OK....chassis done. Nothing fancy, OOB, as most of it will be covered up and can't be seen anyway.
Only thing I did differently is instead of the wheels and tires that came with the kit, I used a set out of a Monogram 1/24 stock car kit. The kit tires have a funky tread pattern on them, that was done away with long before the '76 season (which is where this kit is based from), plus they are a little small for the wheel wells. The 1/24 wheels and tires fill out the wheel wells better. There is a heat shield that goes between the engine and the firewall, but leaving that out as it really doesn't fit that well, and again, not going to see it unless the hood comes off, or someone looks into the front wheel well, so it gets deleted.
Body....well I should have done a little more research with the decals, as where the decals go over where the door handles would be, there is no cut out in the decal for the plate that goes over where the handle would be. Reason for that is the Daytona and Talladega cars wouldn't have a simple plate welded over the door handle hole, as it would be flush to the body to decrease drag. And apparently the decal represent the super speedway cars. Either way, will make it work some how.
Now, plastic on this kit was white. Base color for the car is also white, and as I said before, I hate painting white as it is probably one of the hardest colors to paint and look good. So tried something I read somewhere.
First off, cleaned the plastic well with some mild dish detergent.
Primed the body with Vallejo White primer, and let it dry. There was a slight color difference between the plastic and the paint, so wasn't as bad to see where the paint was and wasn't on the kit. Once dry, 2-3 coats of Future, which brings us to here:
Tough to pick up in the photos, but even with only 2 light coats and a medium coat, the Future has a pretty good shine on it. Now it is decal time, which I will hopefully get done today. Then into the booth for another couple of coats of Future to seal in the decals. In this era of Nascar, the graphics were painted on, and not the fully body decals you see today, so the car would have an even gloss over the whole thing. This would also make the car "slicker" through the air. Once the future is dry, just a little BMF around the window frames, insert the windows and put the body on the chassis. And hopefully all done by Thu/Fri to go to the Atlantic Nats this weekend coming!