Bad Actor

There's an awful lot of black-and-white photos at the blog these days. I thought I'd add a little colour by diving into the old retroDynamics blog and pulling out the posts for the Bad Actor build from the first couple of months in 2013. It's one of my favourite model car projects.

Part 1: A good start to the Bad Actor

I made a start over the Christmas holidays on Tom Daniels' Bad Actor kit I've had in my stash for quite sometime. The paint on the body is a deliberately uneven finish of blue, silver and black that I sprayed outside during a snowfall to get a mottled finish. I'm currently working on the engine and wheels.

Part 2: Bad Actor, Good Chassis

I spent some time building the Bad Actor's chassis and getting it up on its wheels. For a relatively old kit - I think this version dates from 1980 - the parts fit together fairly well without too much filing and fitting.

I didn't do any engine detailing. Just painted it with what I thought were interesting colours and gave it a wash of thinned flat black to highlight some details.

These are all the chassis and exhaust parts. Any that were chromed had the chrome stripped off with SuperClean. Everything was painted with a flat aluminum.

Here's what it looks like after the engine, exhaust and chassis parts are installed. Some thinned black wash was brushed over everything to tone down the colours a bit. Later I plan to weather things a little before finishing.

Here's what it looks like before the radiator assembly is dropped in, and below is the rear wheel assembly - it'll be obscured once the body is installed.

Part 3: Bad actor with the lid off

I've been doing some work on the Bad Actor and luckily I'm getting near the end. Once I had the hood installed it struck me that it looked interesting without the body, so I thought I'd take some photos before finishing up.

Not much more to do on this one. Just some body work and getting it installed.

Part 4: Bad Actor is done

It's done! It was a rather fun build. Not too many pieces, fun to paint, and all the parts fit together quite well. 

Hopefully, once the grey skies clear, and the light is better, I'll take a few more pictures in bright sunlight.