This is one of my favorite things about RC, getting the body or shell of your radio controlled car perfect.

Lexan is a polycarbonate resin thermoplastic. The hard clear plastic is perfect for molding into car bodies, it can be painted and it very tough for those radio contolled incidents where your car flies instead of drives. You can get pretty much any make or model that your heart desires.

The chemical composition of lexan

Preparing the shell

Before you paint the lexan shell you need to clean it, use water and soap and clean the inside of the shell, we do this to remove any dirt or mold that will make your paint job peel after a while, any soap will do, don't use anything other than normal soap as this can sometimes turn the clear lexan a milky white. Once the shell has been cleaned and left to dry your ready for the next stage.

An unpainted lexan RC shell

I'm not going into details about air brushing, this requires a lot of expensive equipment and a lot of time and skill. I'm talking about using the spray cans that you can pick up in any hobby shop. The paint must be right kind, make sure that you use lexan paint, as some of the other won't stick to the plastic. Don't trust they hobby shop owners, double check the can, they will sell you the wrong thing.

Cutting the shell

When I first started painting my shells I used to leave the cutting until last, this always make the most sense to me, but it's wrong for a couple of reasons. It's best to buy Lexan scissors, they have a slight curve in the blade which makes in easy to cut out the shell, you also get tools to cut the wheel arches out perfectly, although I've never used these ad the scissors work well enough.

1. No matter how careful you are you will always end up scratching the paint work, it takes about 24 hours to dry completely, during this time the slightest bump will take a chunk out of your hard work
2. If you paint first and cut second you won't be able to line up the shell to the chassis, it's much easier to cut while you can still see where the holes need to go

Designing your paint scheme

You need to put some thought into the paint scheme, select two or three colours that you want to use. to get the best results you need to back the paint job with a light colour. The rule of thumb is if it's a metallic colour use a silver backing, if it's non-metallic then use white. By backing the paint job with a light or silver colour you ensure that the colours will be consistent, Dark colours first, then light colours, otherwise the dark colour will come through the light and change the resulting colour, for example, white then black would give you a grey tinge, by putting black down first both black and white will show up as the correct colour.

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