The GTA in primer. I'm trying out a technique suggested by "Cruz", on another forum, in which you wash the shut lines with black while the car is in primer, before painting. He suggests rescribing the lines first, but I thought that the GTA had crisp and deep enough lines out of the box to test the technique without needing to scribe them.
The Murcielago in primer. I wanted to get as many parts of the body together as possible to avoid having to match the colours, and glue clear-coated pieces together. In practice, this means the extreme nose, skirts and lower edges of the extreme rear can be attached. Doors and one intake (which has a segment of body colour inside) have to remain separate...
The Murcielago will be Giallo Orion -- a pearl yellow colour -- with lots of black/grey carbon trim. This is, once again, the ever reliable Zero Paints system of ground coat, base coat and clear coat.
Whereas the Giulia Sprint GTA is in a colour scheme inspired by some of the racers I've seen at Donington over the years. More Zero Paints, this time Alfa Rosso Corse and Lamborghini Powder Blue (a Miura colour which eventually lost out to the lime green when I built mine, but I may still do another in this colour, because it looks so cool...)
And now with the clear coat on. You can see how much it changes the apparent colour of the base coat, especially on the Lambo. I think the change is even more intense with the pearl finish because it reduces the scattering of light by the pearl layer, and lets you "see through" to the base coat more directly. I also tried using clear over a decal for the first time, (the Alfa "snake" on the bonnet) which has worked very well. There are the odd spot imperfections here and there, but once again the Zero 2K clear has done its job and settled into a smooth, glossy finish all over.
These will now go away into plastic boxes for a week or so to fully cure before polishing out those spots.
It's good to be back at the bench!
bestest,
M.
).
