Revell 1/25 Corvette C7.R

[Leaning_Dog]

A while back I stumbled across a YouTube channel by a guy who paints his model cars using spray cans from the local hardware store - specifically Rustoleum 2X brand. The results were amazingly good, so I decided to give it a try. Wanting to keep my experiment as inexpensive as possible, I grabbed this kit at our local Hobby Lobby - with the 40%-off coupon I was out the door for just over $16 US. A stop at the local Home Depot to source the paints for roughly $5 each and I was good to go.

 

Having seen (...and HEARD, well more like felt) these Corvettes run at Laguna Seca, this one was an obvious choice. I took this photo in May 2015.

 

 

The kit is by the US division of Revell, hence the scale 1/25. Revell Germany car kits are all 1/24, which seems to be the scale the rest of the planet uses for race car kits.

 

 

Not a lot of parts, and there is some very nice detail. The decal sheet looks good on paper, but proved problematic due to transparency - the underlying paint colors showed through. When I do another one of these, I'll order a set of decals from Indycals.

 

 

 

The trim on the clear piece comes pre-painted. Nice touch, although I'm pretty sure I could do a better job masking and painting it myself.

 

 

It's very yellow - I cheated a little bit and used a can of Tamiya spray paint that I had left over from another project.

 

 

The kit includes a nice interior and motor - it looks good to me right out of the box, but there is plenty of opportunity for super-detail work. Fit was actually pretty good to this point.

 

 

Here you can see the yellow bleeding through the white decal on the door, and the red bleeding through on the rear wing, resulting in an unacceptable pink lettering instead of white. So back to Hobby Lobby with another 40%-off coupon, and a second kit was acquired. I then doubled up the decal and it looks much better now. As a bonus, I have a second kit that I will probably build as one of the Le Mans cars using the excellent Indycals decals.

 

 

So here it is with all the stickers applied, and a panel-line oil wash. I'm done with it at this point, but may come back later and spray on a final gloss clear coat. Race cars are shiny, but not like your car in the garage. And they suffer a lot of wear and tear over the course of a racing season, so based on my own photographs from the track, the degree of shine on this one looks about right.

 

A couple of warnings if you decide to build one - that pre-painted one-piece clear windshield bit does not fit into the body. It's not even close. In order to get it to fit I cut the rear window from the rest of the piece, filed and sanded, and was finally able to get the glass to line up. Second, the headlight glass doesn't fit either - I ended up cutting off and filing down the mounting pins on the inside of the bumper which then allowed for enough wiggle room to get them into position. It was a quick, fun build, let down somewhat by the transparency of the decals. However, those Rustoleum rattle cans are the real deal - I'll definitely be using them in my builds going forward.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mpk]

Oh wow! 

[dodgem37]

Bumblebee!  Well, not quite.  Looks great.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[dmthamade]

That's a nice build!! I did one of these, but i cheated. It was a curbside build, so, easy to do.

 

Don

[mustang1989]

autiful build L_D!! Sucks about the windshield and light covers but looks like you got that all sorted out. 

[Ben Brown]

Nice build! I’ve heard this kit can be a little temperamental.
 

The one thing I’ll miss about these cars vs the C8R is the thumping engine noise. I’d watch them at the VIR. The new car sounds like a Ferrari, although that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Ben

[Leaning_Dog]

Hi Guys - Thanks for the kind words. It really was a fun little build. A little testy here and there to be sure, but only enough to keep things interesting.

And yes, Ben, standing track-side that deafening, ground-shaking, engine noise was something special. 

 

Cheers!

John.