TOPIC:

I think it's been over 2 years since I built & primed these Willy figures, I did the faces while doing the driver for the ski/track thingy & January cold/grey seems like a good time to get on with the rest ...

Progress at the end of day one - one coat of some of the colours needed:



End of day two - 2 coats of most of the colours needed, some details:




From left to right:
- (close to) Wild Willy M38 uniform (for Ozzy head, hence the neck extension)
- Willy's' Wheeler uniform (ditto)
- replacement Air Cav Willy
- " lumberjack Willy
- " Stunt Car Racer Willy

You're a serial wheeler Jonny.
I like the air cav head.

End of day 3/start of day 4 - final coats, details, washes, decals, Ozzy heads epoxied on:




 

Yeahhh awesome

Awesome indeed!

I had a quick look on ebay not long ago and to my door one of these figures with the Willy head would cost me around £30-40 to do.
But I need one of those for sure in the future.

I put all 5 of the recent Willy drivers on eBay (I have a big Credit Card hole I need to fill ) at what I thought were quite strong prices ... all sold within hours, even the Ozzy left overs /

You have a credit card hole too? Mine is the grand canyon...

I seem to have accumulated a lot of Willy drivers & Mezzo Osbourne figures, and as I still don’t feel like doing anything complicated (and want to make some space) I thought I’d have a go at them. I put two full figure Willys aside, but that still leaves 10, plus one torso type. 

This is quite a big batch:-         

7 freestanding figures (no purpose in mind yet);-         

4 “proper” Wild Willy drivers (I plan on doing another Lumberjack, Air Cav & Stunt Car Racer driver , in the hopes I get to use/keep them this time, plus one other (TBD));-         

4 Wild Willy drivers with Ozzy heads (I already had a spare Ozzy head, and these have sold in the past – unlike any kind of Mezzco head on the “torso” type driver);-         

2 headless Wild Willy driver bodies that I will probably just keep the boots and gloves off as I’ve lost the one I’ve done before;-         

15 sets of the other parts (winch, NOS bottle, steering wheel & column, lights) off the full body Willy driver sprue (I already had 5 full spare sets & although I’ve never tried selling these, I’d like to think there’ll be some value in painting these?).   



Step one was to remove the heads, plus the cape & wings of the Ozzy “batwings” figures (one of them turned out to have a broken & poorly repaired shoulder joint):



 

Willy heads the nut holder portion dremelling off, and some internal structure to stop the head flopping about - on the full figure heads it's best described as a dog tag horizontally, and an elongated shark fin vertically. 

On the torso type, the dogtag can be fixed straight to the screw structure. The torso type need the screw hole filling, I used a bit of tube & ball from a Wild Willy gearstick with unfortunate results

I also reshaped the face on the Kelly figure heads slighty - smaller/more defined cheekbones & reduced brow (one one which ended up being very thin, so I drilled & plugged it with a bit of sprue), this & painting the eyes slightly bigger make the face look a bit more feminine.

Basic assembly on 4 "proper" Wild Willy drivers:




Removing the black connector part from the underside of the Mezzo Ozzy heads, it's both really hard to remove, and really fragile if you try to reuse it ... 




5 minute epoxy + M4 screw:




Necks are a bit of 1/2" styrene tube, cut at a slight angle on one end:




Other bits assembled & filled: