Enter The Hellcat
As some of you may or may not know, there is a little known Canadian aftermarket model resin company called Clearly scale run by a gentleman named Jeremy. For a while, Jeremy was producing some top notch resin parts for the modelling community when he suddenly fell ill and was unable to continue with his business. Some called it as scam, others thought he was dead.
But Jeremy is not dead and Clearly Scale is still knocking out some pretty cool, albeit niche, resin products for us to funnel our children’s college fund into. I myself have been experiencing some pretty life changing events recently so I do apologize. It is after all a hobby and not my main focus in life, though I wish it was.
If you have not yet already, take a look at my unboxing video of the Clearly Scale SRT Hellcat conversion for the Revell 1/25 Dodge 2009 Challenger. It will help set the ground work for the project to come.
But enough chat lets dive straight into the build. Usually I would leave the body till last but in order to ensure proper fitment of the chassis and body, I opted to go ahead and just start the body first, which should also help speed up the build as the clear coat will need a week or so in the cooler winter temps to really de-gase.
Also of note that this is not a “showroom replica” or “curbside kit”, meaning that it has a full interior, exterior and engine/ drivetrain modelled (which is what this kit is meant for). If you do plan on using a pre-painted body version or a “curbside” one, your results may vary on fitment.
First on the ticket was the front bumper. The Revell body OOB ( Out of Box) does not come with the front or rear bumpers installed. So essentially the CS bumpers are a drop fit……….almost.
Read the instructions carefully. Jeremy has included some very informative and precise instructions in the conversion kit so make sure you read them properly.
One of the key points stated multiple times over and over is that he as specifically made the parts for the body oversized to allow the user to get the fit that they want. This means you do need to touch the OOB body to get a good fit. Work on the resin and sand little by little till you have the fit you are happy with.
The front bumper has a few pieces to it, mainly the grills, but also the two clear inner headlight buckets that are hollowed out to allow airflow into the intake. While the kit presents you with both, one should only be used on the driver’s side inner light.
After confirming and dry fitting all the bumper accessories, you can start to play around with fit to the body. On my OOB kit and with the CS bumper. I’m going to say that the fitment was at almost 95% and required very little adjustemnt to get it to sit where I wanted.
Now while I was able to achieve a very good and well aligned fit, There was still some issues where is some locations, the resin sat above the plastic or vice versa. Only by a few thousandths. Its not a kit killer at all and when the first coat of primer goes on I will address them with some light sanding.
This is a re-occurring theme for the rest of the body. Yes a little work and attention is needed but not nearly as much as I have had to do in the past on some absolute garbage resin conversions! … cough Jimmy Flinstone cough …
Just to the right of the passengers outer bucket you can see some of the steppage mentioned earlier. I have to clean up the mould seam lines on this anyways and in all honesty the mould seams are far worse than this.
Moving from front to rear, the next area of business was the hood. So far out of this kit, the thing that has required the most work was the hood area. Complete with detail on the underside as well as hood vents. It is one of the most striking features of the car so take your time to get it sitting properly.
First step here was fitting the hood into its slot, and then making it sit flat. Start by sanding down the side of the hood so it fits symmetrically along the centerline between the two fenders and just sneaks in behind the bumper.
When it came time to make it sit flat, that was more of a challenge. While Jeremey explicitly states that all the trimming should be done on the resin and not the plastic, I found I had to perform some slight liposuction to the windshield tray. Mainly the two large humps, separated by the second windshield wiper as well at the weather seal in front of it needed to go bye-bye. Some slight removal on the left and right edges on the underside of the hood put everything else down nicely.
TIP: I use black sharpie on the edges to help me visually see where I’m sanding and when an edge is still visible above the body lines.
The rear bumper took the least amount of work out of all of the exterior pieces by far. Only the curved edge inside the bumper and the edges of the trunk lid needed any attention to them.
Again, some slight overlap was present as was on the front bumper but a quick pass of sanding with a medium grit will level things off nicely
Other parts of the exterior are the rear spoiler and radio antennae blade which will be painted separately and added on after the body has been painted,
That about wraps up the first part of this build. Next I will be focusing on the interior and blasting it out if the way. In addition to the CS resin conversion, I was also able to get my hands on the PE set from Geronimo works which I will be adding it here and there.