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Don Weixl
15 articles

1/24th Scale 2001 Revell Viagra Ford Taurus

February 18, 2022 · in Automotive · · 10 · 1.4K

This model was initially a joint project with my nephew 20 years ago. I painted and decaled the body using the kit decals. My nephew who was 15 at the time completed the model. The model was returned to me 2 years ago as my nephew had moved on and the broken model was about to be thrown out by his mother. The body was still in good shape but the wheels had broken off as well as the rear axle housing.

I had read that the Ford kits of that era suffered from stance problems. Stance is the way the car sits on its wheels, which can really affect how the car looks. Basically the kit's wheels stuck out of the body and the car sits too high if built stock. I took this opportunity to improve the car's stance by narrowing and lowering the rear axle using a razor saw. The front was lowered by a couple millimetres by repositioning the front spindles.

My nephew had painted the window trim using black enamel paint. He had “gone over the lines” in a few places. To fix this I popped out the windows from the body and soaked them in Pine-Sol cleaner for a couple hours. The Pine-Sol softened the paint just enough that I could scrape off the excess paint with a wooden toothpick.

The chassis had been hand painted with light grey gloss enamel. There wasn't complete coverage and the paint was rough in places. To fix this I sanded the chassis with sanding sticks and scuff pads where possible. I repainted the chassis using a brush as airbrushing would require too much difficult masking.

The decals on the tires had started to flake off so I re-decalled them using Slixx NASCAR tire decals which are very good.

I was impressed how the finish of the model stood up for over 20 years. My notes indicated that I used Microscale acrylic gloss as the finish gloss clear coat. I can't detect any yellowing. Sometimes clear gloss coats can look too glossy and out of scale but the “scale' of this gloss looks just right to me.

Reader reactions:
5  Awesome

7 additional images. Click to enlarge.


10 responses

  1. A wonderful re-make, Don! It is really great that, not only did you refurbish the model, but you even corrected kit design issues!
    Well done, few things are more enjoyable than breathing new life to models made many years ago.

  2. Beautiful safe, Don @donweixl
    It would have been a pitty if this kit was thrown away.
    It looks amazing again.

  3. Twenty years on the decals? Excellent work to have achieved that!

    "Viagra" - what an appropriate advertiser for NA$CAR. 🙂

  4. You’ve done a great job of bringing this beauty up to date and extending her life. I agree with you about the gloss finish, everything should be in scale.

  5. Great work Don, I could use a facelift and a bit of fix up myself.
    Beauty re-finish work.
    Good to hear about the Microscale clear coats as I’ve been using the satin finish on my latest builds.

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