It is held on a Saturday night, under CMS' excellent lighting system, and many competitors show up with pretty snazzy paint for this event. If you look at the various models I have for viewing made by myself and other modellers, at THE NASCAR MODEL GALLERY, you will see several of the special paint jobs.
Dupont, being in the Automotive Paint business, chose 1998 to highlight a new hightech line of effects flake, called ChromAlusion@. These colours actually shift hue dramatically, depending on the direction from which light reflects back to you. (Don't ask me how it works - I just make de paint...)
Dupont chose to spray Jeff's "The WINSTON" car in FirePrizm@, a flake that shifts from deep burgundy to a light golden-brown, depending on viewing angle.
Luckily, I was able to obtain a couple ounces, and had gone ahead and painted a Monogram body, just to see how it would look. Came out really good, and I was able to apply a nice coat of TAMIYA TS13 clear, to further enhance the sharpness and colour.
I vacillated between just building it as the "nekkid" undecalled version that would have existed at some point in the process of spraying and decalling the real car, or trying to cobble up some DUPONT decals and stripes from wherever, to try and duplicate the car as it actually ran.
My dilemma was nicely resolved when SLIXX announced they would be issuing the decal sheet in mid 1998! I was amazed, as I could not see many people opting to buy the very pricey FirePrizm@ from refinish paint jobbers. It looks like, however, the aftermarket has ridden to the rescue, and you can get small bottles of this pigment for building your own version.
My buildup is pretty straightforward, the usual wiring and plumbing have been installed, and other detailing added.
Of course the "Raison D'etre" for this model is the paint, so I'll describe that process. The actual process used to paint Jeff's car had a dark grey groundcoat applied, then several coats of the ChromAlusion@ flake, dispersed in refinish basecoat resins, until the right colour was obtained. What I noticed immediately was it was gonna take nearly ALL my little sample to get the right effect, and it did! I've since heard from Randy Frost at Perry's Resins that a useful shortcut is to lay down a groundcoat of light bronze metallic, and the colour will develop more quickly. Makes sense, since trying to develop the yellow-gold sidetone is what uses all the paint!
After it had dried for a few days, I applied several light coats of Tamiya TS13 clear. It was at about this point I heard SLIXX were gonna do the decals, so I parked it for a couple months until they were available.
This particular sheet is, to my mind, SLIXX's best yet. I had purchased two sets, anticipating bleedthru problems, but they were excellent and true for colour when applied. All markings I could see on the real car were there. Each new set SLIXX does seems to drive the benchmark just a bit higher!
After a few days to dry, I clearcoated with the TS13, starting with very light coats from the heated rattlecan, building up slowly, and sanding lightly between coats. Took about 4 days to get a finish I was happy with.
And there it was, one of the more spectacular and realistic models to grace my shelf! I spent a lot of quality time looking at it at various angles to enjoy the colour effect!
Oh.. how'd Jeff do in the real thing, you ask? Well, he had it in the bag, but on the last lap, ran out of fuel, and a stunned Mark Martin took the win! As WINSTON CUP ILLUSTRATED put it: "No Gas, No Glory!"
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