Day 6

First things first. The nails have to go!! Okay, now that I cut down my claws, it should be much easier to hold onto the smaller pieces. Getting back to the car’s rear end… These are the pieces that need to be assembled for this step:

The first thing to deal with before assembly was the license. I would prefer using Ralphie’s license plate rather than a generic one that says “Jada” on it. Hmmm… The area for the license plate on the model is only ½” long, so painting it on (or even using a thin marker) would not work. Instead, I took a picture of his license plate and figured out how much it needed to shrink to fit on the car. While doing this, I noticed that Ralphie also has a GT badge on the left side of the grille that I would need to add to the model.

I emailed a few pictures of these to a local print shot with the dimensions I needed, and they were able to make perfect-sized decals out of both the license plate and the GT badge. Bob and I went to go pick them up. When we arrived, the husband and wife working at that small print shop asked what a Ford GT was (they thought it was Mustang GT). As I started to explain, I looked down. I just happened to be wearing my GT boxers…er…shorts, and my Rally II t-shirt (both of which have a large picture of the Ford GT on them. No explanation needed! We all had a nice laugh. :-)

Once home, I went back to work on the car’s rear. The lights went on first. Then I glued on the 2 small pieces, which are part of the black grille.

Then I put the GT badge and license on the car. Notice how small they are compared to my thumb!

Next, I glued on the rear grille, exhaust pipes, and bumper.

Finally, I put the grille section with the license plate and GT badge on the car. I took another look at Ralphie's "rear end", as well as the rear of a few other GT's, and the exhaust pipes all look black, with a ring of silver around the end. Right now, the model GT has shiny silver pipes. To make it more realistic, I added some black to the inside, leaving a thin layer of silver at the end. This completes the rear end of the car!

The last thing I did today was to take the tires off of the plastic sheet. Each tire has 3 plastic strips in the center (probably to keep the tire round) that do not twist off. I used a small scissors to cut the plastic from the 6 points of contact with each tire, but I could not cut very close to the edge because of the shape and size of the tire. This left 6 unsightly bumps that needed to be filed down on the inside edge of the each tire. Filing on rubber is not that easy, especially since the tires are round. I found that using my nail file at a few different angles, while manipulating the shape of the tire to make a straight surface (to file off of), worked quite well!

I realize that not much got done today, but there is good reason for that! Bob and I went to the Palm Beach Opera and saw Beethoven’s Symphony #9 – “Ode to Joy”. For those of you who have never been to a symphony, it is a blast! Just watching the conductor made me tired, and there was even a chorus and 4 opera singers who could sing high enough to crack glass! With only 11 days until Christmas, we also put up our tree. (I wonder what my present is!) :-)