Anything that can go wrong, went wrong in this mod. Thankfully, as Jesus said, "It is finished."
I am not a big fan of Skylines, or JDMs for that matter, but there is something really cool about the R32 that made me love it. As Hotwheels botched its version of the R32, Tomica was the way to go. Luckily for me, two months ago I was able to acquire a battered Tomica Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R in the Unisa Jecs livery. It had opening doors, a scratched rear window, suspension, and plastic headlights.
Immediately after getting home, the rivets were drilled out, the whole car was cleaned and the OH5SP's from a HW '65 Ford Mustang Fastback were put in. Later, the body was painted in matte black.
Then came the first of many unfortunate events. I lost the left side headlights, which meant that I had to improvise with epoxy. Schoolwork filled my schedule, so the Skyline was placed in storage.
Last month, two Tomica R32s were put on sale in our local die-cast group. Both were purchased, one as headlight donor, and another as a potential candidate for another mod.
When I was about to paint the taillights, I discovered that the edges near the door were stripped of paint due to the doors coming in contact with it. Thus, the car was repainted again, and I lost 2 days for that. In the meantime, the turn signals of the donor headlights were painted orange, and the OH5SP's were transferred to one of the donee cars while the project car was shod with gold lace wheels. The nose-up stance was fixed by inserting a spacer between the chassis and the front axles.
To put the headlights in place I used super glue. Which turned out to be a bad idea-it overflowed out to the edges and destroyed the matte black paint. Worse, the left side headlight was stuck, and the painted shell cannot be used for this custom.
I had to start from scratch.
Thankfully, the second try went better. I still had to be careful, as the matte black paint seems not to stick well to the body.
One amazing feature of this casting is the "GTR" embossed on the front and rear license plates. Those letters were Sharpie'd over.
