This is a
repainted BBI Police Hummer. Most of the lettering is Woodland Scenics
dry transfers, but the larger letters and numbers on the rear deck are
adhesive vinyl letters I picked up at the local Staples.
I completely disassembled the Hummer, to paint it. This
included popping off all of the glued on parts. This resulted in pretty
well destroying the mounting pegs of the rearview mirrors. I had to
redrill the mirror mounting hoels, and something went weird, with the
passenger side hole. I think that's why that mirror is sitting at a
funny angle. Considering all the trail rash I painted on this thing, a
bent up mirror is far from out of place.
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The
base paint is Velljo "Deep Sky Blue." The wipers, grill, lift rings,
and hood vent were painted flat black. All the light recieved a coat of
silver, followed up with tranparent red, or turn signal amber, where
appropriate. The headlights are gloss white. |
I mostly left the seperate deatil pieces alone, save for weathering.
They're all molded in a black rubbery plastic. The stowage on the back
is made of the same hard plastic as the body and chassis. I left it in
factory painted green with black straps. The exhaust pipe recieved the
most attention. Being such rubbery material, it flopped around far more
than I liked. I cut off the pipe, below the cooling tube, and replaced
it with styrene tube. I bent the tube by heating it with a candle.
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The weathering was done with some light earth tone
paintes, mixed with clear coat, and sprayed over the lower parts of the
body. I lightly oversprayed the top of the Hummer with with white
paint, to give dusty faded look. Most of the body was drybrushed with
Model Master "Rust" to give the trail rash.
Here, you can see where I decided to work a mistake, into the paint
scheme. I had decided to move the side numbers down to the front
fenders, but after getting them on to the driver's side, I found out
the passenger side had some large louvers in that location.
The dry transfers are pretty easy to remove. A small piece of tape
would have pulled them right off. Instead, I decided to make them look
like some of the old paint job starting to show through Old 13's badly
neglected paint.
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The bike is a Hevvy Hitter's dirt bike. I replaced the
spring with one from a Maisto street bike. This required both spring
mounting lugs to be cut off, and new ones made from Styrene tube. In
the interest of durability, I drilled holes for small diameter tubing,
that would also fit inside the size tube that fit the springs.
I've modified a newer one of these for another kitbashed figure, and it
got the spring out of the Minicon port mechanism from a deluxe sized
Armada Optimus Prime. The one commonly known as "Bendy Prime." That
bike only needed the lower spring replaced. Not sure if it was because
of the spring, or changes to the bike's tooling.
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The rifle holder is just some styrene
sheet. I laminated some of the thin black sheet I have onto the front
of it. Otherwise, the rifle would have been constantly damaging the
paint I would have had to put on the white back board.
The straps are made form something called Craftlace, that I picked up
at walmart. I sanded it, to get rid of the worst of the shine on it.
It's the same stuff I used to make Jay'cyn's new gun sling.
They fasten by small holes I drilled in them, slipping over two pieces
of brass rod, on the back of the rifle holder.
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The lettering is more dry transfers, like I used on the
Hummer. I'm surprised how well they photograph. Every group of letters
has at least one letter that's not quite even with the others. The
contours and tight spaces made it nearly impossible to get the letters
on evenly. Water slide decals, or even adhesive backed stickers would
have much easier to apply.
I put them on the front panels, instead of the rear ones, because I'm
thinking about mounting an MP7 on the left rear panel. I can't imagine
that single point sling would work very well, for riding a motorcycle
across the country side. I'm sure it would leave some interesting
bruises.
I'll probably eventually paint some of the chrome frame with silver.
The real bikes are anodized aluminum, so it really should be this
shiny. The real problem is that the chroming on the plastic is already
wearing off.
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Humvee
The team needs to be able to get around
in the field. To that end, they were issued a Humvee, form the SRU's
motorpool. Unfortunately, the only one not being used at the time, was
"Old Thirteen." Old 13 was collecting dust in a corner of the garage,
because nobody would use it. Evertime somebody took it out, it either
broke down at the worst possible moment (often to start working again
later, for no reason) or it would be badly dmamged. It was considered
cursed, and everybody refused to drive it.
With Angel's help, Raridan tore the old Hummer down, and rebuilt it,
with an eye towards reliability. The worn out diesel engine was
replaced with a Chevy big block, and the entire drive train was replace
with an electronic system, long proven to work in even extreme
conditions for decades on the railroads. Each wheel is now driven by
its own brushless electric motor. The transmission was replaced with a
large robust alternator that generates power for the drive motors. A
simple, solid state control unit distributes power to each wheel, as
needed. There are four of these units, wired in as redundant backups to
the each other.
The rust and loose paint was sanded off the body, and it was painted
into the latest SRU livery.
Old 13 has since served the team reliably, despite their extended
mission means that the truck rarely receives more than the most
rudimentary maintenance.
Motorcycle
On Jay'cyn's Earth, motorcycles are underpowered,
unreliable toys for the rich nobility. Everyone can see the potential
they have, but the technology no longer exists to allow more powerfull
more reliable engines to put in them.
After Joining the SRU, Jay'cyn was able to buy a dirt bike in that
universe. She had it painted olive drab, for low visibility in the
field, but added the SRU markings to it, to prevent problems while
operating in restricted areas.
The bike allows her to take up a postion away from the rest of the
team, to support them with sniper fire, from her SCAR-H.
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