Beetle Bus -  Brian Thebodeau

Back from the styrene graveyard!

This little gem was acquired with a huge junkyard I won off of Ebay. It's kinda' funny, I got the junkyard initially for an almost complete built up Tijuana Taxi and it was chock full of gold. Of course everything was smashed up pretty bad and I pretty much needed a comb to go through all of it. I found the Beetle Bus and had to try and rebuild it. There were a few parts missing and everything was brush painted and a lot was broken. I started by tearing down the areas that were still glued together. The glass was completely shot and all the chrome was worn out. The body was in one piece but cracked and warped. After gathering all the bits and pieces I had to sort out what needed to be added to get it somewhere near completion. The various bits and pieces were then cleaned up, sanded down, repaired, and painted.

 

I figured since this is a cartoonish kit the chrome would look good if it were painted with Model Master silver chrome trim so it wouldn't be too shiny. The bench seat is flat black and the engine is Chevy engine red. All suspension components, the gas tank, valve covers, stacks,
bumpers, and headlights are silver chrome trim. The body and floor were sprayed with a cheap gold base coat and then many light coats of Boyd's pearl yellow that gave it a real pretty lime green sheen. I'm not much for spraying so I thought to leave it like that but it just didn't look finished. So I dug through my collection of spray bombs and came up with a pearl purple. I masked off the bottom half of the body and re-shot some more pearl yellow to fill the tape seams and then lay the purple down right over that. I got it nice and dark and let it dry for about a week. It turned out pretty good in my eyes and the difference of the yellow and purple really kicks.

 

While I was building it I thought for some time about what to do with the zoomies that are supposed to be sticking out of the sides. I only have seven out of the eight I need. I decided to ignore it for now, but I have a few ideas for some really cool zoomies sometime down the road. I also didn't really care for the scoop and decided I like it better with the eight stacks sticking up through the roof. I would like to have the rest of the suspension under there but I wasn't happy with anything I tried to scratch build. And I didn't have the arms or even want them. After the first final assembly I set it on the table and realized the rear driver side wheel was about half an inch off the table. So...I tore it back down and reassembled it taking great care to make sure everything was positioned just right. When I set it down this time the tire was only about a quarter of an inch off the table. I carefully pushed all four tires down to see if my bonds would hold under the stress. That worked out so I set it up with large books on each tire and left it to sit for a week like that. When I removed the weights all four tires were touching the table and still are.

 

My skills are not great, and this was my first total rebuild. I think I got more enjoyment out of doing this than I do out of regular building. When I first started this I complained a lot about how bad of shape everything in the junkyard was in. Everything seemed to be thickly brush painted and there must have been about 4 tubes of testers red used on every car that was built. All the glass has glue covering it and parts were not assembled right. But then I realized that all these things I was complaining about were clues to the history of the entire junkyard. Everything was built by a kid! As I went through the rest of the rebuilding process I kept wondering about that kid. They obviously enjoyed building these or there wouldn't be so many of them. They were probably excited every time they got one or there wouldn't have been the tell tale signs of rushed building. And they were doing this when these kits came out...so my junkyard is a time machine. I wonder where that kid is now and how did I end up with their childhood?