Starter 1/43 1994 Exide Ford Thunderbird

Geoff Bodine Racing:

Geoff Bodine purchased the former AK Racing team in 1993. Bodine was forced to find a new sponsor almost immediately, as Hooters pulled its sponsorship from the team after he bought it. He originally signed The Family Channel to be the sponsor for the remainder of the season and picked up sponsorship from Exide Batteries in 1994. Bodine won three times that year but finished 17th in points. He improved one spot better in 1995, but in 1996, the sponsorship was replaced by QVC, and scored his final win at Watkins Glen International Raceway. He struggled in 1997, failing to qualify in a couple of races, and having his brother Todd fill in for him at the Coca-Cola 600. Despite this, he won two poles in the last two months of the season, including one that broke the track record at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Eventually the team disbanded in 2000.

Starter kits are well known for being fairly accurate representations and fairly easy to build. It would be accurate to call them a second tier manufacturer. The molding of the resin is excellent until you get to the underside and that is where you will find your air pockets. Easy enough to fill and generally unseen in the finished product.

This kit has the interior cast onto the floor pan and it fits nicely into the body shell. You have a plastic steering wheel and you'll use a pin for the gear shifter. The kit comes with a piece of mesh to use for the driver's side netting. What isn't in the kit is a roll cage and since there are no instructions, you are on your own for building one.

You are provided with spun aluminum wheels and metal axles. Resin wheel inserts are provided as well as rubber/vinyl tires. The exhaust section is also resin. The windows are vacuformed (not shown). They are to be cut out and placed in indentations around each window. This is nice as it means you don't have to mask them to paint the body. The single photo etch part is a rear spoiler and a few other detail items. The decals are nicely done and even after all this time, should work fine. Note that large sheets like this are often curled from sitting in a small box, which is why I have the one in the image clamped. Two full color images of the car are provided to help with decal application and painting. There are no build instructions.

Starter kits appear super easy to build. However, they are not perfect as I discovered fairly early in the build. The primary step is to clear out all the flashed over windows. This requires a sharp scalpel or knife and a bit of scraping or sanding to remove the excess bits. There are roll cage forms molded just inside the windows so be sure not to sand those away. The same was done to the chassis/interior as there is flash on the roll cage molding behind the driver.

Next, the resin pour stubs need to be removed and for this I used a 180/220 grit sanding stick. I found one air pocket that was filled with super glue and sanded smooth. It is important to test fit the chassis with the interior to ensure no surprises later on.

I then removed the spoiler from the p.e. fret and after giving it a bit of a bend, glued it into the shallow slot on the trunk. There are roof rails on this car, unfortunately the bottom of the p.e. bits are flat while the roof is curved so they don't come close to fitting. As a result, I left them off.

Painting is next. I first sprayed on some white Dupli-Color primer I had left over from a project. It is very fine primer and worked just great. However, it stinks to high heaven, unlike my usual Tamiya primer. Speaking of which, I used Tamiya grey primer to simulate the light grey interior. For the body, I used Tamiya X-18 semi-gloss black. I prefer the matte or semi-matte colors as they don't seem to have issues with running and orange peels like I sometimes get with gloss. Besides, I didn't have any gloss.

Once the clear gloss had been applied, I started with the decals. I figured they might be problematic so started with the rear color piece. Not surprising, it cracked and split and generally didn't work as hoped. I had a can of the purple paint designed for the Exide car, and so decanted some. However, the color turned out to be a bit too dark. Better than nothing. Meanwhile I applied several coats of Microscale decal film over the rest of the sheet and let it dry.

Thanks to that saving measure, the rest of the decals went on without too much fuss though they took a long time to come free of the backing paper. With all the decals in place, I used some automotive clear coat left over from a previous car and sprayed that on. It worked just great and one coat was nice and glossy.

The next step was cutting out all the clear bits. All of the parts were marked on the vacuform piece, but were too large so all had to be carefully trimmed to fit into their designated spot. I used clear glue for this. During this somewhat laborious process, I installed the inserts into the wheels and painted them black. The sponsor decals were applied to the rubber tires. I also used my Dremel and cutting disc to shorten the axles so they'd fit.

Fortunately, I cut the axles to the right length and when glued to the wheels fit perfectly. I had to add a few more decals for the window braces and touched up the cracked front decal using Vallejo light sea blue, which came pretty close. The fit of the resin 'chassis' to the body wasn't very good. The chassis was a bit too short for both of the screw holes to line up so while the back one was perfect, the same could not be said for the front.

It has been several years since I built one of these 1/43 kits and while I have done other Starter kits, this one seemed to have more issues than the others. Perhaps it is the subject or perhaps it is just me. Anyway, I now have a nice NASCAR model to add to my small collection.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff_Bodine_Racing

25 April 2025

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