tamiyaclub.com

Now as I like to collect EP RC buggy’s from other manufacturers this car was one that when I decided to get one for my own it did take me a while to acquire one, and its due in thanks to Stulec or Stuart Leckie who used to live in Glasgow but moved to Calgary in Canada when he was still in bonnie Scotland he had heard that I was on the look out for a SG Coyote and happened to have one that he was willing to part with so he kindly offered it to me and I bought it from him in October 2003 and lets just say it was a bit of a fixer-upper, the chassis was missing a few bits and had some non-standard shocks on it, the body had seen better days and had been badly painted red, it did come with a tatty box that had the image of the car as it should look on the cover, the striking two tone blue with White and red colour scheme featuring a angular triangular design on the front, long stripes down the lower sides and a white and turquoise blue chequer pattern over the roof, there were a few fine red pine stripes and lots of small sponsor decals arranged in lines along the side stripes, now at first I did not do much with the car that I had but over time I managed to get a number of spares for it and Barrypops in Hong Kong was particularly helpful in supplying me with a large lot of spares including many of the parts that I had been missing, I’d also managed to get hold of another Box and a better body shell, but it needed the old paint taking off it first which was quite easy as it was old acrylic paint that had dried out and was cracking with age, so just by flexing the lexan of the body the old paint would split and flake off, it did take numerous attempts to get the reset of the paint off but I did it eventually and had a fresh shell all ready for painting.

That was a number of years ago but after the semi success of the Optima Pro body paint job I had a new tactic to employ to in getting this complex paint scheme onto this shell, using the box top of guidance I marked out the design on the outside of the shell using a CD writer pen, I soon noticed that the design was not so easy to duplicate as the prototype body shell on the box-top car is slightly different in its prepositions, the side panniers are of a different shape, more blunt & squared off then the prototypes, anyway I did the best I could to mimic the design, the cheques around the roof were quite challenging as at first they did not seem to match from one side to the other so I had to wipe the lines off and start again this time making a symmetrical cheque pattern on the roof and making it match up to the sides, I used cheque squares that were roughly 15mm in size, these are slightly larger than the ones on the prototype but the overall effect is mostly the same, anyway with the lines done I started to apply the paint, I only had white to start with so opening an ancient pot of Tamiya PC paint that was the consistency of honey I carefully brush painted the first coat of white on using the lines for guidance, when it was done it was starting to show some of the look of the design but I would have to wait until the following Saturday before I get more paint before I could apply the other colours.

On Saturday I travelled the 12 miles over to Coventry and when to Kits & Bits on the Brandon Rd, there I was looking at the pot paints and bought a few, some tins of Tamiya acrylic and some Pactra, however on getting home I found that the best colours to use were ones that I already had in paint pot collection so I had not needed to buy this paint after all… oh well, after I’d finished with my restoration of the Optima Pro it was time to turn my attention to the Coyote, after sorting out which colours I was going to use I painted the remaining colours one at a time starting with the Red, then the dark blue and finally the light blue, this was only the preliminary coat as the acrylic paint is quite thin and will need multiple coats to build up the colour and negate the brush strokes, but even at this stage the body was starting to get some of the striking quality of the original, so on to the Sunday.

First off I looked at the chassis and saw that the wheels I had were White, and the wheels on the box-top car were black, I must admit that the black wheels look miles better so I decided to paint them, but I had no black spray paint left so I had to nip out to Halfords and buy some, upon return I masked the tires and took the wheels into the loft where I gave them all a thorough coating of the satin black spray paint I had bought, My next task to finish the body off was to apply the second coat to each of the colours and then apply the decals and paint a third coat of overall white inside the shell to seal the acrylic, now the original car in the box top shot has clear windows but no driver figure, you can also see the chassis gubbins through the large windows so I was wondering what to do about it, I could just paint the windows black but that was really too easy, then I remembered that I had a spare lexan driver figure off a Kyosho Tomahawk, that with a little modification could be made to fit, do I rummaged around in the boxes in the loft and found what I was looking for, this Driver figure is designed to be a cover over the RX & speedo, but I only needed to top parts so I cut the skirting off, then I figured out a way to attach it to the body using some old Tamiya Grasshopper speed control servo posts, some small screws and a couple of short plastic spacer tubes, but that would have to wait as I had more painting to do, after the 2nd coats I got some black enamel and painted in the rear window and the front bumper, after this I started to apply the decals.

Now as you don’t get all the sponsor decals in the kit (in fact you hardly get any of what’s shown on the box top) I had to get creative and best use what I had while trying to remain as faithful to the original look as possible, I did make use of a few decals off another car but for the most part I used the original decals, after that was done I applied the inner coat of white paint before giving the driver figure the once over and as I using the white paint it seemed obvious that I paint the driver up to look like someone famous who wears such a white race suit, some say….

The finishing touches were to retrieve the wheels from the attic, peel off the masking and drill some vent holes into the wheels so that the tires could breath, then I refitted the wheels, the last touches on the body were the red pin stripes, having bought a pack of Red trim-lines the day before I peeled them off and applied them as per the box design, once done the end result is quite good I think, its not 100% identical but then there are very good reasons for that, it does look very similar if not a little better so that one more car that I’ve restored over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that one or two other TC members have tried to duplicate the Coyote box art with varying success, so I now add my version to the mix, so what do yas all think??