Those who know me well will know that I harbor a deep interest in drag racing. I don't build a lot of car models, as a general rule, but most of the ones I do build are drag cars of one form or another. What we have here is the reissue of the AMT "Fire Fighter" Mustang funny car. It's a pretty nice kit, except I think it is mislabeled. It comes with twin four-barrel carbs, a hood scoop and no blower, so I think that makes it more of a Pro Stock car than a Funny Car, but who am I to quibble?As is traditional for me, I soaked the chromed parts in Blech-Wite for about a week until the chrome and most of the conductive film had dissolved. I haven't tried Alclad-II and I was running short of Bare-Metal Foil (I tear through BMF because I also use it to mask canopies and other oddments on airplanes and spacecraft). So I just airbrushed the formerly chrome parts Testor's Chrome Silver, which I think looks pretty nice. It's not as shiny as genuine chrome, but I don't see many drag cars at my local drag strip sporting chromed wheels anyway.
As is my usual wont, I didn't pay a lot of attention to engine detail. In fact, if you pop off the hood, you'll see that I never even painted the four-barrel carbs! Heresy! And as is my other wont, I didn't bother to produce a show-car gloss on the body. Again, I see relatively few high-gloss cars at my local strip, and in fact I see more cars in flat primer or flat black than uber-glossy paint.
The hardest part was painting the Goodyear lettering on the tires; I used off-white craft paint (technically, "Tapioca"). Since I finished this car I ordered every contingency decal sheet Slixx had on offer and I propose to add a few to spice up the car a bit, but needless to say I haven't done that. Speaking of decals, the long flame decals are difficult to align - you've got to make it fit at both wheel wells and the filler cap and the bottoms of the windows, and it's not easy. But it worked better than I expected it to, frankly.
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