I apologize if this is the 2nd or even 3rd time that you have seen these pics as I’ve put them on the Oppo discord as well as the LaLD drive tribe. However, I am really proud of this one!
When I started modding die casts at the beginning of quarantine I looked at some of the pros for inspiration. I thought, “well mine are going to look like shit and I’ll prob do 2 or three and give up”. Most of my first ones did look like shit, but small improvements were made along the way.
I thought the same thing about the 3D printer I recently acquired, but thanks to you lot. I have been doing well with that also.
The below Ferrari 458 started out life the same as the header image. As you may already know I like COLORS. I picked Tamiya “Camel Yellow” for this project, then I used paint pens and a steady hand to do the body and engine details. Then I hit it with some Tamiya clear coat (I have a long way to go with clear coat).
The hold up(s) on all of my die cast customs (besides rainy days where I can’t paint) are wheels. The wheels that come on 99% of die cast cars are god awful. The hot wheels “real rider” cars are $5 instead of $1, and on top of that it’s not like I can just go to a few stores and peruse the toy section. Buying online is even more expensive. Although I have been doing a little of that.
So I decided to put the 3D printer to work here. I found some files on thingverse that are pretty close to the factory 458 wheels. In addition the wheel and “tire” are separate files which is convenient for painting.
So I threw the files in Cura licked off 4 wheels and test fit them... too big, but nice that they fill up the wells. I scaled the tires down a bit, and scaled the wheels down a bit more as it was a really tight fit (had to use a hammer).
My second attempt was much better. So I masked off the wheels, sprayed them silver and filed down the junky parts on the tires while I waited for the paint to dry.
They came out great! So I slapped them on excitedly... Seems as this 458 needs rear wheels with a slightly larger diameter, haha.
So I re-scaled and printed two more, painted them up and boy did this one come out NEETO.
I hope everyone is having a good week!