the past few days, Joom and I have been working on our custom livery project. after extended discussion with several members, we all agreed that it would be really cool to have racing liveries for existing dNano since we haven’t seen anything new since XP’s release of the Reventon and Kyosho’s most recent release in February of the C6-R. with this in mind, i located Patto’s Place for decals, ordered a few sets and Joom skillfully installed the Brummel #8 livery on my Ferrari F40 (see gallery). it turned out pretty good but the auto scale models already have a clear coat which makes it difficult to install permanent decals. if we wanted to install decal sets on completed models, that would mean starting with a fresh, blank body or finding a way to strip the paints without damaging the plastic. since we’ve already got blank bodies for the 911 GT3, Gallardo and R8, we found a nice livery that matched a set of decals we picked up and went to work on our ‘from scratch’ project.
my task was to paint the base colors using an airbrush. this lays paint smooth, even and secure with no mess as long as masking is done properly. after the base colors, Joom‘s task was to install the decals. she’s a professional nail stylist so applying tiny stickers to small objects is already an easy job for her. while she installed decals, i built a spoiler and mount that would suit our needs for this project. Joom entered the final stage by attaching all the detailed light fixtures, our home-made spoiler and other model parts with acrylic. we both feel it turned out well for our first project but i almost wrecked it when i added a final clear coat and tried to wipe off the excess paint with a tissue. take my advice, paints and tissues don’t mix. we were able to save it but of course it wasn’t as pristine as we’d like it to be. i think we’ll keep this one but will probably add a ‘custom livery’ service to our online shop if we can perfect the process. have you done custom livery for your dNano? send a photo to qon@nanotrax.net and i’ll post it on a future blog update with your name and location included. i’ve got to do maintenance to prepare for upcoming races so i’ll share my technique in my next update.
July 17th, 2010 at 10:43
Looks great and also looks like a lot of work, just wish I had the time to do it myself, I hope the Aston turns out well
July 17th, 2010 at 10:53
now that we’ve found a paint removal solution that works, i’ll just need to get my airbrush fixed and we can get rollin’. the Gulf livery looks really easy so it shouldn’t take long once we have the body prepped. i’ll be racing the Gallardo upstairs this weekend! :D
July 22nd, 2010 at 15:12
good job. Only the top coat story is a little sad. I will bring some arcylic laquer for the airbrush. that will make it easier.