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NASCAR MODELS by MR NASCAR Adam Petty's 1999 SPRINT CTS Dodge Ram

Adam had moved quickly to the Busch series after a couple runs in the Craftsman Truck series in 1999, in the family-owned SPRINT Dodge Ram, the model pictured here. According to the NASCAR 2000 press guide, he ran this truck only twice in '99, in Richmond, in September, where he started 25th, and finished 10th, and in Texas, in October, starting 23rd, and finishing 16th. This ride, with different sponsorship, was taken over by cousin (?) Mark Petty in 2000, as Adam took his Sprint sponsorship to the bigtime, in the BGN series.

This model came about due to the encouragement of Robert Domecq (you can see some of his models and art in the Gallery!). He contacted me about a year ago to see if I was interested in making these decals, and doing a buildup for him, using a diecast 1/24 scale Revell Ram he could send me. Now, 99.9% of the time, I do not get involved in building models for other people for ca$h, for three reasons: first, I have great difficulty parting with them when they are done, kinda like the Michelin Man with his tires in that commercial... second, I live in fear that the customer will be disappointed with the end result - then what?... and third, I have a bazillion projects for my own shelves, and Dupont pays me enuff to stay warm and dry and keep food on the table... most months... so the money is not a strong enuff incentive. But... every once in a while, you get an offer you can't refuse (No, Bob is NOT related to the Sopranos...) so, this was one of those 0.1% of times I accepted. Further down in this write-up, you'll see why I was swayed...

I recieved from Bob some shots of the truck at Texas and Richmond, and a big box with the diecast disassembled and primed. Meantime, I had scoured the internet and back issues of WCI for shots of the sponsors, and began working up the decals.

I knew the trickiest part was gonna be the yellow stripes, so I started on those first. After a couple fumbles, I realized the only way to do this was to paint the truck in it's purple/green/dayglo red colour scheme, then figure out how to copy the breaklines to define the shape of the stripes. Thus, Job 1 was to mask and paint the body. I started by repriming the body with PlastiKote white prime, so the Dayglo red would work. After body was primed, the red was sprayed on, and clearcoated. Next I masked off the areas to stay red, and applied the "Purple" which I mixed from TAMIYA TS37 lavender sprayed into a bottle, with ChromaPremiere violet tint added to darken and redden it to match pictures. That went on thru my airbrush. Once that had dried, I masked off the purple areas, and shot the rest of the body with TAMIYA TS35 Park Green, which looked like a pretty good match. The masking was very laborious, as I tried to duplicate the swoops of the actual truck scheme breaklines. I also painted the kicker bars in TS35 to match the body, altho the truck interior appears to be red.

Once the paint was applied, I had to figure out a way to duplicate the breaklines so I could make those yellow stripes. Came up with the following:

• Tape a piece of tranparent Mylar overhead tranparency to the side of the body
• Using a fine Sharpie (go Kurt!), place a dot every inch or so along the breaklines
• Using your trusty set of French Curves left over from drafting class (not the Talledega type...) connect the dots.
• Scan the tranparency into the 'puter
• Using your favourite graphics program, thicken and manipulate them until you have yellow stripes with a fine black outline.

Once all decals were in place, except those in that huge chrome grille, I applied my usual fine mistcoats of TAMIYA TS13 clear (rattlecan heated in hot water) and buffed it all out with Turtle wax. I then applied BareMetal chrome foil on the nose, followed by the mesh decals, then a coat of TS13 once more, to help hold those decals in place on the foil.

Once all this was done, I reassembled the model, and fired it off to Bob, just this past week. Heck, now I got nuthin' for my shelf...dang... what if he doesn't like it??...boy, I miss that model...