Getting The Artin Stocker Ready For Action
With the new release of Artins American Stocker Series, this gives slot heads like myself a very affordable entry to the stock car series of racers. With the cars coming in 8 different solid colors it also adds a great starting point for liveries. So if your not a painter you can simply obtain the car/ color of your favorite driver, add the decals and a covering of clear protectant and your set.
As for myself, I like to do a little more than your basic paint & decals. So I will attempt to make this article as easy to follow as I can to let you see exactly what can be done with these cars.
This build up of the Artin Stocker was published in the FEB/MAR. 2006 - Vol.27 No. 2 - Issue #211 issue of
I will be starting with the silver body mostly because it has a good light color and should be very easy to cover with new paint.
First thing I will do is get the cutouts for the exhaust and the jack. There are impressions on both sides of the body where these are located. I just used a Exacto knife and trimmed them out. Now to fill in the generic grill area. For this I`ll be using Squadron fast drying White putty. with a small piece of card stock. Apply a little to the card and smooth into the grill opening until it`s filled.(may need repeating after dry) then I used some 1500 grit sand paper to wet sand it smooth.
Moving on to the interior now, I pulled the roll cage from the interior tray to add some red paint. This is done simply because the livery I chose requires this. While the paint was drying I added a few extra details to the tray, fire bottle,oil sump, electronics boxes, gauges on the dash, and a few small details on the driver bust. then everything is re-attached.
Next up is making some realistic looking exhaust pipes. For this I used Strip Styrene 5/32 channel. I cut 4 pieces 5/8" long and glued them together side by side. After this is dry I cut a piece of 020" flat styrene to cover the top of the channel to create the boxed look of each exhaust hole. Then the completed part is glued in place to the bottom of the chassis.
A fuel cell box has been added to the rear Here you can see that I have added some
chassis plate. This was made from some detail to the windows. This just makes the
scrap plastic. glass stand out better against the body
The last step in the chassis detail is to spruce up the wheels. First I removed the tires, then with some red paint I trimmed the outer rib of the wheel. Now with a tooth pick I dotted each wheel lug with silver paint. Then I added a clear coat, for this I used some Future, a small paint brush and coated the complete outside of each wheel. You`ll notice I also added a set of Goodyear Tires, these I had already. If your interested the Scaly NASCAR tires fit perfectly on the Artin wheels.
Getting the body painted will be my next step. This livery calls for a 2 color scheme, so I`ll start with the lightest color which is yellow. I will be painting the whole body yellow as this will act as a good base for the 2nd color. But first the body was washed with dishwashing soap and dried. Then a couple wipes with a tack cloth and lay the paint on.
Now I`m ready to start taping off the body to get it ready for the 2nd color. This part is pretty tricky because the 2nd color (blue) has some offset lines and I will really have to be careful. The part of the body that is to remain yellow has to be covered very good as to keep any of the darker color spray from finding it.
Next I will start adding a few detail colors by brush in black, and also I will be using some Pactra black Trim Tape to separate the yellow and blue. And then decals, and if you don`t know already what this car is going to be, you soon will.
Ok here it is all decaled and awaiting a couple coats of clear. Notice I`ve also added jack posts just in front of the exhaust outlets. This was a last minute observation when looking at pictures of the real car. As I mentioned earlier I had a extra set of Scaly NASCAR tires that were used on this build. But I have now decided to go back to the original tires and I will be adding the GOODYEAR decals to them, just to keep it all Artin. I think this body makes a very good replica for this era stock car.
Now after 2 coats of Future it is now complete and ready for action....thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope you enjoyed the build as much as I did.
