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A very light tickle with a Dremel sanding drum took care of the slight irregularities in the lines of the wheelarch cut outs, and a pass with some used 400 grit paper on an eraser finished the cut edges. On with the windows masks on the inside, tape to close the holes on the outside, cleaning twice with lens wipes & it was ready for paint.   


The bodywork is supposed to be PS-32 Corsa Grey according to the instruction sheet, I’ve used that before (on an NSU TT, backed with PS Purple) & it would probably look quite good – but nothing like the blue of the box art. Despite my liking for sky blue, I’d decided to do it in orange instead.

The weather here has gone from sub zero for the last week to a forecast of warmer and a lot wetter, so that really means doing it indoors. As the body mount holes were pre-cut there was not real point in using glue on magnetic mounts, so the indifferent bound from Pro-Line R?C Body Paints wouldn’t be an issue. It looked about right in the bottle, and brush painting some on a test piece gave a nice shade.


Airbrushing the first coat on straight from the bottle gave an opacity akin to Kia-Ora when your mum was on an economy drive, so I went straight on to a second coat. The struggle with gumming up – despite a lot of fiddling, a little thinning, and increasing air pressure – became too much towards the end so a full breakdown & clean out was required before going any further. 

I swapped out the 0.2mm nozzle set for the 0.4mm size, and the third coat went on much, much better, although I think it’s going to be brighter than I want, so I will back it with …something to bring it back a touch. My first thought was to do it a muted blue/grey, grey/green, grey, or at least some sort of muted shade, but I’ve done that on a lot of Lexan bodied M-chassis cars & wanted something with a bit more punch this time. The more I look at it though, the more I think I made an error…   


It’s had 4 coats now (not shown), I’d like to think just one more of orange, hopefully put on tonight, would be enough & I could get the back colour on tomorrow. I seem to remember the Aluminium being very thin, perhaps red would be a better idea …











 

I used a 0,6 nozzel for my beetle body ( first orange and after metal red) on the now m05 custom.  You could do a jean limited edition of the beetle.
I love this body. 

Paint looked a lot better after the 4th & 5th coat, the red backing (2 coats) didn't change the colour that much, but did make the shape look a bit more defined. It still looks like an injection moulded bucket to me, but at least it doesn't look like a cheap one

It's like a jean limited edition.

Are there headlights for the beetle you can fit with LEDs? The classic 70ies orange looks really nice.

No there are no light buckets on the beetle like the fiat berlina corsa.

too bad, then i will have to make them myself.

The screw is in the middle of the lens.

Who needs screws if you have shoe glue

Jonny you didn't have sticking problems with the beetle decals? I used 2 stickers set on my beetle the rallye one and the classic ones, and they don't stick well.