Day 12

The GT model is just about finished! I waited until early evening before spray painting to avoid any potential problems with the decals. A small part in the front of the model bubbled up, but other than that, the clear coat went on smoothly and looks shiny! The decals stayed on, and this coat should protect them as well as the paint.

I waited 5 hours to ensure that this coat was completely dry, and then I removed all of the blue tape from the clear plastic, as well as the aluminum foil covering the wheels and tires. The memorial decal stayed in place, which was a relief!

Then I took the 4 fender shields, put glue on the end, and slid them into place (holding them there with the tweezers until the glue set). Sounds easy, but in reality, it was incredibly difficult and required a steady hand and a lot of patience.

The pieces took about 45 seconds before sticking enough to let go. Sometimes it took 4-5 tries before I could hold it steady that long. Eventually, I got all 4 pieces in place.

And then...a good friend was kind enough to point out that I had put these "mud flaps" on the wrong side of the wheels... So, I had to rip them off, cut open another plastic bottle, and attach these new fender guards to the correct side. A couple of them moved after being glued, and the front two had to be cut shorter. Other than that, they look good!

While doing this, I noticed that the rear stripe right over the license plate was coming off. This is confusing, because I had sprayed clear coat over the top and waited for it to completely dry before doing anything else.

Well, it is now finished. But before I show you the final result, here is the "real thing". These are a few pictures of Ralphie's GT. The first two are from the rally in Austin. The third one is at Yosemite, and although it does not yet have the Gurney bubble or decals, I find the GT and scenery absolutely breathtaking together!

Here is the finished GT model:

The final thing to do (which is more for fun than anything else as they are not to scale), is add a few butterflies to the front grille. Ralphie will be able to take these off when he gets it, but I thought that his seeing them would bring back nice memories and make him smile. :-)

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog! The Ford GT model is now finished and on its way to CA to join Ralphie for Christmas. Stay tuned for the next project, which will be designing and putting together a Ford GT baby quilt for a good friend who is having his first baby boy this February!!!

Day 11

I did not work on the GT model yesterday. Instead, I drove to Jason Heffner’s shop in Sarasota. Chip, a good friend of mine, trailered his yellow and black GT from AZ to FL to have twin turbos, a new exhaust, and a number of other small modifications installed. It was a gloomy day with rain, wind, flooding, and even a few scattered tornadoes – not the type of day you want to take a three hour drive across the state. However, this was an opportunity I could not pass up! When I arrived and opened the front door, I had to smile. :-) There, laid out on the floor in front of me, were pieces of his GT. They looked just like the model pieces, only supersized!

I was able to watch the guys in the shop work on the GT, and (rather than be annoyed at my interrupting their work space), they happily answered all of my questions and let me take pictures. Each one of them did a great job, and made my experience there a VERY pleasant one!

After working on it for awhile, Chip and I stood by and watched as the car was brought to life for the first time with the new twin turbos. The throaty growl made an incredible sound!

Towards the end of the day, it was the moment Chip and I had been waiting for. The car was put on the dyno, and we crossed our fingers hoping the new set up would bring it up to 800 horsepower. The sound at wide open throttle in the power zone was so great, that standing behind the car, we had to plug our ears!!! They dyno’d the car three times in 4^th gear (which goes up to almost 190 mph), and when it was finished, we went over to the graph to see the results. It did not hit 800 hp. No sir! It hit 841 hp, even with catalytic converters on the car!!! :-)

By the time I got home, it was already way too late to work on Ralphie's GT. But it brought a smile to my face this morning as I started to put the finishing touches on it…

The first thing I did was cut out the decal section where the four #2’s were. Since I had to use my nails to get the back part off rather than just dip it in water, I chose to peel the back off of each decal before cutting it. The first #2 was for the back of the car. I tried to cut the entire skinny number, but found that that caused problems with the decal getting wrinkled. Luckily, I printed a total of eight #2’s, so tossing that first one was not an issue. I also had the foresight to put a red background on the white #2’s, so what I ended up doing is first peeling the back off of the decal, and then cutting most of the red off of the #2, but leaving it in the hard to reach places. The red matched the car, so unless you look closely, you do not notice the different between the red in the decal and the red in the car.

The next decal I added was the gold arrow. I cut all of the red from this decal, and ended up having to shorten the length of the arrow as well. Ralphie put this arrow on the car for Rally IV’s track day at the Texas World Speedway. If he were to get in an accident on the track, the arrow would show the tow truck where the tow hook was on the car. The GT model does not have a tow hook, but I added the arrow anyway.

Time to add the American flag decals that Ralphie has on the sides of his car. These are located on the white side stripes, just before the words “Ford GT”. On the driver side, the flag is facing forward, and on the passenger side, the flag is facing backwards.

In other words, the stars are near the front of the car, and the stripes are near the words “Ford GT”. These are not stickers, but decals that need to be dipped in water before separating the back and applying – similar to how the white stripes were applied. However, when I tried to do this, the flag ripped into about 5 pieces. I had not even applied pressure to remove the back. This was not a good sign! But since I had 3 flags for each side, I had 3 chances to pull this off. The second flag worked better. It still ripped right down the middle, but I was still able to apply the decal without visibly being able to tell that the flag was in two separate pieces. The other side surprised me! The back of the decal would not come off after dipping it for 10 seconds in water. I was being VERY careful not to rip the flag. Therefore, I set it back into the water. I decided not to use the tweezers, as this might have caused the other ones to rip. The decal fell to the bottom of the bowl of water, and the back of the decal fell right off. I was not sure how to get the decal out of the water in one piece without the back on, but I used my finger and gently pushed it up the side of the bowl. I then set it in place over the white stripe, and it went on perfectly, without so much as a tear!!

The last sticker to apply was the memorial sticker for our friend Daniel. Because this was so small, I cut most of it before taking the back off. I also noticed that the top and two sides around the clamshell window are supposed to be black. I went ahead and painted that area black. It not only looks more realistic, but the memorial decal stands out more as well now.

I had to wait for the black paint and new flag decals to dry before applying the clear coat. But there was still some prep work that could be done...

Ralphie has clear plastic fender guards on the front and rear of his car. When I was at the shop yesterday, I tried to think of a way to manufacture these fender guards. A few hours later, Chip handed me a Gatorade and the light bulb went off! The idea was to wash out the container and cut the fender guards from the plastic.

I used a couple pictures of the fender guards that Ralphie had sent me pictures of to figure out the shape. Then, I punched a hole in the Gatorade bottle, found a section with a nice curve in it, and cut out a large enough piece for all four fender guards. I started with the first, and placed it in the GT model for size as I continued to trim it down, adjust the curve (it had to be flattened out a little bit), and file the edges down. The rear fender guards were the most difficult to make, but all of them turned out okay! These will not be clear coated, so I am not gluing them on the GT at this time.

This evening, when the decals and paint had a chance to dry, I prepared the car for the clear coat. To do this, I first used aluminum foil to thread through the wheel wells and completely cover the wheels and tires. This took about 45 minutes to do, as there was a bit of trial and error to get it to flow through smoothly without ripping, catching on something, or sliding out. The two left wheels went smoothly, but while putting the foil on the right wheels, the flag decal came off...TWICE! It was dry, so I had to apply more water to get it to stick again. I was planning on putting the clear coat on tonight, but these decals seem to need extra time to dry. Part of the problem might be that they were placed on top of another decal rather than the model directly (though I don't see how that would make a difference).

I finally managed to get all of the wheels and tires covered, and then I went ahead and covered all of the clear plastic parts with blue tape. The small fog lights, headlights, and side windows took the most time to do, and the only thing I am slightly concerned about, is that after spray painting, when I remove the blue tape, the memorial sticker from the clamshell window will come off with it. I did plan ahead for this and made an extra memorial sticker just in case...

I am completely ready for the clear coat, but I still have to wait for the flag decals to dry. The fact that they came off so easily after sitting for about 8 hours concerns me a little bit. Therefore, I will have to wait until tomorrow to spray paint on the clear coat.

Day 10

I am finishing everything on this model today except for the clear coat. The clear coat cannot be applied the same day as the decals are added, because they have to be completely dry. The instructions say to wait 48 hours before spraying the clear coat on. I will only be waiting 24 hours. This way I can apply the clear coat Friday night, remove the tape and add the wheels and tires Saturday morning, and take this to the Post Office Saturday afternoon, so that Ralphie receives it the day before Christmas. :-)

Having learned my lesson about applying glue to windows yesterday, I very carefully applied 4 tiny drops of glue to the corners of each side window, and then used a toothpick to spread that glue around the edges. As you can see, this worked MUCH better than the windshield!

Once this was in, I applied the first section of stripes just below the windshield. As with the smaller decals, I cut out the decal, dipped it in water for about 10 seconds using a tweezers to hold it, moved the tweezers to a new spot and re-soaked it for few more seconds, removed the back, and applied it to the model. It took a little bit of maneuvering to get it into place, and then I let it dry for a few hours. I also applied the gas cover, which I had painted last night.

As I let the decal set, I moved on to the back end of the GT. The engine window needed to be glued to the clamshell. I can proudly say that this was the best job I have done yet of gluing a window in place! I let the glue set for a few minutes, and then glued the clamshell to the body of the GT. The top part slid into place effortlessly, but the sides had to be squeezed together in order for it to fit properly.

I let the glue set for about 20 minutes, and then added the two side vents. Once these were in place, I used the toothpick to punch a hole in the middle of the stripe decal, and then I tried to figure out which wiper went in each hole. The picture did not help much, and to paint them, I had removed them from the plastic sheet with the numbers, so I ended up just taking a guess. As with a few of the other pieces, I had to file the glue off of the attachment point so that the wipers would fit in the holes. I then had to apply glue to the wiper itself. Without the glue, the wipers fell down onto the top of the car instead of staying flat across the bottom of the windshield.

The front and rear of the GT shell is complete (other than the decals, which will be added last). So it is now time to turn our attention back to the chassis. If you recall from yesterday, I attached the engine to the chassis, and also re-painted a number of pieces. We are going to finish the chassis now.

I first glued the three pencil braces together and then attached them over the engine. I then took the rear wheel axle that I had assembled several days ago, and attached this to the back of the car with the calipers to the right of the disc brake.

Next, I glued the first two parts of the exhaust system together and touched up the paint. I then also noticed that the back piece of the exhaust system also needed a touch up with the black paint. No sooner had I applied the paint, that I realized I would have to wait a few hours for it to dry before attaching it. I wanted to get this finished tonight, so waiting was not an option. I sacrificed the tips of my fingers, getting black paint on them as I attached and glued these pieces to the rear of the chassis. The first part also needed to be glued to the end of the supercharger. Once this was done, I did the best job I could of washing my fingers (which remained sticky and black as if the paint were tar). Then I used the black paint to touch up the areas that my fingers had smeared. I was not sure how this would turn out, but you cannot tell that it has been re-painted 4 or 5 times. :-)

All of the fluid containers that were painted black yesterday, were now glued to the chassis. They had to be glued on the outside a little bit to keep them from tipping over, since the point of contact on the bottom is minimal. This took a few minutes to get right, and more black tar...I mean paint...found its way to my fingers. I had to do only a minor touch up on the sides, and then decided to paint the coolant and oil caps silver to match the real GT caps.

I thought it might be wise to just leave them alone, and couldn't be happier that I went ahead ahead and painted them. I think that other than the license, the small star-shaped cap is the best work I did on this model. That piece was hard to reach with a paint brush and extremely small!! I am not sure I could do that again if I tried.

The next piece to be attached to the chassis is the front wheel axle that was assembled towards the beginning of this project. Here is a picture of where we are thus far:

Now it is time for the wheels. I twisted the wheels off of the plastic sheet and pushed the tires on each of them. This was one of the easiest steps of all!

After the tires went on the wheels, the next step was supposed to be attaching each wheel to the axle. Here is where I ran into a dilemma. According to the guy at the hobby shop, I was not to add the wheels until after the GT was sprayed with clear coat. If I put the wheels on at the end, I would not be able to glue them in place because of the shell. I considered applying the decals to the shell at this stage, and then spray painting on the clear coat before putting the shell on the chassis. However, the decal for the stripes on the back covered multiple pieces. Therefore, the shell had to be on the GT in order to apply all of the decals (which of course needed to be done before the clear coat could be applied). I decided that I would put the GT together as designed, and then figure out how to cover the clear plastic, wheels, and tires, before spraying on the clear coat.

The directions said to put on the wheel and then apply a drop of glue in the hole over the top. I did this to the front wheels, but was not able to reach the glue down to the hole for the rear wheels. What I should have done, was to apply glue to a toothpick, and drop it in place. Instead, I put glue on the back side of the wheel that would be attaching to the axle. (You will see why this was a huge mistake in just a moment.)

After that, I added the 2 red reflector decals to each side, and then careful not to touch the wet reflectors, I attached the rear section with the bumper and exhaust pipes, and glued that into place. While waiting for that to dry, the thought occurred to me that I had just glued the wheel to the axle, but the axle does not move! (Why did I not think of this before I applied the glue to both rear wheels?) To make matters worse, I realized this mistake not only after the glue had already set, but after the rear piece was already glued to the GT. :-(

I tried to rotate the rear tires, and (as expected) they would not move. On top of that, the place where the axle was glued to the chassis came free on both sides from my efforts. (That would be another "oops"...) Because everything had already been set in place after the axle was glued, I could not even see the attachment place where glue needed to be reapplied!! I thought I might be able to detach the rear piece, but the glue was already set, and the connection point would rip off if I tried to pull hard. I took a chance and let a few drops of glue slip down blindly into the general area where the attachment point should be.

I did not want to test my luck by trying to pull on the clamshell brace to see if the piece was actually glued down. Instead, I let the glue dry wherever it happened to land, and I went for the interior section of the GT with the dashboard and seats. This piece seemed too big for the chassis, but once I put glue on the bottom, I was able to press the front section firmly down so the glue could catch.

By now I should know to wait for the glue to dry completely before continuing, but it was getting late and my lack of patience got the best of me. The last piece to attach before putting the decals on was the red GT shell. I tried to fit this piece over the top, but it caught around the sides of the car and pulled the interior section right off the chassis! In addition to this, while trying to remove this piece, which was extremely tight on all sides, I inadvertently knocked loose the clamshell brace and rear wheels/axle again!!! Finally, I removed the GT shell, tried to reglue the axle into place, and reglued the interior to the chassis.

I then waited about a 1/2 hour for the paint to dry before attempting to attach the GT shell for the second time. This time it worked! The rear had to attach to the shell, and once glue was applied, I had to press down with both hands - one on each side - and apply a lot of pressure to get the glue to stick. I held it like that for 4 minutes and let go. Not long enough... The glue separated without the pressure, so I had to apply more glue down the cracks and try again! This time I held it in place firmly for 8 minutes, and to my excitement, this time the glue held! Once I was sure that the rear was not going to detach from the shell again, I glued the sides and front of the chassis to the GT shell. There is some glue that shows up underneath the car, but I thought it was better to glue it than leave it alone and risk coming apart. So here is the GT without the final decals.

The one other thing I noticed after this was assembled, is that the rear diffusers are supposed to be black - not silver. These will need to be painted after I apply the decals.

I did some last second touch up paint work on the black where the glue was (under the car). I also painted the rear diffuser black. Once that was done, I applied the silver door handle decals, the side stripes, and the orange front reflector decals. Then I put the stripes on the front, top, and rear of the car.

The smaller decals are very easy to apply. The stripes - not so easy. With the stripes, it is difficult to place them and then make adjustments. I found that it works easiest to keep the back on the decal, place it where you want, use a tweezers to slowly remove the back from one side while holding the edge in place, and then keeping the rest lined up, continue to remove the back until the entire decal is in place.

It is 1:30 AM, but I finished everything I wanted to finish, and it was worth it. The GT looks great!! :-) There are still a few final touches that will go on tomorrow evening before I apply the clear coat, but here are a couple more pictures with the stripes on.

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.