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More Sand Hopper Progress
Here I am 40 years old and still building model cars.
License Plate
The original Sand Scorcher came with a plastic license plate which had the words “BAJA BUG” molded into the plastic. The Tamiya Monster Beetle came with a flat plastic plate blank. I decided to give mine a vintage green and white style Washington plate. I hit google imges and found a picture of an old Wa. plate, shrunk it down to size and printed it out. I painted the plastic plate silver so that it would sort of approximate a chrome license plate frame, and glued the Washington plate to the “frame”. A couple of coats of clear acrylic should keep the inkjet from running when it gets damp.
Headlight Lenses
Unlike the Sand Scorcher, the Monster Beetle Body came with a smoked glass parts tree, so the windshield and headlight lenses are unnaturally dark in tint. I won’t be using these parts. I am planning to run without any window glass, but the headlight rims looked really funny with no bulbs in them (and I sure don’t want smoked headlights), so I made some out of discarded “blister-pac” material. First I scored some vertical lines into the plastic to give it that lenticular look, then I hit them with some 6o grit sandpaper to give them a frosted effect. Then I simply trimmed the lenses, creating little tabs to fit the slotted headlight rims.
Masked for blue paint.
Blue paint applied.
Next up: Decals, and coming up with some sort of motor to fill that big void in the rear.
I hope that’s not a clear body … looking at the pics I don’t think it is, but you’re supposed to paint those on the inside. I made that mistake when I painted my 1st MRC/Tamiya Frog in the ’80s …. not only did I paint the outside of it, I used regular Krylon. I knew nothing of special paint for the clear lexan-type bodies, with flex additive in it. When the body flexed, the Krylon came off in big chunks. Had to spend like 20 bucks on a new body. That was about 2 months of income when I was in the 6th grade!
Ah, just saw the older posts below …. looks like black polycarbonate.
Wow – really looking nice. You’ve inspired me to get back into modeling.
Stop making me buy things!
P.S. My Grizzly ukulele plays great!
hi im looking to modifie my new hornet chass to have a
blizter beetle shell is there any thing i can buy as i dont have
the equitment or knowledge in model making to make my own
many thanks anthony from united kingdom
Hey Anthony,
I don’t know of any ready-made mounts. I think that you will have to rig something up. It’s not too complicated, you’ll figure something out.
steve
hi steve thanks for reply have now mounted body to chass
could i have your email so that i can email a pic of finished project
just got to spray shell and add a few little little touches
anthony
awsome
Hello,
The car looks awesome!!
You’ve inspired me to do the same thing.
I’m allready restauring my Sand Scorcher (that I own for more than 24 years) but thanks to your idea, I now have the opportunity to drive the baja bug like it should be driven…(like I drove my Sand Scorcher when I was 9 years old)