This is the car that Terry "Ironman" Labonte drove to his 514th
consecutive start at Martinsville Speedway on April 21, 1996 surpassing The
King Richard Petty who had held the record until that time!
The model is a 1996 (wcw BUSCH) Monogram Monte Carlo kit with slixx
decals! This is one of only three Monte Carlo models I've done with the
slab sides, and skirts ( since the pre-1997 kits still had the BGN style
body). I got in such a hurry to get it ready to show a friend of mine
that I forgot to cut out the openings for the exhaust and jack posts (on a
couple models I built the sides to extend below the bottom of the body and
then just cut out the jack post and exhaust openings!) And didn't realize
it until I had already wired it to the case base! (Anybody that has wired
a model down to one of these amt or revell plastic cases knows how hard it
can be to get it un-wired!) So this model has no jack posts and no
exhausts! Hey nobody is perfect...(grin).
Painting and Decals:
This was another easy one. The chassis and interior are standard light
grey. The exterior was sprayed with testors metallic silver and then gloss
coated for decaling (I'll say this again, decals need a slick surface for
good adhesion). Once the body is dry (2-3 days) I applied the decals (as
always stripes first because the contingency decals, some of the associate
and the grille decals go on over them). I allowed them to dry throughly
and then put a final coat of gloss to seal them! The sheet included
decals for the airdam extension and skirts! This is a short track car
(Martinsville remember) so it has the full complement of air ducts on the
up front and there is no passenger side window. Once the gloss coat was
dry I painted the windshield and other clear parts... as per the
instructions else where on this site... and when they were dry (and after
mounting the body on the chassis) I installed them on the body using clear
craft glue!
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!