A diversion into preparing Colin’s detail parts

I decided to take a break from the roadster conversion today so I sat down to prepare some of my stash of Colin’s detail parts for painting. Quite a while ago I took the knife to the engine and carved off the cylinder head (yes, I am a madman). If your’e wondering, I am planning to paint the engine like the 1:1 car. The cylinder head has Large chrome (maybe nickel) acorn nuts on the head bolts and the head itself is gold. Yes really, except for the first few series 1’s which were a pumpkin color.

Anyway masking all that to paint is more than I can bear, so I cut off the head! Then I cut off the acorn nuts and drilled out holes under them to receive Colin’s tasty 3D resin ones. I needed to put a bit of scaffolding back into the block to secure the head, but now it’s all good.

Today I set the bolt heads in some cardboard so I could start the prime/gloss black/chrome (or maybe just a polished alloy) process.

The head is primed. I need to paint it gloss black first, then follow up with metallic gold. After that, I need to remask the surfaces and paint a gloss alloy on the front face of the head - yes it’s that way for real, check the pix. Anyway after the head itself is painted, I can 2K clear it and mate it back to the rest of the engine. Meanwhile I will have chromed the bolt heads and painted them with Alclad Aqua-gloss to protect them before re-installing them. Then assemble the rest of the engine.

You can also see me getting ready to unwrap and prepare some more of Colin’s eye-candy. I have all of his Jag parts - the heater/blower unit and battery unit are in frame above. I’ve also made the 3 idiot lights that go on the dash… the secret with those is to chrome the part and then put a drop of clear color on the top.