Day 9

It is day 9 and we are in the home stretch! The first thing to do is glue the second headlight to the shell. If you recall from yesterday, this is my second attempt. To my relief, it went on without a hitch! :-) The next step is to attach the front grille. Learning from past mistakes, I fit the grill into place to make sure it lined up before adding the glue to the edge of the grille and re-placing it. This also went smoothly!

Then, I took the 2 newly painted fog lights, and glued those below the headlights. It was challenging to line them up correctly, but once they were lined up, I could hold them in place with one hand and glue them to the shell with the other. I would like to take the time to point out that when working with superglue, you should ALWAYS wait until the piece you just glued is dry before handling it in any way, shape, or form!!! As you can probably guess, I forgot to wait until the glue on the front grille was dry. My thumb was on the front grille for about 5 seconds as I used my other fingers to hold the fog lights in place. It took a lot of time, effort, and pain to detach my poor thumb from the grille. Needless to say, the grille is doing much better than my thumb at the moment… :-(

After this, I attached the clear fog light covers to the outside of the car’s shell. I was worried about glue squirting out through the sides, and also about the glue showing through the clear plastic. To avoid overgluing, I put glue on a toothpick, and tried to use the toothpick to apply the glue. This did not work well. It took too long to get the glue on the model, because I had to keep putting glue on the toothpick and then adding glue drop by drop. The result was that the first part was dry by the time I got all the glue on. Hmmm… Next, I tried to put a couple drops of glue directly onto the sides of the fog lights, and then I used the toothpick to gently spread the glue around. This worked much better, and the glue can only be seen through the clear plastic if you look very closely.

Next, I glued the other grille to the back of the vent on the hood, and let the glue dry. In the real GT, this part opens up and serves as a small trunk. However, in this model, the trunk area does not open. The hood did, however, need to be glued to the front of the GT.

I turned the top of the GT shell over and lined it up. I then put a layer of glue around the edges and tried to lay it into place. For some reason, it did not fit right. As gently as I could, I ripped off the hood and scraped away some of the glue, but it still did not fit! I ended up having to file down the ends to get it to fit, and then reglued it into place. I am still not very happy with the way this piece fits, but at least it looks better now than it did the first time I tried.

Unfortunately, because the fit is not perfect, some of the glue crept up through the cracks. (I have to admit that some frustration crept up right along with the glue.) If that wasn’t bad enough, patches of red paint were stripped off when I had initially removed the hood from the GT. This meant waiting a couple of hours for the glue to dry, touching up the paint, and then waiting another few hours for the paint to dry. (The last thing I wanted to do was rush it, smear the paint in my haste, and then have to re-paint yet again.)

I found a few more pieces that needed to be painted before they can be glued to the model – the rear view mirror and gas cover. I painted the back of the rear view mirror black, cleaned the brushes, and painted the gas cover silver. While I waited for these pieces to dry, I decided to attach the side mirrors to the sides of the GT. Because I had applied 2 coats of paint to both the shell and the mirrors, the attachment did not fit. I had to file down the bottom of each mirror, and then slide in both sides and glue them in place. The filing took off some of the paint on the mirrors, so once the glue had set, I used the smallest brush and red paint, and touched up the mirrors.

Once the rear view mirror was dry, I glued this to the roof of the car. I had to press upward on the newly applied paint with some force, so I made sure to let the mirror sit for at least 4 hours before attempting this; I did not want to ruin the paint. I then glued the windshield in place, taking care not to get glue all over the place.

You know those times when you do something and then wish you could immediately undo it? This was one of those moments… :-( In hindsight, I probably should have only applied a tiny amount of glue to the 4 corners. Instead, I put glue around the entire edge of the windshield. When I applied the windshield to the GT, the glue spread. You could see it on all 4 sides. To make matters worse, glue was on my fingers and got all over the windshield. I tried scraping it off, but that left scrape marks. I tried nail polish remover, but that did nothing. I tried (you guessed it) paint thinner, but not only did that not remove the glue, it added a cloudy layer.

Speaking of paint thinner… Do you remember the problem I had a few days ago with this? To avoid a repeat of the last “incident”, I put a very small amount of paint thinner in 2 paper cups, put those cups inside a plastic cup, and then set it on the top of a box. Five minutes later, after using a Q-tip to try and clean up the windshield, I turned around to see paint thinner all over the cover of the box. I am serious!! In five minutes, this evil paint thinner not only ate through both of the paper cups, but also the plastic one! This is just not my day. :-(

The situation was getting worse, so I did what anyone else would do. I threw the model in the garbage and ordered a new one. … Actually, I was tempted to do that, but (thankfully) only for a moment. I thought this would be the perfect time to put the model aside and eat dinner. There is nothing like biting into a delicious pizza that can turn a sour mood into a wonderful one. :-)

With a full tummy, I went back to examine the ruined windshield. The worst part was around the edges, so I took a chance, knowing I might regret it later… I taped the top of the windshield, took the red paint, and painted a thin line (like a border) across the glass. Then I removed the paint, saw that it wasn’t even, and smeared the red paint over the windshield. I had to take a few deep breaths to keep from screaming.

There was a little bit of paint thinner left, so I used that on the Q-tip to clean up the smeared paint, removed the tape, and just freely painted this red line around the glass, trying to keep it even all the way around. Even though the windshield still looks like it was in a snow storm and someone threw a rock in the center of it, the paint job definitely was an improvement!

What I really wanted to do was leave the house and have a drink. However, I could not leave the project on a negative note. Therefore, I turned my attention to the chassis. Lowering in and attaching the engine was the first step. Piece of cake!

Once that was in place, I went to install the braces for the clamshell, but was not happy with the chrome color, so I spray painted them both silver.

Next, I looked at the exhaust system. What they put in the model does not resemble the stock Ford GT exhaust system. However, that is a moot point, since Ralphie does not have the stock exhaust – he has Ford Racing rear exit headers (and his car is LOUD and throaty!!!). :-) The stock exhaust is black. Since I can only assume that the model’s exhaust is supposed to be stock, I will make these black too. (Sorry Ralphie! I am taking away your beautiful engine sound.)

Several of the other pieces, such as the dry sump oil pump, were originally spray painted silver. Now that I am assembling these pieces, I noticed that they should be black. Some of these pieces are double sided, which means painting one side, waiting for them to dry, and then painting the other side. The painting was not difficult, but will set the project back at least another day…

The good news is that I received a call that the decals were done. I went to the graphics store this afternoon and picked them up. They look great!!!! The other decals (if you remember) I had accidentally dotted with a fine coat of red while spray painting the red parts at the beginning of the project. Since that will not come out, I have to work with what I have. I am now finished painting and (barring no unforeseeable mishaps) plan to finish the final assembly and decals tomorrow.