digs into his stash of discounted collectible pre-paints.
In my previous article, I converted a toy car for use in post-apocalyptic arena combat games. This time, I'll take the same type of toy car and do a different conversion.
Going back to the Road Rage rulebook, this time I'm basing my work on the car design on page 40, 73 Custom V-8 Vega. It has one visible weapon – a fixed, forward-firing 20mm chaingun. (I'm assuming the oil sprayer and smoke generator are not visible.) The car also has an upgrade: Rear Armor Plating.
The Gun
The gun is the easy part. Stan Johansen Miniatures doesn't sell any chainguns, but they have several 20mm 'miniguns' in their Special Weapons set. Google Images seems to think that miniguns and chainguns look the same, so that's good enough for me. 
As I did with the previous car, the minigun is primed camo green, washed with green ink, and highlighted with Kelly Green. The gun barrels were painted black, drybrushed silver, then given a black ink wash.
Window Armor
Since this car is supposed to be heavily armored in back, I want to cover up that large rear window with some armor.
Again, the armor set from Stan Johansen Miniatures comes in handy. They make a large, perforated armor plate that happens to fit perfectly over the back window. Since the window is not flat, I press the armor piece over the window to conform it to the curve. Then the armor is painted up as before, except that I used a lighter highlight to emphasize the texture of the armor.
Rebuilding the Car
Meanwhile, I have taken the toy car apart, painted it as I did in the first article, and reassembled it (and yes, I cracked the windshield again!):
The only difference this time is that I used an X-Acto knife to slice the rear bumper off the bottom car piece. So the back of the reassembled car looks like this:
Rear Armor Plating
Now I needed to add armor plating to the back end of the car, but I was out of convenient pieces from the armor set.
Fortunately, Plastruct makes a useful plastic sheet: N (1:200) Tread Plate Sheet, which is 1.5mm thick styrene. I measured the toy car, and used scissors to cut out two pieces from the small sheet.
(Scissors weren't the best choice, as the smaller piece warped when I cut it out. I'll use a knife next time.)
The armor was painted in the same manner as the window armor, and superglued to the back of the car, holding it in place until the glue set so it would match the slight curve of the vehicle.
Final Assembly
Now, I can add the other parts. I was afraid that superglue might haze up the clear plastic, so the window armor was glued into place with Tacky Glue (a white glue):
Where to mount the minigun? Since the hood slopes, mounting it there would make it appear to be aimed into the road. Therefore, I mount it on the car roof. The car is then based as before.
Finished Car
