basic tamiya paint WRC blue and clear question

[darkknightlives]

I'm building the Renaissance Subaru WRC 2006 transkit and will post some pic soon. can the board give me a little advice, Ive sprayed the body with WRC blue from Tamiya, should I wet sand and polish now, or clear coat then polish, or decal clear and then polish, or clear polish decal and then clear????? Tamiya clear work ok over decals or would Zero clear be better?

[Seamus McRae]

After some quite lengthy net research, this is what I now do with my WRC Scoobs:
for any car prior to the WRC01, I just use 3 coats Tamiya's Mica Blue as is, with the can warmed up in a bowl of TAP hot water. 1st coat is a mist to lay down a base. This will dry pretty quickly. I generally wait a couple of hours then give a wet sand to remove the roughness. 2nd coat is a little heavier to add some depth to the colour. I allow this to dry pretty much overnight then give a light wet sand the next day. 3rd coat is then the money job. Move the can a little closer to the model, working in a long, smooth, slow motion, in a 3D pattern - much like the real auto spray painters do. Spraying like this, I have never had to clear coat for decals. The finish is already glossy. In any case, the real decals are die-cut vinyl so should, for ultimate realism, be applied as is, without clearcating.
For Subaru's from the WRC01>, Prodrive changed the look of the Sonic Mica Blue just slightly by spraying a pearl coat to finish - i.e. WRC97-P2000 were sprayed base+clear (as 2 pack comes out matt) whereas WRC01-end were sprayed base+pearl+clear. I am in the middle of doing Rossi's Rally Monza Impreza WRC04 & sprayed the body with 3 coats Mica Blue & 1 coat Pearl Clear. The difference in the depth of the colour between this model & the one I did of Tommi's WRC01 from Monte 02 (where I just sprayed 3 coats Mica Blue) is extraordinary. It is much clearer now why my Tommi car didn't really look the same as what I saw on WRC TV back then - all things considered.
Sorry, a bit long winded there, but hopefully you understood what I was getting at. Basically if you're careful with how you lay down your coats, you shouldn't really need to clear coat for decals. Tamiya's spray lacquers cure exceptionally well with excellent gloss coverage.

[darkknightlives]

thanks for the great reply, can you tell me a little more about the pearl clear is this the tamiya color? doses on mist it on or is it a single coat will too many coats make it overly "pearl", can you clear coat over it?

[Seamus McRae]

Yes Pearl Clear is (should be) a readily available Tamiya spray - TS65. Since the Mica Blue already has a very faint metallic fleck through it, you shouldn't need to spray too much Pearl. Depending on how the Blue goes down (because no 2 spray jobs ever come out the same) depends on whether I spray 1 or 2 coats of Pearl. I generally aim for a semi-wet spray of the Pearl, so the lacquer isn't drying in the air before it hits the model.