1996 Family Channel/Primestar Ford Thunderbird


This is the 1996 #16 Family Channel/Primestar Ford T-Bird driven by Ted Musgrave.

This model is a 1996 Monogram T-Bird it is a rendition of one of the short track car he drove during the 1996 season. It has the usual modifications for a t-bird kit including slab sides, jack posts and skirts along with front airdam extension! This was a very colorful paint scheme which made for a very impressive looking car on the track and as a model!

Decals:

The decals are from slixx. They included the red stripes (the red stripes were each printed as separate decals... when monogram did a kit of this car in 1995 they were printed as one decal) which fit nicely. Once all of the stripes were applied ( the separate stripes were a little bit of work but not too bad) and allowed to dry the rest of the decals went on without any hassle.

Painting:

Painting was a bit of a challenge since the white wrapped around the window openings and you have to leave the edges of the window openings blue but it wasn't too bad. This requires that I first paint the entire body white. The I masked the blue areas by applying scotch magic tape to the windows (outside) and cut around the openings with a razor blade and sprayed on the blue metallic since I was still using spray cans at the time for metallic paints I also had to completely cover all areas that were to remain white because there is no fine control with a spray can!!! The chassis and body interior are the standard light gray (equal parts grey and white). This was one of the first models in which my "home made" exhausts were fashioned from 3/16 thin wall plastic tubing ... although I didn't use this size tubing for too long, it seemed just a little bit to large to me ... on a couple models I used tubing that I thought was styrene but wasn't and had a wall thickness that was much to heavy! I've replaced the pipes on all but one of these early t-birds that had the thick wall stuff with 1/8th thin wall stock. Once the decals were applied the usual coat of gloss coat was applied! The body was then mounted the clear parts painted and installed with clear craft glue. Then a few finishing touches were added (tire and wheel decals and center caps painted) and the #16 was added to my collection!

Complete instructions for painting and assembly of chassis, clear parts, and construction of slab sides can be found at the bottom of the main page!

Click Here


Additional Pictures

Left Side View
Left Front View
Right Rear View