# Revell Lightning McQueen (Easy Click)



## Alien (Sep 5, 2001)

Hi Guys,

I just thought I would post a photo of my Revell 1:24 scale 'Easy-click' Lightning McQueen from the Disney/Pixar Cars movies. (In particular, as he appeared in Cars 3.)

He is shown next to 'Mack', his Mack truck hauler, that I kit bashed a few years ago from an Italeri American Superliner. (Italeri did not obtain a Mack license for the kit so there was no reference to Mack on it at all, although it was obviously a Mack.)

McQueen is a click together kit (Actually, push together as there is no clicking involved.) and comes moulded in three colours with rubber tires that have 'Lightyear' already nicely printed on them. There are also five little pots of acrylic paint and a set of water slide decals as well as a sheet of peel and stick decals aimed at junior modellers.
Even the instructions are printed in full colour. Such fun!
Junior modellers could just assemble the kit, stick on the decals, and produce a nice model very easily.
More advanced modellers will want to paint it and use the water slide decals.

The body shell is really shiny right out of the box, but I primed it, sanded the very tiny mould lines, primed it again and gave it a coat of Tamiya Bright Red (TS-49) from a rattle can. I chose this colour as it is what I used to paint Mack, and they both should be the same colour. 

The kit is exceptionally well engineered and all parts fit very snugly together. I did make a couple of changes... I always do.. sigh!
I wanted the front wheels to be steerable allowing for a more interesting pose. It looks like Revell may have thought about doing that as it only took me about 30 minutes with a razor saw, sanding stick, some Evergreen styrene rod and strip, and a piece of bent brass wire (For the steering linkage) and I had steerable front wheels. Easy peasy! However, when I put the body over the chassis, there was not enough gap between the tires and the wheel arches for the wheels to steer. So that was a waste of time!
My McQueen is destined to be a straight line racer.

The other alteration was to the dual exhaust pipes on either side of the model. These are moulded with solid blocked ends and they really needed to be opened up. I cut off the ends and replaced them with some Evergreen tube that I squashed into ovals. Looks much better!.
I sprayed them with a chrome silver, rather than using the Aluminium Metallic that came with the kit.

I even used some of the supplied paint (Iron Metallic) to brush paint the wheel nuts (AKA Lug nuts?) and I was impressed with it. Easy to apply, and great coverage over the red wheels.
I also used the supplied red paint to paint the brake callipers.
The wheels have a nice raised ring that made painting it yellow very easy. Surprisingly there was no yellow paint supplied in the kit. But a yellow paint marker made short work of painting the yellow ring.
I sanded the rubber tires to remove the mould line and to give them a more worn look.

Revell had pre-painted McQueen's teeth white, so no white paint need to be supplied and no painting needed to be done by me. Nice!

I used a chrome marker pen to pick out the hood catches and the rivets on the rear side windows.
Liquid mask was applied around the pneumatic struts on the rear wing and chrome silver airbrushed on them.
Loads of decals to apply but great placement diagrams (in full colour.) are supplied and they all applied very well with Microscale Set and Sol making them fit to all the complex curves. Note: The decals craze and wrinkle after the Micro Sol is applied. Don't panic! Slop on a bit more and walk away. After a few hours the decals will dry smooth.
These are some of the best decals that I have ever used, brilliantly printed and opaque enough so none of the red body colour shows through.

The whole body was then sprayed in Modelmaster Glosscoat to seal everything.

Note: that the wheels are not designed to roll (They do turn a bit!). Not a problem for me, but junior modellers may expect a model that they can push around. 

My Mack has waited a long time for a 1/24 Lightning McQueen buddy. But this kit was certainly worth the wait. Who says that you can't have a great click fit kit?
So if you want a scale model car with eyes and a mouth then this kit is for you


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## Milton Fox Racing (May 27, 2014)

Is there room inside the fender wheels to cut part out and let the wheels turn (or just leave them out)? Doest look like you can see inside the wheel arches to much and it might not be noticable. :lurk5:


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## Alien (Sep 5, 2001)

Milton Fox Racing said:


> Is there room inside the fender wheels to cut part out and let the wheels turn (or just leave them out)? Doest look like you can see inside the wheel arches to much and it might not be noticable. :lurk5:


Sadly the real problem is that the wheels and tires extend out slightly further than the fenders so when you try and turn the wheels the tires hit the fender wheel arches almost immediately.
As far as I can see you would have to make the fender wheel arches bigger which would spoil the look of the car.:frown2:
Or, recess the wheels further into the body to clear the fenders when they turn. That would be doable but would take a lot of work and not worth it in my opinion.


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