Build a better Buick. The buick regal was one of the more-popular 1980s body SPECIAL! STOCK CAR. How to detail Tim Richmond s Riverside Regal

Transcription

1 Build a better Buick STOCK CAR SPECIAL! How to detail Tim Richmond s Riverside Regal by DREW HIERWARTER Drew s Tim Richmond Buick Regal is a fitting tribute to a great driver and a nice commemoration of his first win in NASCAR s top division, he says. The buick regal was one of the more-popular 1980s body styles for racing. It was relatively sleek, compared to the other brands, and it used the popular and well-refined small-block Chevy V-8. Almost every team that ran General Motors equipment had at least one Buick Regal in its stable. Another reason to choose the Regal is the Revell-Monogram kit. The Buick Regal was the first of the new line of Winston Cup stock cars that R-M released in those days. It was state-of-the-art, and it has held up well. Although the kit has been out of production for more than 20 years, it s readily available and affordable, at swap meets and on ebay. Plenty of aftermarket decals are still available, too. The car I chose to model is one of the more colorful ones from 1982, and it has a certain historical significance: It s the car that the late Tim Richmond drove to his first NASCAR Winston Cup victory. Tim beat Terry Labonte, Geoff Bodine, Dale Earnhardt, and Neil Bonnett, who were the only other drivers on the lead lap. I normally tackle any project like this in three phases: Phase One I call the Paint Prep phase. This is comprised of preparing all parts of the model for paint. This is when I drill holes for detailing wire and/or hoses to be added later. I also make up subassemblies of those parts that are best painted together (or I group all those parts that are to be painted with the same color). And lastly in this phase, it s time to do any and all bodywork, and I prepare the car s body for the paint shop to follow. Phase Two is Painting and Detailing. I try to do all of the airbrush painting for the entire project at once. This helps keep colors consistent, and keeps me from having to go back and forth from the paint shop too many times. During this phase, I do all of the paint-detailing and decaling. Things like window frames, wheel lug nuts, etc., are picked out with a paintbrush at this stage of the project. And most, if not all, of the decals are applied. Last is Phase Three, or Final Assembly. If all of the tedious and time-consuming work has been done, this phase should take no more than an hour or two, and the model is finished. There will always be one or two detail items that can t be completed until this phase, but for the most part, this should go quickly and easily. I have not set out to build the next winner in a national competition; far from it. I did try to show how, with a minimum of effort, you can build a nice, moderately detailed model that will show well in any collection. Maybe you ve only been building box-stock models up to this point; this article will provide you with that next step up from building straight out of the box, and show you how to add just a few details to an already nicely detailed kit. You can certainly go much farther than I have here; I did not attempt to add every line and wire that these cars had. I have a modeling philosophy that basically says, if you can t see it, you don t need to model it! 36 Scale Auto J U N E 20 07

2 PHASE ONE: PREP FOR PAINT Use a razor saw to carefully separate the truck arms from the frame crossmember; it makes painting much easier. Leave that little connector between the track bar and the right truck arm in place for now. Glue the crossmember in place in the frame, and glue the truck arms to the rear axle housing. When this assembly is dry, you can cut out that connector to the track bar. We need to lower the car just a little to improve the stance. We re only going to go about one scale inch a little less than 1 16." Cut off the front spindles, and drill an.040" hole in the back of each spindle, as close to the center as possible. Then glue in a short length of.040" styrene rod. The length doesn t matter; it will be cut off later. Drill another.040" hole all the way through the front suspension upright, no more than 1 16" above the cutoff spindle s center point. Glue the spindle into this new hole. In this photo, the lowered spindle is on the bottom. When the glue is dry and solid, cut off the back of that pin. Lowering the rear end is much easier to do; just cut off the end of the weight jack screw on top of the rear springs. Don t go more than 1 16" or you ll have the truck arms hitting the floor pan. Now glue the springs in place on the truck arms. One of the biggest drawbacks to these old kits was their lack of roll-bar padding; we re going to fix that. Start by cutting out this much of the left-side cage; it will be replaced with some.100" styrene rod. J U N E scaleautomag.com 37

3 When all of the cutting s done, this is what should be left. Now you can replace all of those door bars with.100" styrene rod. Save the window net; we ll use it later. The finished roll-cage assembly doesn t look like much now, but wait until you see it with paint on it. You could also pad the header bar above the windshield. I didn t, because after the car is assembled, it s nearly impossible to see up in there. Here s the basic principle for replicating padding: Cut out any bars that should be padded and replace them with matching pieces of.100" rod. The.100" rod s slightly larger diameter gives the appearance of padding wrapped around the original bars. Clip the front and rear bumpers, the headlight covers, the shifter, and the hood pins from the chrome tree. Using your favorite method, strip the chrome plating from the rest of the parts tree. I like to use Easy-Off Oven Cleaner. All races at Riverside ran in a clockwise direction, and the pits were on the driver s right, so the fuel filler needs to be on that side too. Make a plug for the old filler from a scrap of styrene, glue it in, and sand and fill as necessary to get it smooth. Drill a hole in the right rear fender for a new fuel filler and vent tube, then do all of the normal body prep for painting. Drill the distributor and cylinder heads for plug wires, the oil pump for oil lines, and the oil cooler needs that little molded line clipped off and a hole drilled in the fitting. 38 Scale Auto J U N E 20 07

4 PHASE TWO: PAINTING AND DETAILING Here s the engine, painted and assembled expect for the fan and exhaust. I ve shown you how to run the plug wires, but I often wonder why I bother, because in the finished car they re almost completely hidden. I m not going to install the fuel lines or carb linkage, because all that would be hidden under the air cleaner anyway. Also notice that the valve cover with the two breathers in it is mounted on the right side, not the left, as usual. The wheels and tires are all painted up and ready to go. There are no decals here; I m not a believer in using decals on vinyl tires. The lettering is sprayed on through a stencil, exactly the same way Goodyear did the 1:1 tires. It s not perfect, because the real ones weren t either. Decals always look too perfect and bright white, and the 1:1 tires just didn t look that way. The other markings are hand-painted. Even the wheel weights are just drops of Testor s Metalizer. The finished roll-cage subassembly has been painted and detailed. Now you can see the effect of the padding, which was brush-painted flat black. You can also see some of the wiring I added for effect. Don t worry about where it comes from or where it goes; it just runs up along that bar from under the dash, around behind the driver, and out of sight between the seat and the battery box. The crush panels behind the cage are brush-painted silver. The body came fresh from the paint shop, resplendent in its overall coat of Testor s Model Master Ford Engine Light Blue. This is the same color used on all of the other blue parts of this model. After decaling and some painted-on details, the body looks like this. No clear was used; clearcoating over the decals is not only unnecessary, it s unrealistic. They didn t put clear coats over the vinyl graphics on the 1:1 cars, so we re not going to on the model, either. The rear end assembly is ready for installation. For some reason, few teams ever painted the third member but always left it in reddish brown primer. The 1:1 tires were not directional, and Goodyear stenciled the lettering on both sides. J U N E scaleautomag.com 39

5 Shock absorbers in 1980s stock cars were almost always Monroe brand, and were almost always yellow. You can see also how a little detailpainting really makes a difference. Carefully mask the three braces on the inside of the windshield, and spray them with a little aluminum paint. PHASE THREE: FINAL DETAILING AND ASSEMBLY I mounted the radiator with the oil cooler on the opposite side from the norm, because this is a Riverside car; the oil cooler is on the right side too. Now s the time to add your favorite brand of aftermarket seat belts, or just use decals. Then you can install the roll cage. The braided line you see running along the top of the bar is an overflow from the radiator. The other line goes from the oil cooler, around in front of the radiator, to the oil pump. Just glue a short line from the fitting on top of the oil cooler to the front of the radiator. It can t be seen up there, so there s no point in wasting the expensive braided line to go all the way across. You can add another short piece of line from the other side in front of the radiator to one of the holes previously drilled in the oil pump. Two more oil lines run between the pump and the tank in the back of the car one braided and one insulated. I used Detail Master heater hose for that one. After these lines go through holes in the firewall, they can t be seen anymore, so there s no point in modeling them beyond that. The tie-wraps are simple knots of sewing thread. The instrument panel is simplicity itself. The rings around the gauges are hand-painted silver, and the gauge faces are decals. 40 Scale Auto J U N E 20 07

6 I used an aftermarket fuel filler and vent tube. They are from Race Ready Replicas, but I must tell you that I ve had them for a long time, and they may no longer be available. Use whatever you have. The headlight bezels are not interchangeable, and because we ve moved the oil cooler over to the right side, we need to do something about the grille for it. The left headlight bezel, which has a screen in it, has been covered with a piece of.010 sheet styrene painted aluminum. The grille in the right-side headlight cover for the oil cooler is a decal. The brake-duct grilles in the lower bumper are decals. I love the NASCAR racecars of the 1980s! That was the last decade that they still looked like the cars they were supposed to be. A NASCAR Buick Regal looked a lot like a street Buick Regal; the same thing went for the Pontiacs, Fords, and Chevys of that era. Most of the body panels used on the racecars were still the real thing. Front and rear fenders were modifed from originals to clear the large racing tires. Front bumpers and grilles, doors, hoods, entire roof panels and C-pillars, deck lids, and rear bumpers, were made by the auto manufacturers not the Remember stock cars? talented race team fabricators who do all of that today. The various race teams came to the conclusion that it took less labor to fabricate a fender from scratch than it did to modify a stock one, and they lobbied NASCAR to let them use their own fenders. It wasn t long before they wanted to make other panels from scratch, and things just sort of snowballed from there. Today, nearly every panel on a race car is made in the team s own shop, and the final product bears little resemblance to anything that s sitting on your local car dealer s lot. So much for stock car racing, huh? Drew Hierwarter The finished project is a real thing of beauty. The lowering got the stance looking fast and aggressive just as these cars were. The colors pop, and there s just enough detail to satisfy most people, but not so much that I was buried in work. J U N E scaleautomag.com 41