Taxi !!! (an update...)

In a previous entry on the "Slot car madness" section I presented you my project of turning a Revell's Mercedes 300 SE from the Argentinian Rally into a Portuguese taxi!

A long time has passed and progress on this project has been slow so far. So, here's a short update on how things went so far, something light to resume publishing on this blog...

The original bodywork paint was stripped with ethyl alcohol... I thought it would be an easy task, only to be wrong! The paintwork from Revell is very resistant to the alcohol I used, had a tough time stripping it and could only manage to sand paper it in several bursts, after long alcohol baths (2 or 3 days, sometimes...). Details like the race numbers and letters were quite easy to remove, at least.

I then applied grey primer from Tamiya and already painted the black sections. Here's the looks on it by now:

As you can see I covered the roof section before applying the black paint, otherwise I would have a tough time painting it green over glossy black. The plate in the rooftop was applied as a model, it's not final yet... will need some extra trimming and side lights, in order to look like this:

The choice of green will be tough... it's really a unusual tone, but guess that with some nice Emerald green from Citadel paint and some mixing of white, I may get this. Taxi badges have been ordered to a decal specialist (Pedro), and will surely bring up the looks on the final model. Then I will have to make a "civilian looking" interior for the model... and I also wish to set the driver with the arm over the sidewindow!

I really need to push on this one... it's a "non-racing" project, so it looses a bit on priority.

Stay tuned for more...