details on the body, so I had to be very careful not to polish through the clear. The 1/32 scale didn't help either, because all body panels are really small compared to the regular 1/24 or 1/25 that I'm used to. But, the end result came out  pretty good.

 

[espo]

Smooth like glass. Like the color as well. 

[FoMoCo66]

That clear must be hard as a rock. It looks so smooth.

[TopherMcGinnis]

That paint is NICE! I'd drive it. You may want to go ahead and cut the Cadillac-convertible(I can't tell you how many people ive met that cant say catalytic converter)out so your shelf doesn't smell like rotten eggs ?

[Nazz]

On 4/14/2024 at 10:20 AM, espo said:

Smooth like glass. Like the color as well. 

 I agree.

 

Jerry

[RomanII]

Great color choice and great paint job!  I had forgotten about all of the molded in pieces like headlamps, grille, and tail lamps.  That was poor design on the part of Monogram way back then, and it kept me from ever building one.

[W-409]

Thanks for the kind words! They're appreciated.

David, you're right that the molded in body parts are a downside in this kit, as well as the lack of chrome parts. But honestly I don't think it's that big deal. With some careful BMF work and a "chrome plating" for the bumpers I think they can look pretty good.

 

I got the wheels and tires done. They are both AirTrax resin items, tires are painted flat black and clear coated with flat clear out of a spray can, wheels are Revell gloss black enamel. I wanted Dog Dish style hubcaps for this one, so I made them out of aluminum. Actually, I had done a few sets of those when I worked at a machining shop earlier.

[W-409]

Been busy and had very little time to work on anything besides 1:1 scale cars. But finally got some progress done on this thing.

All chrome trim on the body was done with BMF. Window trims and drip rail moldings were easy, but those molded-in tail lights and especially front grille and headlight bezels/headlights were really tricky to do cleanly. Tail lights were done out of a single piece of BMF each, after some careful work I was able to stretch the BMF so that it covers the whole tail lights and doesn't have many wrinkles on it.

For the grill I BMF'ed the thicker horizontal grille bars but between those the grille has some finer mesh, and there was no way BMF could be stretched well enough for the mesh so that I could black wash those areas later. After some thinking I ended up chroming the mesh-areas with Molotow. The end result is not flawless, but I think I can live with it. Obviously, the mesh still needs to be black washed, but that's not before the Molotow has dried properly. Molotow was also used for the headlight bezels, or to be more clear, for the headlight assemblies theirselves, the bezels are BMF.

Next I'll need to black wash the grille, paint tail lights and side markers and do some dry-brushing to the "Malibu" emblems on the body.

 

[espo]

Great looking paint and body trim. Once you got the final color and clear on the body this really became an eye catcher.