What if instead of painting bumpers, engine blocks, trim or other details silver, you could paint them a true chrome finish? Now you can with two different paints, Alclad II Lacquers Chrome and Spaz Stix Liquid Metal. For the first time, r/c painters can achieve true chrome metal look. Prior to this paint, if you wanted chrome bumpers on your r/c car, you either had to settle for silver or use a model sheet film. Neither was ideal with the silver being, well, silver and the sheet films being tedious to apply. With some simple, careful attention to your work, either Spaz Stix Liquid Metal or Alclad Chrome can give you the chrome you've been looking for.

Both Spaz Stix Liquid Metal and Alclad II Lacquer chrome are lacquer based paint, sold in 1 oz. vials. Inside the paint, which looks clear with dust inside when new, are small particles which when sprayed and allowed to dry, produce a smooth chrome finish. When drying, the particles align and settle creating a mirror like finish. It should be noted that Alclad II has versions available for both static plastic models as well as Lexan car bodies, be sure the paint you are buying says "For RC Bodies" on the label or you will have the wrong paint. Applying the paints require the same steps for each paint so once you've master one, you've mastered them both. Do NOT use a hair dryer to speed this along since the particles will not align correctly.

1. Again, start with a properly prepped body, free of mold agents and finger prints.
2. Set you air pressure to between 15 and 20 psi. Any more and it will dry in the airbrush, any less and it will spatter.
3. There is no need to thin the paint. In fact, doing so will ruin it.
4. Apply 3 thin coats. If using Alclad II Lacquers Chrome, allowing it to dry between coats for a good 30 minutes to an hour. If using Spaz Stix Liquid Metal, it only requires a minute or two between coats! During this time, the paint will settle and the particles will realign on the paint. One great benefit to the Spaz Stix Liquid Metal is that the bottle is designed to accept the top of many paint brush siphon cups, which means you can just screw on the bottle and not mess and clean a paint cup.
5. Holding a black card or shirt behind the paint, check the density of your coats. If it looks like chrome when you hold the card behind the body, you've applied enough paint.
6. Clean your airbrush with r/c lacquer based paint thinner.
7. Per the instructions on the bottle, back the chrome with any dark acrylic. I've found black works universally. Do not use a lacquer based paint for backing, (i.e. Pactra Lacquers!) since it will react with the paint! Use Parma FasBlack or Pactra Acryl Black.
8. Revel in the awesome wonder of your creative skills!

Alclad recently introduced a line of transparent tint colors to tint your chrome! They are a transparent paint you spray first, then back with Chrome to achieve Red, Blue, Green or Yellow chrome. Their application is very easy: Simply spray a few coats of the transparent color on the body before you spray the chrome. When you have an even coat that has dried, then spray and back the chrome as you normally would.

There are a number of ways to tint the windows in your RC car once its complete. You can use actual window tinting film from the auto parts store, but it takes a lot of patience to complete the car and make it look perfect.

If you are spraying with cans, one choice is using Pactra's Window Tint in a can. Testor's products are usually top of the line, the best of the best, that being said, the Pactra's Window Tint can be difficult to use unless you really go slowly and prep the body correctly. If you do want to use it, here are the steps involved:

1. Before you take off the window masks, back your car completely with alternating colors of Pactra Sprint White or Fluorescent White and Indy Silver with least 3 coats of EACH (6 total). Make sure the body is completely dry, as in a day or two of drying.
2. You'd heard the advice to warm your can of paint in water before you spray. With the case of Window Tint, get it down right hot.
3. Now stand there and shake the can like you are a paint-mixing machine for a good 30 seconds.
4. Apply a thin (read that THIN) coat of spray to the windows.
5. Hit the inside with a hair dryer for a few minutes and then wait 60 minutes.
6. Reapply another VERY THIN coat of Window Tint.
7. Repeat the process tomorrow.

If you rush it, you WILL screw up the body with paint leaks. I've never met anyone who has not screwed their body up the first time they used this stuff.

If you have an airbrush, life becomes much easier in terms of tinting. The easiest way is to use Pactra Acryl Transparent Smoke to tint your windows. It looks excellent, retains the dark yet transparent look of real tint and takes all of 5 minutes to apply. This is where the Pactra paints really shine in their simplicity and quality of paint! Simply said, the Pactra Acryl line is the smoothest spraying paint I've ever worked with. The steps for applying it are very straightforward and outstanding results can be achieved very quickly!

1. Once the body has been finished and backed with an even backing coat, crank up your compressor to 50 to 80 psi.
2. Spray a light even coat of Acryl Transparent Smoke across the windows.
3. Resist the urge to spray another coat and hit the freshly sprayed paint with a hairdryer for a few minutes while checking it for evenness.
4. If necessary, apply another coat and consider it done!

If you want to experiment with different color tints, try using some of the other Pactra Acryl Transparent paints. When applied to with the right paint scheme, some very cool results with the transparent amber, green, blue etc...

If Pactra Acryls aren't available in your area, you can achieve that black semi mirrored purplish look of many window tints. Try this recipe for home mixed window tint using Fascolor paints:

• 1 Nearly empty bottle of Faspearl Charcoal (about a spits worth left in the bottle)
• 1 squirt of FasBlack
• 2 squirts of water to thin the mix
• 1 squirts of Fasescent Purple
• 2 squirts of Faschange Purple (for luminescence)

The steps for applying the homemade mix are the same as spraying the Pactra Acryl's. The difference is in experimenting to see what results you get. You may want to add more of one color or adjust the water levels to achieve the results you are looking for. The water is for thinning it to transparency level. Remember, to thin and it will run, too thick and it will blotch on the windows.

Glow in the dark paints have taken R/C by storm with the introduction of Spaz Stix Xtreme Glow Paints. Since then, Spaz Stix has released their Radio Active line of paints which as even more intense then the Xtreme Glow paints! Both lines are available in a range of colors so you can have a wide range of glow in the darks on your night time r/c skin! Applying them is similar to applying any r/c lacquer, but with a few nuances.

1. Fill your airbrush paint cup with your choice of Spaz Stix Radio Active or Extreme paint (no thinning required)
2. Set the pressure output on your compressor to between 15 and 25 psi.
3. Apply nice, even thin coats of the Spaz Stix paint. This paint requires more coats then your typical lacquer. Shoot for applying between 6 and 10 coats. While that many seem excessive, remember this: the more coats, the brighter the glow!
4. Be sure to flush your brush clean with lacquer thinner between coats.
5. Once you have the number of coats you want, you'll need to back the glow paints. Soaz Stix makes a backer specifically for this purpose called Glow Enhancer. Apply 2 to 3 coats of Glow Enhancer to the back of the Glow paints.

That's it! They spray as nicely and evenly as any paint on the market, the major difference comes in the glow they produce at night! No longer are you relegated to running your car during the day. With Spaz Stix paints, you can spray up a body and watch it glow as it zips down the street.

Everyone seems to love this stuff. If you haven't seen it yet, this is paint that changes color depending on the angle of the light striking it. I have not included a picture since this effect is difficult to capture in a picture. There are several ways to achieve this effect. One is going to an auto body shop and have them spray the genuine Dupont paint on there for you, but I think a gallon runs like $2,500.00!!! The most common way to achieve this effect is to simply use one of the paints from Alclad II Lacquers, Spaz Stix and Pactra Racing Colors. FYI, it almost all looks milky white in the bottle and you can only see hints of the color change in the bottle, so don't judge its finish by what it looks like in the bottle. I should point out that there are really 2 types of paint here, the true color change paints (from Alclad, Spaz Stix and Parma) and color highlight paint, which is more of what the original Parma Faschange and Pactra Acryl color change paints are. What is the difference? The true color change paints actually under go a drastic color change as the body is viewed from different angles. Viewed from one angle, they will look, for example, green. When viewed from another, they might be blue or gold. Some of these paints go through an amazing 3 and 4 true color changes! The original Parma Faschange and Pactra Acryl color change will cause a color change to the high lighted areas of the body but rarely do you see a dramatic shift in color. For example, the body may be blue with Faschange purple. When the body is sitting in the sun, the body looks blue with purple highlights where ever the sun is striking its contours.

The finish on these paints is incredible if done carefully and you take your time. Being lacquer based, you need to treat them as you would any lacquer paint minus the thinning since you don't need to thin them at all. Again, you can experiment with backing colors, but to start off with, use black on your first body to see the color change most dramatically. Their application is identical:

1. Spray your first top coat lightly, sealing the masking with the paint.
2. Allow for adequate drying time between coats, usually 30 to 60 minutes
3. Spray 3 to 4 more coats, going slowly and applying even coverage.
4. Remember to flush your brush out with thinner between coats to keep the paint from drying in the brush
5. Test to see if the top coat is complete by holding a dark object behind the body. When you see the color change as you want it to appear, its done.
6. Back the top coat with a dark ACRYLIC paint such as Parma's Fasblack.
7. Take it out in the sun! Really, the color changes will amaze you!

I call them "Intense Color Change" since I don't know their formal name yet, but you will know them soon enough J! They are Parma's response to Alclad's Prismatics and Spaz Stix's Color Change, both of which have impressed the R/C painting world with their intensity and sharp color changes. They are sprayed in a very similar manner as their lacquer counter parts, but are water based acrylics!

1. Spray your first top coat lightly, sealing the masking with the paint.
2. Use a hair dryer to speed up the drying time.
3. Spray 3 to 4 more coats, going slowly and applying even coverage.
4. Allow for adequate drying time between coats, usually 20 to 30 minutes after you have used the hair dryer and watched the moisture leave the paint.
5. Remember to flush your brush out with water between coats to keep the paint from drying in the brush
6. Test to see if the top coat is complete by holding a dark object behind the body. When you see the color change as you want it to appear, its done.
7. Back the top coat with a dark paint such as Parma's Fasblack.
8. Take it out in the sun!

This is the original r/c color change paint. While the color changes are not nearly as impressive as with the other lines, the Faschange paint is still a very cool line to have in your painting arsenal since sometimes subtle is more impressive. While there are many ways to apply this stuff and I would invite you to experiment with different thick nesses and backing colors, there is a classic way is to use this paint. Let's assume you want a white car with blue high light color changing effects.

1. Take the prepped body and with the Faschange Blue paint in your airbrush with a fine nozzle and the compressor cranked on high, apply a very ONE thin coat of the Faschange paint. When you are spraying, go slow and make it even. Don't go back over areas or you risk putting on too much which will muddy the main body color. The general rule is, when it looks milky, you have applied too much.
2. Use a hairdryer to dry the first coat and wait 30 minutes.
3. Flush your airbrush out with water to keep the paint from drying in the brush.
4. Now it's time to apply the main white body color. Simply spray this as you would a one color paint job, with 3 to 4 coats of white Faskolor paint
5. Back it with a coat of silver.
6. That's it! Finish the body as you normally would. To see it change colors, take it out in the sun!

This isn't so much a technique or painting style as it is another type of paint. FasGlitter was introduced by Parma and it is just as its name implies, glitter paint. Actually, it's a two part paint. You buy a bottle of FasGlitter in whatever color you want and you also buy a bottle of FasKoat. FasKoat is the liquid base or spraying agent. To mix them, I found the best way is to take the FasKoat and pour some out into a paint cup (you take some out to make it faster to add the FasGlitter faster) and then mix in the glitter. The mixture is 1:1, that is one bottle of glitter to one bottle of FasKoat. Once the glitter is completely in the bottle, pour in the rest of the FasKoat back into the bottle and start shaking it up and keep shaking. Did I mention to keep shaking? You need to mix this stuff well in order for it to pour and spray smoothly.

When you are ready to spray, make sure you use the largest nozzle available for your airbrush. If you are using the Testors Aztec system, use the yellow nozzle. When you spray it on, it goes on very thinly but also very nicely. Spray a little more on your first coat then you normally would then look it. You can get a clear indication of how much you have on. Spray as many coats as you need to reach the density you want.

1. Wear a mask. We're talking about spraying very fine particles of metal. If this stuff gets in your lungs, it won't be leaving.
2. This stuff gets EVERYWHERE! Wear your worst mess clothes; they will get covered in this stuff. It didn't matter if I sprayed at 30 or 80 psi, it was like standing in one of those snow globes.
3. The FasKoat is very sticky, almost like glue. It doesn't require the drying time the regular Faspaints require. On my first go around, I let the FasGlitter dry for an hour, then backed it then let it dry for 3 hours. That was way too long and it was tough to pull up the masks. Next time I just sprayed the FasGlitter, hit it with the dryer, waited 15 minutes and then backed it and only waited an hour and the masks came up nicely.
4. Have lots Fascleaner or auto window washing fluid handy to flush your brush clean. I mentioned the FasGlitter doesn't require much time to dry. In fact, it will begin to dry within your airbrush VERY quickly. Don't stop to admire your work or close up the paints, just clean your airbrush right away!!! I fouled my nozzle the first time I used this stuff by simply letting it sit in the brush for 10 minutes between coats. With how hard and quick the FasKoat dried, you should get your brush cleaned ASAP.

Obviously, a multitude of glitter/backing color combinations is possible. I was going for a rich deep blue look and I found what Parma said at the show was correct. If I wanted a deep rich blue, you spray the FasGlitter on in 3 or 4 coats, then back it with black. When I compared the FasGlitter blue with a black backing and the Fasglitter blue with a Faspearl Blue backing, the black looked much deeper and richer but not garish.

A few years ago, Team Orion introduced Thunder Designs internal graphics for your car. These are essentially sticker you place on the inside of your car so that your car looks like it is painted in multiple colors. Recently, Jackal Hobbies introduced their Internal Graphics kit but they are different then the Team Orion stickers. The Jackal Hobbies Internal Graphics are the Lexan equivalent of rub on tattoos. Once applied and backed, the Jackal graphics combine with the paint to "melt" into the body. No matter what the type, both are designed to give your R/C car the look of being painted with multiple colors with minimum effort!

1. Peel the graphics from the sheet and carefully place them inside the body, piece by piece.
2. Take a credit card and slowly press out all of the air bubbles so that all of the air is pushed out.
3. Press down all of the edges of the graphic so there are no paint leaks.
4. Paint the body as you normally would with a one or two color paint job!

1. Trim the images from the sheet until you have all the separate pieces.
2. Carefully place each of the images into place (with the image facing outward) and secure them in place with one or two pieces of masking tape
3. Blot the back of the image with a wet rag, pressing it firmly into place for 20 to 30 seconds, just like you would a temporary tattoo.
4. Slowly peel off the backing paper. If the image starts to flake or tear, stop and rewet the backing paper with the rag for another 15 seconds or so.
5. Once the image as dried for a few hours, paint it as you normally would any paint job!