The Naked Silo

This project's come a long way since  Part 1  where I mentioned the idea for this build came from looking at the main fuselage and imagining dragster slicks in place of the cylindrical engines and wanting to see what this would look like as a road vehicle. Reminder of the space version. Of course, it could only be a hot rod or race car, and much of the inspiration for that was seeing Colin Cantwell's concept model for the X-Wing fighter that looks like it was kitbashed from a dragster. I bought two of these kits over a year ago, planning to do something non-standard with at least one of them, but I had no idea at the time that making a road vehicle would be an option, so this roadster was as much a surprise to me as it was a delight to build. Decals port. I figured spaceship markings would be different from automobile markings, and these particular ones could mean anything, so I didn't follow the decals guide in the instructions...and I didn't both...

Things are moving along more quickly since Part 1  now that I'm finally using an airbrush. It's more precise and uses less paint than rattle cans, and I can use acrylics, which means less (if any) fumes and easy clean-up. I love it! Mechanic for scale. I settled my 1/48-or-1/72 scale problem when I realized the tires would be huge at those scales. I assembled a 1/24 scale Tamiya mechanic to see how he looked alongside the roadster and that was that (despite the Revell dragster/roadster donor kits (see part 1 ) being 1/25 scale). Also, here you can see I've added an extra beefy collar around the rod styrene axle. Cockpit. Now that she's 1/24 scale, I had to adjust the cockpit accordingly by scratch-building a seat from some leftover parts and some ridged sheet styrene. I should probably add some seat belts...but I doubt I will. Tight fit. I'll be honest: that cockpit looks uncomfortably (if not unrealistically) cramped. That steering whe...

This is the main hub for all my automotive Shipyard model projects. Thinking I'd be doing mostly  science fiction-based models  when I returned to this hobby in 2015, I didn't expect I'd build more than one or two cars at most, but, at the time of writing this post, I've already done three and I have plans for several more, so I've made this hub to collect them all. I've also been making some architectural models , so there's a collection for that, too.   Projects are in chronological order, and new ones will be added as they're completed. To read about the origin of the  Small Pond Shipyard  click the SPS logo at the bottom of this post. Click on the various images to see the build log for that project: