Creating the TRUE 13" lowrider wire wheels took quite some time and patience. Combining two slices of the Aoshima rims was hard because they are tappered and don't line up. Bondo and lot's of carefull sanding resulted in a clean looking dish with nipples resambling the OG 13" lowrider style wheel.



For the spokes/ wires I used an old style deep dish Pegasus wire wheel. They have a better definition and depth than the new style Pegasus wheels which look quite flat more like a euro wire wheel. I used a Dremel tool for milling the edge of the wheel so that it fit the rim size and 5.20 tires I created.


 
Molds were created and the result look excellent! I used Alclad chrome to check out how the final chromed wheel would look like. I used Alclad directly on the black resin parts after a good clean up. Alclad does a good job but you can't compare it with real chrome it's more of a polished alluminium but still looks good.
Finally an authentic looking wire wheel in 1/25 scale!

I'm always looking for ways to improve and come up with new model low stuff like these TRUE 13 inch wire wheels complete with 5.20 tires. Many modelers out there like the fact that you can see thru the spokes just like the real thing. The Pegasus see thru wire wheels are way to big and don't have the extra rim details. I used two Aoshima resin casted hubs and milled Pegasus see thru wires to come up with this all TRUE 13 inch wire wheel that has the right size and details in 1/25 scale.
I will perfect the master and start casting these real soon along with the new 5.20 tires and knock offs.

 

FOR SALE the 1/12 wire wheels for your 1/12 RC scale lowrider! $65 plus $6 for worldwide priority shipping $15 for registered priority mail. VERY LIMITED 12 sets only!

Don't have the time right now to send em out for chroming. For US buyers goes: it's cheaper to send em out to Chrome Tech yourselves.
These are the perfect wire wheels for your radio controlled Radio Shack lowriders and Maisto '64 Impala. Wheels come with seperate wire/spoke inset for easy duo tone effects, Zenith style knock offs and durable rubber urethane 5.20 tires with white walls. 
For a perfect fit you need to use either small bearings for the front wheels or nylon/ plastic bushings. The rear wheels fit the axles of both the RS and Maisto cars.

NOTE: These wheels are strong but not intended to race with!! Cruising only!



For more info contact me at: jevries@jevries.com  

Finaly the Monte Carlo LS conversion kit is finished!
The kit looks very authentic and quality of the castings is high. Creating the clear lenses proved to be a difficult task but in the end the results look great.
The head light casings are casted using black resin so no need to paint the edges you only need to use a small piece of black sticky vinyl for the seperation of the lights. For sale now for only $35 plus $2 shipping.



 

 

After many hours creating and perfecting the masters it was finaly time to create the silicone molds. I started out by creating the mold for the tiny and fragile grill and I was pretty happy to see it came out perfect. Casting resin in a freshly made silicone mold usualy gives you a poor result because the mold needs to be worn in. Saying that the first try gave me a near perfect result with a very thin layer of flash behind the grill bars that can easily be removed with sanding paper. In the picture above you also see the right style mirrors coming from the Chevy Monte Carlo Earo coupe kit

  

The plan was to include seperate chrome strips/ trim around the LS clip but I decided this was a little bit too much hassle so I glued thin styrene strips on the master and it looks pretty accurate. I bought me some Smooth-on C325 which has an amber color and added two drops of So-strong black color pigment to cast the grill in black so that later on I can add a layer of Kosutte ginsan chrome powder to it to check how it looks in chrome.
 
 

I could have merged the headlight casings in the clip and cast it in one time but seperate casings work more convenient because it's easier to apply black paint on the outer edges and chrome foil on the refelectors. The masters for the clear head and rear light lenses are almost finished and a mold that holds 12 pieces each will be created next week. 12 pieces in one time is not only convienent but also necessary since the crystal clear resin has very short shelf life after opening.
 
 

After I placed and cut all the tiny pieces of styrene between the horizontal bars I glued small strips on top to give the vertical bars a cleaner look. I created a small silicone mold and casted the grill using Smooth-on 300 urethane resin. Using a pressure pot is a must to make sure all the tiny details will be preserved. The resin copy looks great and it's a the big plus that the result is not a solid resin grill that you find in standard model kits but you can really see thru it.
I decided to not just place the grill element inside the clip but to create a frame around it. This means I need to get rid of the frame that I already created on the clip to make room for the new grill.

 

Here's the LS grill in mid stage it still needs to be cleaned and perfected but it looks really good. The inset pic is a magnified photo of a photo etched Monte Carlo emblem that I bought from Scaledreams. This emblem will be placed in the middle of the grill just like the original version. Make sure to check out the Scaledreams website they offer lot's of great products for your model cars and the service and shipping handling is excellent.

Creating the 1/25 scale Aoshima copy wire wheels it became clear that casting the small tires using black urethane rubber is a difficult and time consuming process. The urethane rubber needs to cure for over 16 hours and pouring the honey thick material inside the small silicone mold was annoying. I decided to create a new silicone mold with the true 5.20 tire placed on the rim and casted in white urethane resin. This material cures in about 10 minutes so I can produce a lot more copies in a shorter amount of time. The complete wheel will be chromed and the customer can paint the tire with satin black. A white wall can either be painted on or you can use white sticky vinyl.

 

In the first post you could read that I created ine master of the 1/25 knock off and using a small silicone mold I created 4 more copies. These copies were cleaned and glued on a styrene bar to create a mold containing 4 knock offs.
The resin copies came out great and a new silicone mold will be created to produce more copies in one time.

    

 I followed the same procedure for the 1/12 scale knock offs and gave the masters sharper lines. This time around I didn't use any mold release because removing that stuff is very hard however I recently bought a newer kind of mold release that can easilly be removed with water and soap. More updates soon!
 

 
Now that I've created the 1/12 and 1/25 scale wire wheels I really needed some cool looking knock offs to go along with it. The Zenith straight 2 wing style knock off I find to the best looking and both are not available in any scale so that means: scratchbuilding!

 

For the 1/12 scaled knock off I used styrene tubing and a thick flat strip. A scaled  printed copy of the real thing helped me to determine the dimensions. Putty, sanding and more putty and sanding was needed to get to the final result. 
I created one small silicone mold and casted several resin copies cleaned em up so that I can hook up 8 copies and create the final mold.
Because of the small size it was pretty hard to create a clean looking 1/25 version. I used the centre of a Pegasus knock off and styrene for the wings. The casted lower A-arms are for my 1/25 RC cruisers.

 
 

The '87 Chevrolet Monte Carlo Luxery Sport (LS) is a pretty popular lowrider model and on my trip to Japan I came across quite a few as well. Where the SS version is more the muscle car the LS features a more elegant looking front clip and has other luxery aspects.

 
Chedda, Desert Dreams Car Club, CA.

Chevrolet Monte Carlo LS vs SS


'80's Monte Carlo SS
 
Monogram/ Revell offers the '86 Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS kit for quite some time now but no LS version was ever made as a model kit. That leaves the creative scratch builder to create his own LS front clip by converting the stock one that comes with the kit using knifes, sanding paper and putty. So I decided to create my own clip which proved to be harder and more time consuming than I thought. 



The stock SS clip has a smoother looking shape where the LS clip is a little bit more pointed and edged. Also the lights are completely different basically the whole shape is different from the LS clip. After many hours of cutting, glueing styrene strips, putty and sanding I finally created something that comes pretty close to the real thing but it's still not finished. The thin chrome bumper strips come seperate to give the clip an overall clean look.
The grill proved to be the hardest part since the closest I found was the AMT American hot rod '57 Chevy grill but even that one I was not satisfied with. The only option was to create the grill myself using a scaled down printed photo of an LS clip and a whole bunch of thin styrene strips.

 

I used brass strips en square tubing to divide the tiny styrene pieces evenly on the styrene sheet. It took time and lot's of patience to get to right result. The excess parts where cut and the part needs to dry overnight before it can be sanded and prepared for molding. I will use a 80% cured resin copy to give the grill the right shape. Finally that's going to be the master for the rest of the copies. Finding the right headlights is another adventure. More on this project soon!