Pimp My Batmobile!

Quick update on the steering wheel and some other parts news:

1. Futura wheel. I was pretty happy with the wheel I had devised. Until…  Three days ago I dropped in a test decal and then conformed it to the concave bezel using Micro Sol. Once dry, I dropped in a smaller central metal ring to function as the actual speedo rim. Then I augmented the gauge lights with some epoxy colored paint for a raised effect. The final piece of the puzzle was after I added a few drops of  ‘crystal clear’ watch cement. The effect was amazing – the clear liquid glue magnified the depth and detail of everything in the center of the wheel and it truly looked stunning. I added some clear epoxy later and left for the day. When I go home I was dismayed to see the epoxy had clouded! (it was old) so I had to pry out the epoxy, which of course brought up the decal with it. SOoooo – I printed out a slightly different center hub decal and started over. This one is not as good because it isn’t using our real decal, but it gives you an idea of how it looks. This time I used clear resin for the center. The hanging turn signal pods are next.

2. New Upgrade Parts Set Clarification. Several people have emailed me to ask about the parts and decals being sold on ebay and wondering if they are ours as they look very similar. First – they are NOT ours. Ours are not out and won’t be for a little while yet. And when we sell on ebay it will always be under the PimpMyBatmobile user ID. The parts on eBay are being sold by Jason Napper. Jason created a resin 1:18 batmobile kit 2 years ago and is selling the parts he made for that batmobile on ebay.  As you know – the Hot Wheels Batmobile is really 1:19.5 scale. Which is smaller than true 1:18.  Jason made a very nice resin kit and his was based off of a 1:16 kit originally. Which is that much bigger than 1:19.5  So much in fact, that many of the parts made for his kit are out of scale for the HW car. They are good parts and we started our set with a few similar base parts, but the reason ours are not out yet and why we are not just using the same parts is because ours are being specifically tailored to the specs of the new Hot Wheels Batmobile. Jason’s are not. If you can’t stand the wait and don’t care about the size discrepancy that much – Jason’s part set is a pretty good, quick upgrade set. If you can wait a bit longer – ours will have some pretty nice features. Like clear red parts and black urethane parts for example. Here’s a peak at the beacon we’re working on, cast in clear red. Easily lit, easily painted silver around the parts you want to leave red. 

Also a note on the decal sets: The wetslide decals Jason Napper is selling are very nice. They were designed by the same person who designed our decals – our partner – Andy Garringer. However – Andy has resized our set to actually fit the Hot Wheels Batmobile. Jason’s were sized for his larger model kit. Again – a great set if you can’t wait. Some will work better than others. But our set will be correctly resized by the original designer for the Hot Wheels Batmobile.

We wish Jason well with all his endeavors. We hear he is working on a 1:18 Futura kit at the moment. That should be a nice compliment to the Hot Wheels Batmobile when he finishes it.