Loose tutorial on how I do my vinyl tops.

[the60falcon]

Here's my post I put on a popular model page on Facebook a while back. This was my first one I did and I've gotten a little better since but the concept remains. I genuinely hope this encourages people to get out and do some vinyl tops of their own. I believe this to be far better looking than the tape method. But to each their own! I've since switched to mostly airbrush for my body color painting. 

I've gotten asked a LOT in the post I made last night how I did my vinyl top, please understand, this was my first one, I either got very lucky or it's not as bad as expected! I'm not going to do a full tutorial as there's guys leaps and bounds better than me at that. But I will loosely explain how I did it and what I used. My first step was to make sure I had the right supplies! My local shop didn't have all my stuff so I took a couple days to gather everything, including the styrene from Evergreen, and the Rustoleum paint shown below. After that your next step will be to research! You can F this up fast if your trim, or seams aren't in the right place. Take your time, look at the internet, look at cars at car shows. I've had weeks of research into this, even deciding on which car model I wanted to try it on. Thirdly, you'll want to start laying out your chrome trim, for this I used the rounded styrene rod. Luckily my monte is pretty square, I found it easiest to do the front windshield, rear windshield ,and  then one side  around the door windows first, thus leaving me somewhere to make the rest meet up to. After that I found the center of the car, and made 4 marks, 2 front, 2 rear where I wanted my "seams" to be, this is where I used the flat styrene strips. By this point you should have a nice idea of what's going to be "vinyl" and what's going to be body color. The next and final step before spraying your roof(if going in the order I did) will be to carefully tape the car off I use Tamiya tape for EVERYTHING. It sticks nice and flat. I rarely have bleed issues. Be careful to get the edges very tight to your trim, leaving less areas you'll have to touch up later on. Now you're ready to spray your vinyl top, I warm ALL of my paint in the sink with some warm water before spraying, shaking it every so often. I then sprayed the roof, let it cure a couple hours, peeled the tape and bare metal foiled the rear window trim. I had plenty of time to do other stuff to this model while it dried, so I gave it a full coue days  to cure, then shot the main body color, again checking to make sure the tape was nice and tight everywhere.. I did get a little blue overspray on the rear trim but that's easy enough to re-foil. I hope this helps you guys build up the courage to go try it yourself. 

 

[yh70]

great job..i wish i knew that paint was around some years ago. i did one using a brush to go all over the roof dapping the paint on and it turned out great also.but your way would been so much easier and way less time..

[johnyrotten]

Very nice job, I may have to try this out. I also wonder if that paint would mimic a bed liner material?

[the60falcon]

58 minutes ago, johnyrotten said:

Very nice job, I may have to try this out. I also wonder if that paint would mimic a bed liner material?

I think if you did a couple passes, with one or two a little further away and heavy at the end to "roughen" it up it would be great for that! 

[Maindrian Pace]

That paint works very well, nice effect and realistic. Great tip.

[Leica007]

Thanks for sharing, the top looks very good and you did an excellent job.  I wonder if you can paint over it to get different color, if you airbrush in thin coats. Makes me want to try your technique.

[the60falcon]

3 minutes ago, Leica007 said:

Thanks for sharing, the top looks very good and you did an excellent job.  I wonder if you can paint over it to get different color, if you airbrush in thin coats. Makes me want to try your technique.

I haven't tried them yet, but rustoleum does have at least white and a brownish color too. I'm sure the white could be painted to do a blue, green or any other wild color some of the cars back then had. Good idea, I didn't even think of it. 

[Rattlecan Dan]

Great looking Vinyl! Thanks for the tutorial. Nice looking build. Is it finished?

[the60falcon]

15 hours ago, Rattlecan Dan said:

Great looking Vinyl! Thanks for the tutorial. Nice looking build. Is it finished?

it is! I'll have to get some pics of it in the "under glass" section

[Bainford]

Nice tutorial. Some good, useful information there. Thanks.