imported_doug
New member
I have wanted a model of my car for a while - but if you've looked you'll know there aren't any good models of the car in black. I finally settled on the Burago 1/18 scale made in Italy, which comes with the (proper for my car) Black interior, but exterior painted yellow.
For anyone interested in such a "conversion", here is what I did:
1) dissasembled the model - 4 screws and the chassis and main interior comes out. Then you can pop off the door panels, windshield and headliner, taillights, headlights, boot interior, front grill, rear grill/fan. - leaving you with a complete body. The Porsche logo on the hood and Turbo logo on the rear were decals and too small to mask - so I removed them. I plan to try printing onto decal paper (if I can find some) from a photograph for these.
2) The "factory paint" was not great - lots of orange peel, plus some unsightly moulding lines on the rear quarter. I wet-sanded the yellow with 320. I tried some glazing putty on the moulding lines but it was too hard to work with and I took it all off, opting instead to build up paint and sand to remove the lines.
3) I airbrushed thin, gloss black model enamel onto the car. Each coat produced a really nice glossy finish but small bits of dust and ocassional runs were unavoidable. So - three coats later, with wet-sanding of 600 after the first and 1500 after the second and third, I had a nearly flawless, but flat paint job.
4) Tried a bunch of things to polish out the wet sanding marks and bring back the gloss - Meguiar's Swirl Remover 2.0 worked the best, followed by a zillion coats of Souveran to help fill in remaining marks. It still has a few. Maybe I should have clear coated it. This enamel is SOFT - and some of the compounds I tried softened and marred it.
I gave up before perfection - but I know I could do better. Maybe next time! 
5) The interior was a black, textured but shiny plastic. I brushed the whole thing with flat black, which looks much more natural. Then I dabbed silver on where it needed to be - interior door handle, brake knob, part of the shift lever, etc.
6) The wheel/rotor assemblies rotate as one, and there are no calipers. I simply painted a section of the rotor read - so the wheels have to be rotated to the right place to show the model.
The end result looks pretty good - certtainly better than the store-bought version - but it made a good starting point. It was also an interesting way to experience wet sanding and bringing back gloss. I am seriously considering buying an old (full size) junk body panel as a practice piece for buffing techniques, sanding, painting, testing, etc.
Just kidding, man.