Paint and tweaking

The trick, as far as I am concerned, with old model road vehicles is to understand that the current rainbow palette of paint hasn't always been available. For me the 1950's and 60's happened largely in black and white and that makes working out colours difficult. Mind you, looking at the colour shots, it seems that most of the world was black and white, or at least a panoply of muted shades. Vibrant colour did exist but it was uncommon and certainly not to be found on the sort of van I'm building.

With this in mind I decided to try a blue body with black mudguards. The blue is rail blue from the Humbrol acrylic range. Having always been an enamel fan I only ended up with a pot of this colour when I thought I'd be unable to get real paint in time for a magazine deadline.

Once I worked out the plastic pot was screw topped, the paint brushed on well enough with good coverage. In fact it was just as good in this case as the oil based alternative, just less smelly. Not sure I like the move from a metal jar with a push on lid - threads and paint don't mix, or if they do you can't get the stupid top off !

The black mudguards are satin enamel and the top matt. Transfers came with the kit. Being ancient they broke up a bit and on this side wrapped themselves around at the end too. I'll have to show the model looking at the drivers door.

The chassis required a tweak to get it to sit flat. Not because of the moulding but due to those rubber tyres not being as round as you might expect, especially where the moulding tab has been cut off. I prefer whitemetal tyres as they can be sanded to give flat bottoms just like a real car will exhibit. Still, gripping the chassis at each end with pliers then twisting soon sorted things out.